Parasitic accountability

This article investigates what generates and sustains the centrality of accountability as an enduring motif of organizations and contemporary forms of organizing. The article uses a study of malaria interventions to explore the means through which accountability endures. First, the article engages with the burgeoning literature on accountability to explore the ways in which the continuing prominence of accountability is explained. Second, the article turns attention to interventions in malaria and specifically the production of accounts and distributions of accountability in this field. It will be argued that one means through which accountability has endured is through a heretofore un-discussed parasitism. Third, the contribution that parasitism can make to the academic literature on accounts and accountability will be considered. The article will suggest that it is the very features of accounts and distributions of accountability that enable such parasitism and that accountability becomes parasitic upon the organizational form.