Employee accountability: development of a multidimensional scale

摘要

Employee accountability is a phenomenon of central importance to public administration. The volume of empirical research, however, has been modest given the absence of valid measures. This article develops a reliable and valid five-dimension scale to measure public employee accountability. The measure is distinguished from prior scales in that it fully captures the five distinct dimensions along which employee accountability varies. To test a higher-order factor model of the multidimensional scale, data representing the population of U.S. public sector (government and nonprofit) employees was utilized. A series of scale construction tests, including convergent and discriminant validity tests and multi-group analysis, confirmed that a best-fit model was a five-dimensional, reflective scale with 15 indicators. The article concludes by discussing theoretical and practical implications and future research.