The University of Pittsburgh's Johnson Institute for Responsible Leadership Announces Best Paper Contest Winners

PITTSBURGH-The Johnson Institute for Responsible Leadership in Pitt's Graduate School for Public and International Affairs (GSPIA) has announced the winners of the Best Paper in Ethics and Accountability contest. Each year, scholars, students, and professionals from around the world are invited to submit papers written on topics of leadership, public service, and accountability in public life.

Recipients of the 2008-09 Johnson Institute's Best Paper Prize in the categories of published paper and student paper are as follows, respectively.

"Governance for Broadened Accountability: Blending Deliberate and Emergent Strategizing," coauthored by J. Bart Morrison, assistant professor of management at Assumption College, and J. Paul Salipante, professor of labor and human resource policy at Case Western Reserve University. Published in "Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly," the paper breaks new ground by showing how an organization can inch its way toward accountability with emergent and incremental adjustments and with strategic planning.

"Whose Accountability Is It Anyway?" by Paloma Raggo, PhD student and teaching associate in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs' political science department at Syracuse University, is one of the two winning papers in the student category. This paper adds to the understanding of how financial accountability relates to other types of accountability mechanisms, including good governance, transparency, program evaluation, responsiveness, and participation.

"Accountability in Social Enterprises: An Analytical Framework" by Wen-Jiun Wang, GSPIA graduate student at Pitt, also won in the student category. This paper, which addresses the accountability of social enterprises, proposes a creative and highly original framework that uncovers four different types of accountability, depending on whether the actors are internal or external and the outcomes are mission- or economic-related. Also, Wang's four-cell framework has theoretical as well as practical value.

To view the winning papers, visit the Johnson Institute Web site (www.johnsoninstitute-gspia.org). For more information, contact the Johnson Institute at ethics@gspia.pitt.edu or 412-648-1336.

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4/20/09/tmw