Stewardship and Accountability

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Stewardship

Stewardship is basically derived from the word Steward, there are four definitions of this word are;

1.            A person who manage the affairs of an estate on the behalf of his employer.
2.            A person who manager the other person finance and property.
3.            One who administers anything as an agent?
4.            A person who is appointed in the place of another.

In accounting literature, the term stewardship is used many times and has different meanings in different conditions. Sometimes it is used to distinguish between the management performance and the entity performance. Sometimes it is just used for one person like a custodian of the asset. Other references go narrow on conceptual framework in Europe.

 Accountability

The word accountability is derived from accountable. In accounting literature, this term has been used many times with similar meanings. The Australian accounting framework defines accountability as the responsibility to provide information to enable all the users to make informed decisions about the performance of the management, financial position, decision to investment and compliance with all the relevant laws. In the financial reporting management should provide the information with can be used by the present and future stakeholder. Through this, all user can get to know about the performance of the management how they have performed in the previous year. How manager has performed stewardship responsibility and the other performance objective too. Managers are answerable to all the resource providers about their performance, not only for the safekeeping of the organization resources but also for the ways of efficient and effective use. The stakeholders who provided resources to the non-profit organizations do not have profit indicator, they don’t have anything to measure the performance of the manager. In this situation, resource providers can measure the efficient use of the resource through which they can get their organization objective.

Managers are answerable to all the resource providers about their performance, not only for the safekeeping of the organization resources but also for the ways of efficient and effective use. The stakeholders who provided resources to the non-profit organizations do not have profit indicator, they don’t have anything to measure the performance of the manager. In this situation, resource providers can measure the efficient use of the resource through which they can get their organization objective.

Remarks

I am not agreeing with the statement because IASB’s also consider the stewardship, and managers are accountable to the stakeholders. There are two types of directors for example executive directors and non-executive directors, NED has a check over the executive directors how they are performing, are their decision are good for the organization. Corporate governance is now becoming necessary for getting stock exchange listing; this makes management accountable to all the stakeholders.