ABSTRACT
As a result of the marketization of the public sector, a ‘corporate’ form of governance has become the predominant model for judging how professionals account for themselves at work. The rationale of this model, dictating its mode of operation, grounds the idea of what now counts as public accountability: ‘to set clear targets, to develop performance indicators, to measure the achievement of those targets, and to single out, by means of merit awards, promotion or other rewards, those individuals who get “results”’.1 Aptly described as a ‘market-inspired managerialism’ by Pádraig Hogan (1995: 226), this kind of accountability is also referred to in the literature as ‘New Public Management’ (usually abbreviated to NPM; see Section I.5 for more details).
