Role expectations and shared accountability: A framework for school governance

What This Study Set Out to Do

Accountability in school governance is frequently discussed as if it were a one-directional mechanism: boards hold principals accountable, and principals hold staff accountable. This top-down framing is embedded in most governance frameworks, policy documents, and board training programs. But it has a practical problem. It often produces compliance theater rather than genuine accountability for outcomes, because it separates those with formal authority (boards) from those with operational knowledge (principals) and gives each party an incentive to protect their own position rather than share ownership of results.

Unda and colleagues approached this problem through the lens of Frink and Klimoski's accountability role theory, which frames accountability not as a structural relationship between a principal and an agent but as a perception, one that emerges from the interplay of role expectations, social context, and interpersonal exchange. The goal was to examine how board members, board chairs, and principals in Australian independent schools actually experience and perceive accountability, and what conditions produce shared rather than siloed accountability for school performance.

What Role Theory Adds to Governance Research

Frink and Klimoski's accountability role theory holds that accountability is fundamentally about felt obligation. The sense that one is answerable to others for the outcomes in one's domain. The theory distinguishes between accountability as a formal structural arrangement (who is technically responsible to whom) and accountability as a lived experience (how people actually experience their obligations and to whom they feel answerable). These two can diverge substantially, and when they do, formal governance structures produce less actual accountability than they appear to on paper.

Applying this framework to school governance highlights something that pure structural analyses miss: the perceptions and expectations that board members and principals bring to their roles are not givens. They are constructed through interaction. A new board member learns what it means to be a board member partly from the chair, partly from other board members, and partly from the principal. If those sources convey conflicting or ambiguous role expectations, the board member's accountability perceptions will be correspondingly fuzzy. And fuzzy accountability perceptions produce governance behavior that is either overly deferential (approving proposals without review) or overreaching (directing staff-level decisions that belong to the superintendent), depending on which way the ambiguity resolves.

Key Findings on Role Expectations and Accountability

The interview data from board chairs, board members, and principals revealed several patterns that illuminate how shared accountability does and does not emerge in school governance contexts.

• Role clarity is a prerequisite for shared accountability: When board members and principals held well-defined and mutually understood role expectations, accountability perceptions were clearer and more congruent. When role expectations were ambiguous or contested, accountability became a source of tension rather than a shared governance resource.
• Interpersonal exchange quality matters as much as formal structure: The quality of relationships, particularly between the board chair and principal, influenced how accountability was experienced and enacted in practice. High-quality exchanges characterized by trust, transparency, and mutual respect supported collaborative accountability; transactional or adversarial relationships produced defensive or compliance-oriented behavior instead.
• The board chair-principal relationship is structurally central: The chair-principal dyad functions as the primary channel through which board expectations are communicated and principal performance is understood. The health of this relationship shapes the accountability environment for the whole organization, a dysfunctional chair-principal relationship diffuses shared accountability even when formal governance structures are sound.
• Accountability perceived as shared supports performance better than accountability perceived as imposed: Participants who experienced accountability as a mutual obligation, something boards and principals carried together toward shared goals, described governance environments that were more conducive to honest performance conversations, proactive problem-solving, and organizational learning. Participants who experienced accountability as imposed from above described environments characterized by information management, blame avoidance, and strategic reporting.

The Collaborative Accountability Model

The paper's central theoretical contribution is an argument for replacing the conventional hierarchical accountability model (board holds principal accountable) with a collaborative accountability model (board and principal are jointly accountable for school performance). This is not a claim that boards should abandon oversight. It is a claim that oversight is most effective when it operates within a framework of shared ownership rather than hierarchical supervision.

In a collaborative accountability model, boards contribute governance-level judgment, long-term strategic perspective, and community accountability, while principals contribute operational expertise, staff relationships, and execution capacity. Neither party can be fully accountable for school performance without the other, because the outcomes they are responsible for require both governance-level and operational-level contributions. A model that frames the principal as the accountable party and the board as the overseer obscures this interdependence and creates incentives that work against the collaborative behavior needed for sustained improvement.

Implications for Governance Practice

• Invest deliberately in role clarity: Boards should establish and regularly revisit explicit, written expectations for the board's role, the chair's role, and the principal's role, not as a compliance exercise but as a foundation for shared accountability. Unexamined assumptions about who is responsible for what are a primary source of governance dysfunction.
• Treat the chair-principal relationship as a governance priority: Given that the chair-principal dyad is the primary channel for accountability communication in this study, boards should structure onboarding, evaluation, and professional development to support the health of this relationship. This includes ensuring the chair has the skills and time to maintain a productive working relationship, not just formal oversight authority.
• Shift accountability conversations from reporting to shared inquiry: Boards that operate primarily through formal reporting cycles (principal presents data, board receives it) are structuring accountability as a one-way flow. Boards that engage in genuine collaborative inquiry, examining performance data together, testing explanations, and co-developing responses, are building the shared accountability dynamic this study found to be most conducive to performance improvement.
• Recognize that accountability is a perception, not just a structure: Governance reforms that focus exclusively on structural changes (new bylaws, clearer job descriptions, new evaluation tools) will underperform if they do not also attend to the relational and perceptual dynamics that shape how accountability is actually experienced. The architecture matters, but so does the culture it operates in.