ACADEMIC PAPER Public caseworkers' strategies coping with accountability demands Kwangseon Hwang 1 | Yousueng Han 2 1 Public administration & Policy, Korea Institute of S&T Evaluation and Planning (KISTEP), Seoul, Korea 2 School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA), Indiana University at Bloomington, Bloomington, Indiana, USA Correspondence Yousueng Han, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA Email: youshan@indiana.edu Public employees are required to manage multiple accountability requirements by investing in the relationship with those who demand accountability, making a commitment to the given tasks and anticipating what might happen. The purpose of the study is to explore how social caseworkers manage multiple accountability requirements compared to public managers. The analysis from child welfare caseworkers' interview data highlights a number of ways on how social caseworkers respond to multiple accountabilities. Although most of acts from caseworkers are exposed within the public managers' strategies, talking or discussing with coworkers and supervisors seems the caseworkers' contextual and endemic response. Discussions followed. 1 | INTRODUCTION Coping with accountability has been well developed from the social psychological perspective (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999; Tetlock, 1998; Tetlock, Skitka, & Boettger, 1989). Tetlock and his colleagues have found cognitive, emotional, and behavioral strategies of coping with accountability. For example, conformity, preemptive self‐criticism (to think in more self‐critical, integratively complex ways in which they consider multiple perspectives on the issue and try to anticipate the objections that reasonable), and self‐justification are feasible strategies (Tetlock et al., 1989). Facing contradictory demands, people respond to those by decision‐evasion tactics, by plunging into controversy and aligning oneself with one or another constituency or by mediating the dispute between the conflicting constituencies (Tetlock, 1998). Recently, how public managers manage the diverse accountability requirements has been disclosed (Schillemans, 2015). Schillemans's (2015) study focused on executive managers of different areas of pub- lic sector in the Netherlands, and their strategies managing multiple accountabilities were identified. Active investment in the relationship with accountability forums, an authentic commitment to the mission, and anticipating what might happen, to name a few, seem to be their responses. The purpose of the present study is to explore how street‐level bureaucrats manage multiple accountability require- ments and compare them with the public managers' responses. Multiple accountability requirements are identified in the child wel- fare service context (Hwang, 2016). Caseworkers acknowledge the importance of coping with diverse accountability requirements, which come into conflict with one another in their daily practice with some variations. So how do child welfare caseworkers manage or cope with these conflicting accountability requirements? Although little research has been done regarding the strategies of public offi- cials on managing accountability, this article adds understanding of how the street‐level public service workers respond to conflicting accountability demands. Our focus is public child welfare caseworkers in the state of Virginia, which are relevant to personnel in the areas of adoption, child protec- tive services (CPS), family preservation, and foster care. Child welfare systems are often managed through a steadily expanding regulatory framework that sets forth procedures, timeframes, documentation requirements, and review processes. These management practices encourage caseworkers to look for other careers, and they are contrary to a culture of responsibility and professional growth. Correspondingly, there has been a movement to balance compliance with a regulatory framework and an emphasis on professional commitment (Casey‐ Family‐Programs, 2011). Examining accountability in street‐level orga- nizations is appropriate because discretion, which has a significant correlation with managing accountability, is assumed in theory, and possibly indispensable in practice. The empirical evidence comes primarily from interviews with 28 child welfare caseworkers in the United States. The respondents repre- sent a diverse mix of child welfare services, some of which include CPS, foster care, and mixed services. The respondents are also diverse in terms of their service regions and child welfare work experience. 1 The interview questionnaire was “How do you cope with any conflicts between accountability requirements? Please be as specific as possible in describing your personal strategies for coping with these conflicts.” 1 Service Region (Virginia): Northern 5, Piedmont 6, Central 6, Western 6, Eastern 5; Work Period in Child Welfare Services: from 3 months to 38 years Received: 19 February 2017 Accepted: 16 July 2017 DOI: 10.1002/pa.1669 J Public Affairs. 2017;17:e1669. https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1669 Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1 of 8