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Introduction
Accountability has become a central theme of management literature and practice, especially in the non‐profit and government sectors. Although the literature on accountability is diverse, much of this material defines quite narrowly both the relationships underlying accountability and the actions involved in being accountable. At its most extreme, accountability is defined as the production and publication of quantitative performance measures.
The purpose of this paper is to enrich our understanding of accountability by exploring how it was conceptualized and put into action at the Hull House settlement, a non‐profit organization established in Chicago at the turn of the century. We chose Hull House because it was an important and influential non‐profit organization in the USA, leaving a significant mark on public policy (Davis, 1967). Further historians have suggested two theoretical reasons to believe that Hull House may have provided alternative formulations of accountability. Jane Addams, the founder and driving force of Hull House was deeply involved with those who articulated pragmatic philosophy, including John Dewey. Pragmatism has been described as “America's one original contribution to the world of philosophy,” (Diggins, 1994, p. 2) and Dewey has been described as “the most important philosopher in modern American history, honored and attacked by men and women all over the world” (Westbrook, 1992, p. ix). We believe that this linkage influenced the way Hull House conceptualized its role within and accountability to the community where it was founded[1].
Secondly, settlement houses were often founded and run by women. As such, they provided one opportunity for women to leave their private sphere of domestic life, and to move into public life. Historians argue that these women brought to their settlement work both their private understandings of women's traditional role as homemakers and their newly formed conceptions of women as public professionals. Some Feminist scholars and historians suggest that this unique blending made Hull House and other settlements fundamentally different from other, more traditional non‐profit organizations. One prominent area of difference was the way these women held themselves accountable to the community in which they worked, to each other and to their funders.
Pragmatist writers can cast light on tensions that remain woven throughout our current efforts to define what it means to be accountable. Although the issues surrounding...