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The Importance of Accountability

• Categories: Accountability Leadership

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Words: 539 |

Published: Mar 5, 2024

Words: 539 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

References:

• Center for Creative Leadership. (2019). The Role of Leadership Accountability in Driving Success
• Harvard Business Review. (2018). The Importance of Accountability in the Workplace
• Journal of Business Ethics. (2020). The Role of Leadership Accountability in Promoting Ethical Behavior

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How to Create a Culture of Ethics & Accountability in the Workplace

• 22 Aug 2023

Ethics and accountability play significant roles in company culture. From employee satisfaction and productivity to maintaining a favorable reputation with customers and business partners, prioritizing ethical decision-making and accountability has numerous benefits.

An ethical company culture results from hard work and intentional actions. Before diving into how to foster that kind of environment, here’s an overview of why ethics and accountability are important in the workplace.

Access your free e-book today.

The Importance of Ethics and Accountability at Work

Ethics and accountability are crucial to a productive work environment. They help shape your organization's culture, promote trust, ensure responsible behavior, and contribute to its success.

“Being a leader involves responsibility for others,” says Harvard Business School Professor Nien-hê Hsieh in the online course Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability . “As a leader, you’ll want to create a culture not just of legal and regulatory compliance but more fundamentally grounded in reliability, ethics, and goodwill.”

When it comes to employees, you must create a culture that both encourages them to work hard and saves the company from lawsuits. Wrongful termination claims can cost your organization upwards of $100,000 in legal expenses , but you can help avoid them with a track record of ethical decision-making .

How to Create a Culture of Accountability

Despite its growing importance, creating a culture of accountability can be challenging. This is largely because organizational change can suffer from poor employee buy-in, an unclear vision, or inadequate understanding among managers. According to a recent Partners In Leadership study on workplace accountability, however, 91 percent of respondents included accountability at the top of their company’s leadership development needs.

So, how can you build a culture of accountability? Here are five ways to get started.

1. Lead by Example

Establishing a culture of ethics and accountability starts with setting an example as an organizational leader . By proactively creating a space where you encourage ethical decision-making and accountability, your team will be more likely to do the same.

Integrity and accountability are also vital to leading effectively .

“Shaping and sustaining an organization’s culture is a critical dimension of a leader’s responsibilities toward their employees,” Hsieh says in Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability . “In addition, the right culture—one in which employees feel they’re treated fairly and with respect—can benefit the organization from an economic perspective.”

Leading by example also promotes trust within your organization, which can be critical to establishing accountability among your team. Although 40 percent of employees report unethical behavior in the workplace, they’re 24 percent more likely to report it if they trust leadership.

To increase trust, promote accountability, and encourage ethical decisions, it’s prudent to practice what you preach.

Related: How Does Leadership Influence Organizational Culture?

2. Provide Meaningful Feedback

Giving feedback is an effective way to promote accountability within your team. Research by Gallup shows that employees who receive regular, meaningful feedback are four times more likely to be engaged.

“Within a company, one way of building accountability is to incorporate key performance indicators, or KPIs, into evaluations of managers and other employees,” Hsieh says in Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability . “It would then be important to regularly review how well employees are meeting those KPIs and to reaffirm that the metrics chosen are indeed useful and relevant ones.”

When providing feedback, be direct but empathetic. Let your team know you come from a place of caring and consideration, with the goal of helping them grow and improve professionally.

Remember that asking for and receiving meaningful feedback is essential to creating a culture of accountability. Request input on how you’re doing as a leader, and show initiative to improve. This can encourage your team members to continuously hold you—and each other—accountable.

3. Combat Workplace Bias

Building a culture of ethics and accountability requires that everyone proactively combats workplace bias and stereotypes .

Workplace bias refers to unconscious inclinations based on personal experience, cultural background, or social conditioning. Bias can affect your decisions and actions and be explicit (you’re aware of it) or implicit (you’re unaware of it).

Stereotypes—overgeneralized perceptions and beliefs about groups of people—can also lead to unfair decisions and harmful actions. They can be based on:

• Sexual orientation
• Religious affiliation

According to Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability , promoting diversity is one of the best ways to overcome workplace bias and stereotypes.

“It’s integral to create a sense of belonging within an organization,” Hsieh says in the course. “Having diverse people in upper management roles ensures that minority employees have role models they can relate to. But it can also be helpful to foster meaningful interactions among people in different demographic groups; for example, through mentorships or teamwork in small groups.”

Other strategies include hosting workshops to increase cultural awareness, encouraging interactions between diverse groups, and holding colleagues accountable when bias or stereotypes affect workplace dynamics.

4. Give Employees a Voice

So that you and other leaders receive meaningful feedback and stay accountable, it’s vital to give employees a platform to share their thoughts. However, doing so can be unnerving.

“Finding ways to promote employee voice is not always an easy or comfortable task,” Hsieh says in Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability . “It involves both formal and informal channels of engagement. It involves real listening. And it may even feel threatening to managers and require a sense of vulnerability.”

Yet, employees need to feel heard—beyond defending their basic rights—to boost their morale.

“Fairness may require that companies establish formal channels for employees to speak out not only about rights violations but also about wants, needs, concerns, and suggestions for improvement,” Hsieh says in the course.

Despite the potential discomfort, giving employees a platform can have numerous benefits. For example, you can increase their satisfaction and reduce costly turnover by addressing their concerns. It can also lead to more innovation and creative problem-solving .

5. Develop an Authentic Leadership Style

Authentic leadership is defined by principle-driven decisions. It requires putting your beliefs ahead of your company’s success and prioritizing employee satisfaction and relationships.

The benefits of having an authentic leadership style include:

• Enhanced workplace relationships
• Increased productivity
• Improved working environments

To develop an authentic leadership style, reflect on your values, principles, and mission. What’s important to you above all else? What do you believe in? Self-awareness is one of the first steps to becoming an authentic leader.

You also need to practice authentic leadership in your daily life. For instance, by making decisions that prioritize relationships with your team and colleagues. Continuously committing to developing your leadership style through accountability and implementing feedback can ensure you garner long-term results in creating an ethical work environment.

Take Accountability

Taking accountability can be difficult—especially in the workplace. However, it’s critical to fostering an ethical, productive work environment and protecting your organization from negative financial or legal actions.

If you struggle to navigate business ethics , consider sharpening your leadership skills . One way to do so is by taking an online course, such as Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability . Through engaging in an interactive learning experience featuring real-world business examples, you can develop a framework for understanding and delivering on your responsibilities to customers, employees, investors, and society.

Ready to improve your workplace accountability? Enroll in Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability —one of our online leadership and management courses—and download our free e-book on how to become a more effective leader.

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Ethics and Accountability in Philippine Public Administration

The paper describes and explains the existing executive and legal instruments in promoting good governance within Philippine public administration.

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Teresa Dolly

sherlito Sable

This paper intends to highlight the nature of ethics in public governance, current condition of ethics in public service in the Philippine governance system, and the implication of ethics in the country’s political economy. To achieve these objectives document review of existing literature is used. Thematic analysis from the existing documents is used to be able construct a model of understanding the politics of ethics in the Philippine public service. On the basis of the literature cited and document review conducted, the politics of public ethics in the Philippines can be described as; the moral development is in compliance level of public norms and rules only; it has not reached or graduated from compliance towards the level of integrity and institutional culture of ethics; agency heads play a role of administrator than a public manager; and perception of the public tends to show a declining trust in governance. Author: Prof. Sherlito Sable

Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance

Maria Pilar Lorenzo

Given the development context of the Philippines, the foremost question confronting the discipline of Public Administration is not only in junction with its identity – "What is Philippine Public Administration" – but to expand the boundaries and inquire, "For whom is Philippine Public Administration?" The publicness of public administration signifies that emphasis should not be placed only on the traditional components of 3 Es, but primordial consideration must also be given to additional principles of equity, ethics, and accountability in order to create and sustain a public administration that is truly agile and Filipino people-oriented. As such, a Philippine version of Public Administration can be framed as the “5 Es and an A,” juxtaposing effectiveness, efficiency, and economy with three other pillars, namely, equity, ethics, and accountability.

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Maricel Fernandez

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This article traces the evolution of public administration, suggesting that there are only two major phases: traditional and modern. The fields of public administration are discussed taking cognizance of the many other emerging fields going beyond the traditional fields of public administration, namely, voluntary sector management and information technology. Selected major ongoing concerns of public administration which include reorganization, decentralization and corruption in the Philippines are also considered. The article also briefly discusses an example of what is now taken as an emerging illustration of a home grown governance paradigm, the "Gawad Kalinga" as illustrative of a successful partnership and cooperation between government, business and civil society in the delivery of basic services, which after all is a core concern of modern public administration and good governance. The article ends by raising third order concerns and challenges as it tries to address...

Journal PPS UNISTI

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Ethics is an important element which determines the successful implementation of organizations activities and public administration actors. The importance to implement public administration ethics in the Indonesia government bureaucracy was based to the ethical problems which happened, such as corruption, collusion and nepotism. This research used qualitative method, where is primary data obtained from observations, and secondary data obtained from media and literature study. From the research that has been conducted, it is known that few of government officials in Indonesia are lack of accountability in performing their duties, authorities and responsibilities and as a result the public bureaucracy in the reform era was much highlighted by the public and got criticism. To solve this problem, besides by enforcing the laws, the government also must to cultivate and implement the public administration ethics for their bureaucratic apparatus.

Eliza W. Y. Lee

The Principal Officials Accountability System (POAS), which was established in 2002 by the then Chief Executive, Tung Chee Hwa, marked the beginning of a Hong Kong-style system of ministerial government. As a major attempt at institutional reform in the postcolonial era, the reform has so far invited more negative than positive appraisals about its impact on public governance. Academic critiques, however, have barely touched on the problem from the perspectives of institutional design and development. Accordingly, this article analyses the institutional characteristics of the POAS as a ministerial system, and how these characteristics have shaped the working relationships between politicians and bureaucrats. The underling argument is that, after one and a half decades, the POAS remains underdeveloped. This state of underdevelopment is the outcome of institutional change through incremental reforms leading to disjointedness and incoherence. There are worrying signs that under an increasingly authoritarian system, the core values of the civil service are gradually being eroded.

julius paolo Basa

An Analysis of the Current State of the Philippine Public Administration and Governance According to the Fourth Trade Policy Review of the Philippines conducted by the World Trade Organization (WTO), the country's economy is " operating below potential due to the slow pace of reform while some of the key constraints on overall economic growth remain (e.g. inadequate infrastructure, low investment, and governance issues). " (WTO Secretariat, Trade Policy Review, 2012) Given that one of the key constraints of the country's economic growth is issues pertaining to governance, this clearly reflects the current state of governance and Public Administration in the Philippines that is hampered by complex bureaucracies, with excessive and overlapping rules and regulations leading to inefficient use of government resources. We can identify several " clusters " of issues in which these inefficiencies sprouted from. The first cluster of these issues relating to the current state of governance and public administration in the country is the aged-old problem of corruption. This issue rose from the existence of widespread monopoly and discretion without transparency and accountability; to simply put, corruption is the dishonest or fraudulent act by those in power. The issue of corruption in the Philippines has been in existence since time immemorial; tracing its roots back to the political dynasties of Datus at Barangays. The lack of laws against corruption has never been the case in the Philippines as there have been as much laws passed and took in effect which aims to fight the said issue, but still is existing. This only shows how deep this issue has affected us; corruption has been embedded to the very society we live in which makes it hard to eradicate entirely that no existing laws can solve this phenomenon. It can be noted that due to the extensive presence of corruption, public trust has been dramatically subsiding throughout the years.

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Ethics & Accountability

Preventing undue influence, corruption, and the appearance of corruption by elected officials, lobbyists, and members of the executive branch.

Areas of focus

• Congressional Ethics
• Executive Branch Ethics
• Lobbying Reform

High ethical standards are a cornerstone of a functioning and accountable political system that earns the public’s trust.

Too often, though, there is lax or no enforcement of ethics and lobbying laws in Congress and the executive branch.

Many Americans feel members of Congress, government officials, and lobbyists are above the law, using their positions of power for personal or financial gain. Such corruption — or even the appearance of corruption — has a corrosive effect on our democracy, undermining public confidence in the integrity of our most sacred institutions.

To win public trust in our government, it’s imperative we build — and enforce — stronger ethics, accountability, and transparency laws for Congress, the executive branch, and for lobbyists.

• Work to combat attempts to undermine existing accountability mechanisms such as the Office of Congressional Ethics in the House or the Inspector General system, improve their functioning and strengthen their independence.
• Work to establish new and empowered accountability systems, proposing an independent Office of Senate Ethics.
• Push for executive orders to strengthen federal executive branch ethics rules and call out officials that abuse their role .
• Fight against congressional insider trading and call for passage of the bipartisan legislation to ban members of Congress and their families from trading individual stocks.
• Work to close the “shadow lobbying” loophole, a practice that allows officials to participate in activities tantamount to lobbying but without the requirement to register as a lobbyist.

Our impact:

• Spearheaded a coalition of organizations to advance legislation designed to protect the integrity and independence of the Inspectors General system
• Successfully advocated for more than a year for the House Democratic Caucus to publicly release its rules
• Advocated for a bicameral, bipartisan update to Congress’ sexual harassment policy
• Gave a detailed accounting of how the House and Senate ethics committees fail to foster a culture of high ethical standards in Congress
• Fought attempts in the 115th and 118th Congress to covertly gut the independent Office of Congressional Ethics in the House of Representatives

Featured Work

Private: Ensuring the independence of inspectors general (IGs)

Loopholes in our system allow presidents to overreach and fire IGs for political or personal reasons, undermining the public’s  ability to hold government officials accountable.

Stopping members of Congress from trading stocks

When members of Congress trade stock while in office, they abuse the public trust. Our laws need to be strengthened to correct weaknesses dealing with insider trading.

Podcast episodes

Swamp Stories Episode 9: Profiting from Public Service

  “There’s no question members of Congress have access to information that the public does not have, therefore if you want transparency, if you want open hands and a clean…

The Ethics Blind Spot

How the House and Senate ethics committees fail to foster a culture of high ethical standards in Congress...

Read the press release. In “The Ethics Blind Spot,” Issue One analyzes and contrasts the case histories of the two ethics oversight bodies in the U.S. House of Representatives—the House…

Get Updates on Issue One

Featured Press

Raw Story: ‘Aren’t we a little more grown up than that?’: Ex-lawmaker rips Congress for ‘dog ate my homework’ excuses

ReFormers Caucus member Brian Baird quoted...

Roll Call: Advocacy groups denounce GOP proposals to ‘gut’ ethics office

Issue One Legislative Director Elise Wirkus cited...

Insider: Ban federal lawmakers and their family members from trading stocks, 37 former lawmakers tell Congress

The Hill: Congressional stock trading ban must include spouses, lawmakers say

The latest on ethics & accountability.

Jul 16, 2024

Press releases

Sen. Menendez should resign, ReFormers Caucus co-chairs say following criminal conviction

Following today’s conviction of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) on 16 counts of bribery, extortion, and wire fraud, Issue One released the following statement from Amb. Tim Roemer (D-IN) and Rep.…

Dec 01, 2023

Members of Congress have a responsibility to uphold the highest ethical standards, ReFormers Caucus co-chairs say following Rep. Santos expulsion

In reaction to today’s bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives to expel Rep. George Santos (R-NY) from Congress in response to a thorough investigation by the House Ethics Committee,…

Nov 16, 2023

Rep. Santos has tarnished the institution of Congress and should resign, ReFormers Caucus co-chairs say following ethics report release

Today, the House Committee on Ethics released its final report following an investigation into allegations of wrongdoing by Rep. George Santos (R-NY). The report uncovered substantial evidence of illegal activity…

Jun 28, 2023

In the media

Mar 03, 2023

Sign-on letters

Members of Issue One’s Bipartisan ReFormers Caucus Urge House Leadership and Ethics Committee Leadership to Conduct a Thorough Investigation into Rep. George Santos and to Codify the Office of Congressional Ethics

We as members of Issue One’s ReFormers Caucus — a bipartisan coalition made up of nearly 200 former members of Congress, governors, and Cabinet officials — urge the House Committee…

Jan 20, 2023

Issue One joins more than 25 groups in support of strengthening and codifying the Office of Congressional Ethics into law

Issue One joined more than 25 groups this week in urging Congress to strengthen and codify the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) into law. The letter opposes the recently passed…

Jan 12, 2023

Issue One praises bipartisan effort to ban members of Congress from trading stocks

Issue One today applauded the bipartisan reintroduction of the TRUST in Congress Act, a bill that would prohibit members of Congress, their spouses, and their children from buying and selling…

Jan 04, 2023

Issue One joins broad coalition urging Congress to strengthen, not weaken, congressional ethics watchdog

Issue One today joined a broad coalition of two dozen organizations in urging Congress to strengthen, not weaken, the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE). The new letter warns that changes…

Jan 03, 2023

Proposed rule gutting House Office of Congressional Ethics is a “shameful and cynical move,” says Issue One Legislative Director Elise Wirkus

Following proposed changes to House rules that would significantly weaken the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), Issue One Legislative Director Elise Wirkus released the following statement: “The Office of Congressional…

Our Values: On Accountability

By Holton Lemaster

By: Kim Strom, Director of UNC-Chapel Hill Office of Ethics and Policy

In 2021 leaders in Institutional Integrity and Risk Management initiated a project to identify and promote shared principles. Campus consensus emerged around  four principles : integrity, community, transparency, and accountability. To foster reflection and continue the campus conversation, I will be using the newsletter to take a deeper look at each principle in turn. This month’s focus is accountability.

Accountability is often seen as an individual obligation. The synonyms for accountability include terms like answerability, responsibility, liability, and culpability. It typically has punitive implications. When scandals or crimes take place there will often be an outcry to hold someone accountable. People who apologize or admit a wrong are demonstrating personal accountability. Accountability is often reactive and negative, with overtones of control, fear, blame, and retribution. Thought of in that way it is  hardly an inspiring and unifying ideal for any organization of community.

Consider another perspective on accountability as “the willingness to care for the well-being of the whole” (Block, 2018, p. 75). Block pairs accountability with commitment, creating a shared outward focus and mutual accountability. In this vision, accountability can empower, motivate, and unify. Accountability is transformed from a term of individual censure and burden to one of communal possibility.

• What would it mean if accountability was one of the agreements all members of the Carolina community make when they come to live, work, or study here?
• How would it change the ways that people interact with each other?
• How would it change the way people see their opportunities, roles, and responsibilities?
• How would it fit with community, transparency, and integrity?

Kim Strom is the Director of UNC-Chapel Hill Office of Ethics and Policy

116 Accountability Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best accountability topic ideas & essay examples, 👍 good essay topics on accountability, ⭐ simple & easy accountability essay titles, 🎓 good research topics about accountability.

• Professional Accountability in Nursing According to professionals, the concept of professional accountability in nursing stands for the process of having full responsibility for one’s actions both to oneself and others.
• Accountability and Outcome in the Counseling Profession A client involvement in the therapy process will determine the therapy outcome in addition to quality of the treatment choice. For a counselor, it is crucial to approach this process with honesty and responsibility in […]
• Professional Accountability of Nurses Further, when it comes to the nursing process, an example of a nurse demonstrating professional accountability will be the proper usage of equipment, adequate documentation of the information related to treatment, and the correct administration […]
• Accountability of Equipment in Military And, the last task a commander has to do before the change of command ceremony is to account for all the property they had signed for and meet with the property book officer and the […]
• Responsibility and Accountability Management Management is an indication of power, where, managers have the authority to give orders to their subordinates and influence them to work according to their policies.
• Institutional Accountability: Dispersion of Power and Delegation of Responsibilities Decentralization of power is manifested in a number of managerial practices in institutions like the delegation of the organization’s duties and responsibilities.
• Importance of Accountability in Healthcare This paper discusses the importance of accountability in hospitals and the role of leaders in maintaining positive organizational culture in their facilities. Medical facility staffs need to be accountable in their actions; this will facilitate […]
• Accountability in Hotel and School Management From a certain perspective, it can be stated that accountability involves not only taking responsibility for when actions result in adverse consequences but also the use of a moral and ethical framework in a decision-making […]
• Social Work Career, Professional Behavior and Accountability I have the desire to fight for human rights and social change, and I want to fight for justice in all corners to make society a better place.
• Walker’s New Framework for Police Accountability The purpose of this paper is to give a detailed analysis of Walker’s new framework for police accountability, the model for understanding deviance, and body-worn cameras.
• Accountability in the European Union For EU, it is important to keep independence in the accounting that it may be regarded as a cornerstone upon which much of the ethics peculiar to the institution is built.
• Why Forest Sustainability and Accountability of Its Use Is Challenging Since the concept of sustainability is at the centre of this analysis, the understanding of the challenges that prevent the effectiveness of sustainable forest management depends on the grasp of the concept of sustainability.
• An Analysis of Accountability in Traditional, New and Networked Public Management This essay is divided into four main sections: an initial section that will examine the theoretical aspects of public accountability, after which it will delve into the 3 models of public administration in which the […]
• Implications of Privatising Public Utilities and Accountability Issues The responsibility of the government is to investigate and respond to the demands of the public. In a nutshell, the fundamental nature of privatising public utilities is to increase the participation of the general public […]
• The Fast-Food Industry and Legal Accountability for Obesity The principle of least harm in ethics is closely associated with the fast food industry; this is mainly because of the basic fact that fast food increases chances of obesity to its consumers.
• Empowerment and Accountability in the High School Its personnel, teachers, and administration are not motivated to change anything or work efficiently, and students are not motivated to study and behave appropriately.
• Organizational Accountability for Safety to Avoid Accidents NTSB investigators are tasked with the responsibility of determining the possible cause of the accident and then implementing appropriate measures that can be used to prevent future occurrences of similar incidents.
• Private Firms’ Accountability to Their Customers By developing systems of control, motivation, and responsibility that compel organizations and the people, they serve to achieve ever-higher standards of performance at the workplace, in the classroom, in the playing area, as well as […]
• Police Accountability and Community Relations Contrary to expectations, the working of overtime police officers and regular police officers seems to differ, as the former is more hostile to the community.
• Feminist Accountability Approach Therefore, the feminist accountability approach involves the collective responsibility to fight social injustices regardless of gender and race. Therefore, integrating the global approach to social injustice promotes the aspect of universality and unity in promoting […]
• Pursuing Professional Accountability and Just Culture It is suitable to combine the quantitative and qualitative approaches to evaluate organizational culture since this ensures that the strength of the other adjusts for the shortcomings of one method.
• Journalistic Accountability and Financial Crash Through investigation of multiple sources, it is possible to see a rough outline of the relationship between the subject from the 20th century to the present.
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Marketing Process: Advertising Advertising is regarded as a vital type of information for medical service competitiveness due to the competitive nature of medicine and the firm establishment of practically all business sectors in the United States, presently deemed […]
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act: Privacy and Security Rules Violation Most cases present with the use of malicious malware to access protected data without the consent of the insurers and inappropriate use of that information.
• The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Medical Billing Process As of now, the disclosure and use of health information is safeguarded by a collage of state legislations that leave gaps in the protection of patients’ health records that are private and confidential.
• Criminal Justice Agency Accountability and Liability The Act has set the “minimum pay for employees and the overtime pay has to be between 22 to 25% of the standard pay”.
• Civil Society and Political Accountability in Samoa Also, one of the priorities in the political life of Samoa is the attraction of local communities and governments to the state governance system to ensure progress in all aspects of the country’s life.
• The Importance of Accountability In some cases, there are some organizations where employees have a culture of timely and perfect deliveries, and this becomes the culture of the organization. As seen in the health sector, the employees and the […]
• Accountability of Healthcare Organizations for Quality of Care Delivery Clinical governance was introduced to the NHS in the 1990s to address a series of concerns in quality and safety of healthcare, a response to conditions of increasing demand, consumer participation, cost pressures and litigations.
• Accountability and Its Matter in the Healthcare Industry It must be noted that establishing proper performance standards is one of the steps necessary in measuring employee accountability within a healthcare setting since employees that reach and exceed such goals show that they hold […]
• Accountability of Court Officials Therefore, just like the politicians and the government which is accountable to the citizens of the country, the judicial system is accountable to the citizens.
• Police Accountability Analysis The policing strategies are supposed to agree with the expectations of the society in order to make both the police work effective as well as to enhance the relationship between the police and the community.
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• Humanitarian Actions: Accountability and Effectiveness Realising the existence of this issue, this paper will discuss the current state of the evidence-base for the accountability and effectiveness of humanitarian actions.
• Standards and Accountability in Early Education To enhance the impacts of education assessment and get to the very root of the issues it was decided to create special programs targeting the youngest learners, one of which is called head Start.
• Corruption and Accountability of Police Work In this regard, lack of strong and proper policies on misconduct and unethical behavior in the line of duty has helped to perpetrate the corruption of law enforcement officers in various sectors of their work.
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• Assessment and Accountability Implementation This is because the teachers and the various assessors will be able to measure their own competencies and be able to review their instructional practices to bridge the gap between the achieved results and the […]
• Accountability in Sports Management Accountability of FIFA would help in improving the management of football. This is due to the various complex factors that are involved in management of football.
• Importance of Accountability: World War I It is clear from the beginning of this article, that the statistics on the World War I causalities indicates that the Germans suffered fewer casualties compared to their western counterparts, who are the French and […]
• Liability and Accountability – Discussion Post Variations in the levels of legal accountability and responsibility have various advantages and disadvantages depending on the nature of the risks and vulnerability of actions and decisions undertaken by the professional.
• Adaptation and Accountability in Local Government To enhance accountability, the local government of Kerara has enforced and strengthened all its laws and regulations that relate to the governance of the local authorities.
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Essay Samples on Accountability

Community responsibility: culture of care and accountability.

Community responsibility is a cornerstone of building strong, resilient, and harmonious societies. This essay delves into the significance of community responsibility, its role in fostering positive change, the benefits it brings to individuals and communities, and the ways in which individuals can actively contribute to...

• Accountability
• Responsibility

Importance Of Mission Command: Accountability, Intent

Abstract In this case study I realized that Operation Anaconda although successful could have turned out very differently if not for the grit of these Soldiers. This brings us to the six principles of Army Mission paper, I will discuss how the implementation of these...

The Importance Of Accountability In The Army

What is accountability? liability to be called on to render an account; accountableness. It’s important to be accounted for no matter if you’re part of a formation or some type of business. Being accounted for let’s that subjects accountee know that he/she is at his...

Accountability - Responsibility, Culpability, Pending Billing Ethics and Governance

'Accountability is the glue that ties commitment to the result' — Bob Proctor Accountability is a very important universal value, is to consider and accept the impact and consequences of personal actions and decisions. The practice of accountability makes us a better person, it increases...

The Accountability Of Personnel That Cost Lives

The definition of accountability is “to account for one’s actions”, it can also mean “the condition of being accountable or responsible. ” In the military, this means being where you’re supposed to be in the correct uniform, at the correct time, or checking in when...

• Identity Theft

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The Concept of Accountability in Many Areas of Activity and in General

What Is Accountability? Work to engage men and boys around gender equality and women’s rights has gained momentum and interest in recent years. In any case, this intrigue accompanies a hazard that such work is done in manners that are counterproductive to the requirements and...

• Gender Equality
• Women's Rights

Accountability and Responsibility Which are Key Concepts in Healthcare

This essay is going to discuss accountability and responsibility. These concepts are going to be related to scenario ward 6 (see appendix). The focus will be on the accountability and responsibility of the health care assistant (HCA) and student nurse in the scenario and will...

• Universal Health Care

Analyzing Responsibility in Business Management

Meaning of Responsible Management Responsible management has become very crucial in an era of growing governmental and public scrutiny of managerial practices and accountability. During the past years, a succession of instances of poor managerial practices, or even malpractices, unethical behaviour and questionable bonus and...

Best topics on Accountability

1. Community Responsibility: Culture of Care and Accountability

2. Importance Of Mission Command: Accountability, Intent

3. The Importance Of Accountability In The Army

4. Accountability – Responsibility, Culpability, Pending Billing Ethics and Governance

5. The Accountability Of Personnel That Cost Lives

6. The Concept of Accountability in Many Areas of Activity and in General

7. Accountability and Responsibility Which are Key Concepts in Healthcare

8. Analyzing Responsibility in Business Management

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Essay on Accountability And Responsibility

Students are often asked to write an essay on Accountability And Responsibility in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Accountability And Responsibility

Understanding accountability.

Accountability is when you take ownership of your actions. It’s like saying, “I did this, and I stand by it.” When you are accountable, you accept the results of your actions, good or bad. It’s a key part of growing up and becoming a responsible person.

What is Responsibility?

Responsibility is closely linked to accountability. It means you have a duty or task to perform. For example, your responsibility might be to do your homework. When you fulfill your responsibilities, you show that you can be trusted and relied upon.

The Link Between Accountability and Responsibility

Accountability and responsibility go hand in hand. When you take responsibility for something, you are also accountable for the outcome. For instance, if you’re responsible for a group project, you’re also accountable for its success or failure.

Why They Matter

Both accountability and responsibility are important in life. They help us make good choices and learn from our mistakes. They also show others that we can be trusted and relied upon. By being accountable and responsible, we become better people.

250 Words Essay on Accountability And Responsibility

What is accountability.

Accountability is about being answerable for your actions. It means that if you do something, you should be ready to explain why you did it. For example, if you are a student and you did not do your homework, you should be able to explain why. This is what accountability is all about.

Responsibility, on the other hand, is about being in charge of something. When you are responsible for something, it means you have to take care of it. For example, if you have a pet, you are responsible for feeding it and taking care of it. This is what responsibility means.

Why are Accountability and Responsibility Important?

Accountability and responsibility are important because they help us to grow as individuals. When we are accountable and responsible, we learn how to make good decisions. We learn how to think about the consequences of our actions. This helps us to become better people.

How can we be more Accountable and Responsible?

We can be more accountable and responsible by thinking about our actions before we do them. We should ask ourselves, “Is this the right thing to do?” If it is not, we should not do it. We should also be ready to explain why we did something. This will help us to be more accountable and responsible.

In conclusion, accountability and responsibility are important qualities that everyone should have. They help us to grow as individuals and to make good decisions. So, let’s all strive to be more accountable and responsible.

500 Words Essay on Accountability And Responsibility

Introduction.

Accountability is like a promise. When we say we are accountable, we are saying that we will accept the outcomes of our actions, good or bad. For example, if you break a glass and then tell your parents about it, you are being accountable. You understand that there might be a consequence, but you accept it because you know it was your action that led to the broken glass.

Understanding Responsibility

Responsibility is a bit different. It is about doing tasks that we are expected to do. For instance, if your teacher gives you homework, it is your responsibility to complete it. You can’t pass it off to your friend or your sibling, it’s your job to get it done.

Responsibility, on the other hand, teaches us to be dependable. When people know they can count on us to do our tasks, they trust us more. This leads to better relationships with friends, family, and teachers.

Accountability and Responsibility in School

In school, being accountable and responsible is very important. Teachers rely on students to do their homework, study for tests, and behave well. When students are accountable and responsible, it creates a better learning environment for everyone.

In conclusion, accountability and responsibility are two important values that guide us in life. They help us become better people by teaching us to be honest, dependable, and respectful. By practicing these values in school and at home, we can build better relationships and create a positive environment for everyone.

Remember, it’s okay to make mistakes as long as we learn from them and take responsibility for our actions. That’s what being accountable and responsible is all about.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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We Hold Ourselves Accountable: A Relational View of Team Accountability

• Original Paper
• Open access
• Published: 18 November 2021
• Volume 183 , pages 691–712, ( 2023 )

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• Virginia R. Stewart 1 ,
• Deirdre G. Snyder 2 &
• Chia-Yu Kou 3  

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Accountability is of universal interest to the business ethics community, but the emphasis to date has been primarily at the level of the industry, organization, or key individuals. This paper unites concepts from relational and felt accountability and team dynamics to provide an initial explanatory framework that emphasizes the importance of social interactions to team accountability. We develop a measure of team accountability using participants in the USA and Europe and then use it to study a cohort of 65 teams of Irish business students over three months as they complete a complex simulation. Our hypotheses test the origins of team accountability and its effects on subsequent team performance and attitudinal states. Results indicate that initial team accountability is strongly related to team trust, commitment, efficacy, and identifying with the team emotionally. In established teams, accountability increases effort and willingness to continue to collaborate but did not significantly improve task performance in this investigation.

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Introduction

Accountability is prevalent in the ethics literature because it makes people attend to the relevant prescriptions for conduct and provides a mechanism for the social control of behavior in accord with those prescriptions (Quinn & Schlenker, 2002 ). Practitioners and academics alike treat accountability as a means of directing and correcting individual and organizational efforts and performance and encouraging socially responsible behaviors. Accountability may be thought of as the “adhesive that binds social systems together” (Frink & Klimoski, 1998 , p. 3) and as such is not only a fundamental principle of the organizational sciences, but is also a necessity for the effective operation of enterprise (Frink & Klimoski, 1998 ; Lerner & Tetlock, 1999 ).

Traditional, formal accountability systems are fading in many quarters as authority-based relationships decline (Moncrieffe, 2011 ). The ongoing transformation in the basic organization of work has resulted in a less hierarchical structure and the emergence of teams as the core building blocks of organizations (O’Neill & Salas, 2018 ), which calls for an urgent reexamination of the inherent nature of accountability. In particular, this change necessitates a better understanding shared accountability (Bergsteiner, 2012 ; de Leede et al., 1999 ), or how ‘we’ hold ourselves accountable.

Our paper joins the shift away from studying accountability as an objective external feature of the context, i.e., reporting and surveillance systems or obligations to stakeholders, and instead develops a view of accountability that is derived from relationships and social exchanges and is collectively lived and breathed (Frink & Klimoski, 2004 ; Gefland et al., 2004 ; Painter-Morland, 2006 ). The human core of accountability is particularly relevant in times of turmoil such as the global health pandemic. An orderly environment can be effectively dealt with by formal measures, but professionals across the globe report that flourishing in chaos requires the renewed focus on human purpose, fairness, ethics, collaboration, and relationships. In this context, effective teaming has become a ‘life raft’ keeping organizations and their talent afloat during COVID-19 (Deloitte, 2020 , p. 24).

We define team accountability as team members’ shared expectations of being held answerable for their common actions or decisions (Frink et al., 2008 ; Kou & Stewart, 2018 ; Lerner & Tetlock, 1999 ). These expectations arise through an interdependent process of group members interpreting formal accountability mechanisms, introducing felt obligations, shaping routines and communication patterns, and nurturing the trust, loyalty, and commitment that encourage or curtail member behaviors. Our proposed conceptualization of team accountability includes an important moral dimension because team members are not only accountable to external authorities, but are also accountable to and for each other, making them moral actors with an obligation to serve the interests of the team (Clark & Brown, 2015 ; Robinson, 2015 ).

Such an approach applies a relational understanding of accountability to the team context. This perspective spotlights the relational context within which responsibilities and duties develop and focuses attention on the dynamic network of interactive relationships within which individuals and organizations are embedded in the business environment (Painter-Morland & Deslandes, 2017 ). An order emerges over time through the interactions of individuals who participate in the team. This developing sense of reciprocal responsibility, commitment, and shared purpose may resist being codified as formal rules and procedures, but it shapes the normative backdrop against which the actions and decisions of the team play out.

The relational approach to team accountability provides support for treating the concept as an emergent team phenomenon. Emergent constructs form over time through a synthesis of the interactions of team members (Cronin et al., 2011 ; Marks et al., 2001 ). In the context of teams, emergent phenomena ‘bubble up’ from lower-level constituent properties that exist in the form of individual and dyadic behaviors (Waller et al., 2016 , p. 565). This means that team accountability cannot be examined before the team has been formed or has worked together. Team accountability in our view exemplifies ‘strong’ emergence as it arrives from lower-level parts but it exceeds their sum, continues over time, is substantial enough to be felt and experienced by team members, and can exert downward causal forces that affect individual team members and their interactions.

This paper advances the concept of team accountability through four approaches. First, we review and integrate ideas from relational accountability and team dynamics to provide a cross-disciplinary conceptualization of team accountability. In this conceptualization, the primary accountability actor is the collective rather than the individual, and the audience to whom the team is accountable includes its members.

Our second contribution is to develop a working measure (Team Accountability Questionnaire, TAQ hereafter) that addresses limitations in existing accountability measurements (Hall et al., 2017 ; Kou & Stewart, 2018 ). This 8-item measure was developed using a U.S. business student sample (Study 1a) and validated using senior leaders in the U.K. (Study 1b) and an online paid subject pool from the U.S. (Study 1c).

We then used the measurement tool to follow 65 teams of Irish business students for three months as they completed a complex business development simulation (Study 2). Based on our results, our third contribution is to establish collective team accountability as a coherent emergent state and to demonstrate its relationship with team trust, commitment, affective identification, and team efficacy. Our fourth contribution addresses practical concerns about collective accountability. Presumably getting collective accountability ‘right’ matters because it should inhibit social loafing, increase performance, and reduce turnover intentions, all outcomes that are valued by organizations. We therefore examine whether team accountability indeed predicts collective effort, task performance, and willingness to work together again (Study 2).

Theoretical Background

An often made point in the ethics literature and observations of business practices is that even the most carefully conceived accountability mechanisms do not always lead to accountable behaviors by individuals or organizations (Mansouri & Rowney, 2014 ). For instance, individuals occupying comparable work environments, with equivalent demands and expectations, can perceive increased accountability as coercive and oppressive, while others in the same context welcome accountability and engage proactively with performance targets (Ogden et al., 2006 ).

Acknowledging this reality, many researchers have advocated a phenomenological view of accountability, which argues that accountability is best viewed as a subjective interpretation, or a state of mind (i.e., felt accountability), rather than an objective state of affairs (Breaux et al., 2009 ; Frink et al., 2008 ; Gefland et al., 2004 ; Hall et al., 2017 ; Hochwarter et al., 2005 ; Hochwarter et al., 2007 ; Lanivich et al., 2010 ; Wallace et al., 2011 ). Indeed, subjective interpretations are typically more important than the actual external context because these perceptions drive attitudes and behavior (Lewin, 1947 ). A supportive context is necessary but not sufficient for the development of team accountability (de Leede et al., 1999 ). For this reason, we examine team accountability through collective perceptions of accountability rather than through the existence of formal accountability mechanisms.

If team accountability is indeed a subjective interpretation of objective accountability mechanisms, what prompts these interpretations in a team context? We suggest that social interactions between group members give rise to a collective understanding of what accountability entails for the group. To support the criticality of relationships with team members in substantiating team accountability, we draw on recent work on relational accountability.

Relational View of Team Accountability

Accountability is increasingly being seen through a wider lens that includes the social relationships and power dynamics that influence what accountability means in practice (Moncrieffe, 2011 ). A relational understanding of accountability proceeds from the assumption that the most meaningful normative duties and responsibilities resist legalistic formulation and codification and originates with the premise that we are primarily social creatures and that social relationships shape accountability (Painter-Morland, 2006 , 2007 , 2011 ). Being in a relationship and wanting to maintain it—i.e., relational responsiveness—is fundamental to the mindset of expecting to give an account. Relational approaches to accountability inquire how people experience accountability and how the quality of social relationships shapes accountability outcomes.

This understanding of accountability highlights the dynamic network of interactive relationships within which individuals and organizations are embedded (Beu & Buckley, 2001 ; Gefland et al., 2004 ; Johansen, 2008 ; McGrath, 1991 ), for it is “only within the context of particular relationships that any kind of account becomes meaningful and significant” (Painter-Morland, 2006 , p. 93). This does not imply permissive subjectivism or relativism. Rather, the dynamic expectations that define moral duties and obligations within a relational context provide guidance. These expectations may be particularly salient at key milestones, such as the midpoint of a project (Gersick, 1991 ). Furthermore, the kinds of moral constraints that emerge in the context of specific relationships may arguably be more demanding than conventional accountability mechanisms. For example, the degree of peer agreement that an action is wrong decreases unethical behaviors far more than the presence of an organizational code of ethics (Kish-Gephart et al., 2010 ). Moreover, formal accountability mechanisms can paradoxically interfere with moral responsivity (Beu & Buckley, 2001 ), such as when accountability for outcomes leads to greater self-serving behaviors (Pitesa & Thau, 2013 ) or misallocation of limited funds (Adelberg & Batson, 1978 ).

According to the relational understanding of accountability, values result from key individuals within a particular system interacting with each other. These values represent an ‘emergent order’ which is the result of relational dynamics rather than the unilateral imposition of formal accountability mechanisms or moral ideals (Painter-Morland, 2006 , p. 94). Everyday engagements between stakeholders enable actors to identify and refine the nature and extent of their moral obligations and shape mutual expectations (Painter-Morland, 2006 , 2011 ). The need to belong is a core human motive (Baumeister & Leary, 1995 ; Deci & Ryan, 2000 ) and individuals are motivated to adjust behavior in order to gain or maintain membership in a group that has a high relational value (Leary, 2001 ). Specifically, among collaborators, these interactions create a tacit sense of reciprocal responsibility, loyalty, and common cause that shapes behaviors in a way that may not be formally articulated (Painter-Moreland & Deslandes, 2017 ). Thus, relational accountability not only provides a basis for a shared sense of propriety and morality, but also draws emotional as well as cognitive aspects of value (Robinson, 2015 ) and encourages behavior that fortifies continued group membership.

Applying these concepts to team accountability suggests that ongoing meaningful interactions between team members give rise to team accountability practices beyond any formal accountability mechanisms or individual attributes (Moncrieffe, 2011 ). From an ethics perspective, team accountability can be viewed as group members interpreting formal policies, introducing felt obligations, shaping interaction patterns, and providing the context within which team behaviors are supported or curbed. Such internal team interactions may be more demanding than external sources of accountability in terms of providing meaningful guidance, in part because members themselves contribute to the emergence of mutual accountability and to the rewarding or sanctioning of team members.

A relational understanding of accountability indicates that team accountability is an emergent team phenomenon. Emergent constructs are variable and dynamic and form over time through a synthesis of the interactions of team members (Cronin et al., 2011 ; Marks et al., 2001 ). Emergent team phenomena emanate from a series of behaviors of group members and include states such as collective cognition or emotions as well as behavioral patterns and power structures. Each manifestation of team accountability will be unique because the lower-level components interact in a dynamic fashion. To use the language of emergence, team accountability is ‘radically novel’ (Waller et al., 2016 ) because it can neither be predicted from individual team member accountability nor reduced to component parts, and exists at a level higher than individual team members (Kozlowski & Klein, 2000 ). This implies that studying team accountability requires an explicit focus on group dynamics.

A hallmark of an emergent state is its coherence over time (Marks et al., 2001 ; Waller et al., 2016 ). If team accountability ebbs and flows in response to internal and external dynamics, we would still expect it to endure as a global team property. Coherence and endurance do not necessarily imply that group members’ perceptions of accountability converge, but rather that team members are able to collectively recognize and experience team accountability in a persistent way for a nontrivial time period as they perform interdependent organizational tasks. With awareness of team accountability comes potential feelings of agency by group members concerning their ability or desire to act to change accountability patterns. This means team accountability is not only the bottom-up product of team member interactions over time, but in theory exerts top-down influence on ongoing group member interactions.

Hypotheses Development

At the start we defined team accountability as team members’ expectations of being held answerable for their common actions or decisions. Based on a relational understanding of accountability we made the argument that expectations of being answerable as a team are in large part the product of ongoing group member interactions in which formal accountability mechanisms are interpreted and internalized by the team. While individuals contribute to these dynamics, team accountability is a global phenomenon, unique and irreducible to individual members.

Co-emergence of Team Accountability

During the formative stage of team development the continuous social dynamics between group members will naturally shape team states in addition to initial accountability expectations. We suggest that in the context of studying primordial team states, it is appropriate to examine co-variation rather than causation (Costa et al., 2014 ; Gucciardi et al., 2018 ). Therefore, we first identify the constructs with which team accountability ought to co-emerge during its infancy and defer making precise causal statements about the consequences of team accountability until enough time has passed for a team to accumulate a series of meaningful performance episodes.

Within the realm of related team states that encircle nascent team accountability, the most primary must certainly be the trust felt within the team. In abstract, accountability and trust both refer to behavioral expectations held by parties in a relationship and evolve based on interpersonal interactions and group dynamics (Costa et al., 2018 ). Trust and accountability can both be seen as a moral phenomenon that occurs in the context of team relationships (Cohen & Dienhart, 2013 ). Trust, however, is distinct from accountability because it refers to an actor’s willingness to be vulnerable to the actions of another party, irrespective of the ability to control that other party (Mayer et al., 1995 ).

We anticipate that when a team starts to collaborate, accountability and trust build on and reinforce another. Trust may be ready to be activated on newly formed teams due to preexisting conditions such as strong identification with the group, imported expectations about roles or skills, or anticipating future professional interactions (i.e., ‘swift trust’, Kroeger et al., 2021 ; Meyerson et al., 1996 ). Trust may also develop incrementally through interpersonal interactions (Costa et al., 2018 ). In both forms, we expect that trust should help convert individual actions into coordination and collaborative team effort (Dirks, 1999 ; Meyerson et al., 1996 ), thereby positively influencing perceptions of accountability shared among team members.

An alternative perspective is that when initial trust is high, there is less need to invest in monitoring the relationship (Ammeter et al., 2004 ). However, we suggest that when trust is high, teammates will still feel morally accountable to each other and behave cooperatively, independently of whether or not they are held formally accountable (De Cremer et al., 2001 ). This suggests that trust and team accountability are not operating along a single continuum (Ehren et al., 2019 ).

Actually being accountable as a team can also ensure that trust becomes an established feature of the team (Ehren et al., 2019 ). Initial efforts to establish accountability will signal reliability and acceptance of vulnerability to interdependencies as well as emphasize collective well-being. Indications of teammates' competence, benevolence, and integrity should positively influence evaluations of collective trustworthiness (Mayer et al., 1995 ) which will encourage trusting behaviors such as relying on others' skills or judgments or delegating tasks to as yet unproven colleagues.

Team accountability is positively related to initial team trust.

In addition to showing a positive relationship with trust, we anticipate that team accountability will emerge in tandem with a sense of oneness as a team (Ashforth & Mael, 1989 ; Zhang et al., 2014 ). This affective identification with a team is associated with feelings of pride and joy (Johnson et al., 2012 ), greater belongingness (Ashforth & Mael, 1989 ; Dutton et al., 1994 ), and deeper internalization of and contribution towards the goals of the workgroup (Mael & Ashforth, 1992 ). Even among team members with conflicting goals a sense of team identification allows members to share their perspectives and work together to maximize team performance (De Cremer & Van Vugt, 1999 ). Thus, higher affective identification for the team is likely to instill a stronger sense of ‘we’ that will boost internalization of accountability expectations as team members work together to overcome conflicting goals and engage in collective actions to drive performance.

A spirit of unity and togetherness should support the emergence of relational accountability within the team. When team members connect on a positive emotional level and where being a member of the group is valued (Riketta & Van Dick, 2005 ), the salience of maintaining healthy relationships with other team members will be higher. However, fault lines—potential team division into subgroups based on the alignment on one or more social categories—can make it very difficult for a superordinate team to emerge in the presence of stereotyping and in-group favoritism (Bezrukova et al., 2009 ; Jehn & Bezrukova, 2010 ; Thatcher, 2011 ). In teams with active subgroups and weak team-level attachments, relational accountability should more naturally gravitate around subgroups. Drawing attention to shared accountabilities could help bridge differences in such situations by reinforcing the interdependence of subgroups. Therefore, we offer the following hypothesis.

Team accountability is positively related to initial team identification.

The third dynamic relevant to understanding team accountability during the early stage of team development is commitment . Acceptance and belief in the team’s goals and a willingness to exert effort on behalf of the team should support the growth of team accountability expectations. The more determined a group is to do its best, the more likely the group is to monitor its performance against their agreed upon objectives and expect to explain lapses in performance relative to team goals. Commitment has further been shown to increase information sharing within teams (Aubé et al., 2014 ; Liu & Li, 2018 ), which should encourage communication norms of keeping each other informed about task progress. Beyond facilitating information flow and performance tracking, commitment to a higher purpose also stimulates the development of positive working relationships and citizenship behaviors to achieve those objectives (Aubé & Rousseau, 2005 ; Bishop et al., 2000 ; Pearce & Herbik, 2004 ). These reasons lead us to anticipate an initial positive effect of commitment on accountability.

The countervailing argument is that team accountability expectations are a precursor to commitment. The general challenge of accountability is how to get the best out of people—how to secure their commitment to desired behaviors (Bergsteiner, 2012 ). Expecting to be held answerable to a relevant audience is supposed to increase a team’s persistence and effort in the desired direction. Under this premise, shared accountability expectations will motivate teams to allocate their efforts and resources in ways that allow them to address expectations (Katzenbach & Smith, 1993 ). For example, when a group is held collectively accountable for making quality decisions, members focus their energy on exchanging more information and achieving shared outcomes (Liu & McLeod, 2014 ; Scholten et al., 2007 ). Given the support for mutual causality, we predict a positive relationship between accountability and commitment at the launch of a team.

Team accountability is positively related to initial team commitment.

Team efficacy is the fourth state we suggest will emerge along with team accountability. When a team believes that it has sufficient ability to complete its assigned tasks and to do them well it is more likely to anticipate accounting for achievements rather than failures (Gully et al., 2002 ; Zacarro et al., 1995 ), which would lead to embracing shared responsibilities. Evidence from the military demonstrates that a team’s belief in its ability to solve problems and make good decisions improves social cohesion (Hirshfield and Benerth, 2008) which should facilitate the relational connections needed for team accountability to emerge.

In the early stages of team development, accountability should increase a team’s belief in its ability to do the work it has taken on. Team accountability contributes to perceptions of team efficacy through its effects on coordination and cooperation. Expecting to account as a group and to each other involves taking responsibility for decisions, monitoring progress, explaining choices, and being able to count on members to meet their commitments. These patterns of behavior are likely to strengthen the team’s beliefs in its capabilities (Watson et al., 2001 ).

Team accountability is positively related to initial team efficacy.

We suggest that by the halfway point between the beginning and final team deadline, team accountability should be tangible enough to predict subsequent outcomes of interest to organizations. Team members should have established a communal history, social and task interaction patterns are better established, and there should be fewer unknowns and more givens (McGrath, 1991 ). The basic configuration into which the team's members are organized and maintenance activities are executed should be assembled (Gersick, 1988 , 1991 ) and having to account for team efforts will be more salient at the midpoint than at the start, as will the potential for rewards and penalties. Awareness of time becomes acute at the midpoint and fear of running out of time can create a ‘jolt of urgency’ (Gersick, 1991 , p. 27). This heightens performance pressures and raises concerns about group image. Characteristic responses include checking external requirements, seeking outside assistance, making temporal commitments, and regulating the flow of task and interpersonal interactions (Chang et al., 2006 ; Gersick, 1988 ), each of which highlights the salience of collective accountability. We therefore anticipate that by the midpoint of most collaborative projects, a team will have interacted sufficiently for a sense of collective accountability to mature from a generic meaning into one that is uniquely situated within that particular team and organizational context (McGrath, 1991 ).

Consequences of Team Accountability

Understanding the relationship between team accountability and team performance is critical because organizational teams are formed to deliver on stakeholder objectives (O’Neill & Salas, 2018 ). Productivity includes the behaviors employed in reaching targets (Klimoski & Mohammed, 1994 ) as well as the growth potential of the team (Bell & Marentette, 2011 ; Hackman, 1987 ). Without viability, members will eventually burn out even if a team is productive. The following section therefore proposes relationships between team accountability and task performance and effort, as well as the long-term sustainability of the team.

The positive effects of accountability mechanisms on team performance have been explored primarily in experimental contexts with nominal teams subjected to various accountability conditions. Accountability has often been investigated as a potential antidote to process loss in group decision-making. For example, when teams are told they will be held accountable for how they make decisions, they exchange more information (Liu & McLeod, 2014 ) and more often choose the correct alternative (Scholten et al., 2007 ). Group members expecting to be collectively responsible display less groupthink than control groups. In particular, accountability staves off excessive consensus-seeking, results in a better power balance within the group, and produces less risky decisions (Kroon et al., 1991 ). Outside the laboratory environment, Wallace and colleagues report better sales and customer service in restaurants with higher shared accountability in management staff, so long as they also felt empowered (Wallace et al., 2011 ). The relational nature of team accountability should focus the team on achieving collective goals for reasons in addition to—or in spite of—formal accountability systems. Thus, we predict a positive relationship between accountability and team task performance.

Midpoint team accountability predicts higher endpoint performance.

Performance measures contain variance attributable to factors other than teamwork such as availability of resources or industry shocks and are usually not diagnostic because they may not indicate potential underlying causes (Cannon-Bowers & Salas, 1997 ). Process measures address the strategies and behaviors deployed to reaching desired outcomes. Team process-based performance may include, among others, levels of collective effort expended or the quality of interpersonal relationships (Klimoski & Mohammed, 1994 ). We anticipate that feelings of being morally obligated to another should create a shared motivational reality which influences the direction, intensity, and persistence of team behavior over time (Park et al., 2013 ). Team accountability should therefore both increase goal-directed effort and reduce social loafing, free-riding and other tendencies to reduce efforts or escape responsibilities (Karau & Williams, 1993 ; Latané et al., 1979 ). We therefore suggest:

Midpoint accountability predicts greater endpoint effort.

The sustainability and growth potential of a team—i.e., team viability—is an essential measure of effectiveness for groups that have longer lifecycles (Bell & Marentette, 2011 ; Hackman, 1987 ). Teams with a stronger sense of shared accountability should be better positioned to stay together in the long run than those with weak feelings of mutual obligation because they have developed work processes and communication norms that facilitate successful performance. Healthy team accountability behaviors should discourage burnout and divisive behaviors because members feel an obligation to help others and provide social and instrumental support. The nature of feeling accountable to each other further solidifies the sense of belonging to the group, which facilitates in-group bias and the desire to maintain membership in the group (Ashforth & Mael, 1989 ). Indeed, antecedents of team viability include denser emotional connections within the team and greater social integration (Balkundi & Harrison, 2006 ; Foo et al., 2006 ). This leads us to expect the following relationship:

Midpoint team accountability predicts stronger viability.

In addition to impacting performance outcomes, we expect that accountability will positively influence relationship dynamics. We assume that when a team starts collaborating, accountability emerges hand in hand with other team dynamics which muddies causal effects. To identify the unique impact of accountability requires space for an accountability mindset to develop. Once an accountability mindset develops, it should be predictive of greater team trust and deeper commitment to the shared cause. These two attitudes are foundational to the functioning of the team and relevant throughout the life of the team:

Midpoint team accountability predicts greater endpoint trust.

Midpoint team accountability predicts greater endpoint commitment.

Methodology

In order to test these hypotheses we first needed to address measurement issues. In their review of felt accountability in organizations, Hall and colleagues identified the lack of a validated instrument that captures answerability to audiences other than top management and the reliance on experimental conditions that may not capture the relational, dynamic, and perceptual nature of accountability as two main issues limiting accountability research (2017).

Study 1a: Scale Development

Our research process therefore started by developing and validating a team accountability questionnaire that could work across organizational levels. In a conceptually valid measure of shared team accountability the primary accountability actor is the group (not the individual), the audience to whom the team is accountable includes its members, and the content assesses collective expectations about explaining and justifying team decision processes and performance, as well as team dynamics related to relational accountabilities. We followed deductive scale development processes to generate an initial set of items (Hinkin, 1998 ) because our definition of team accountability builds on the classic definition of accountability which focuses on the expectation of answering for behaviors and outcomes to a relevant audience (Frink & Klimoski, 1998 ; Lerner & Tetlock, 1999 ).

Item Generation

A search of the accountability literature identified 120 individual accountability items that could be shifted to the level of the team by changing the referent from ‘I’ to ‘we’ and by changing the content to reflect shared expectations (Chan, 1998 ). We whittled down this list to 22 items by prioritizing three scales developed with input from managerial samples (Doney & Armstrong, 1996 ; Mero et al., 2014 ; Ogden et al., 2006 ), a scale that has been used widely in the felt accountability domain (Hochwarter et al., 2005 ), and several checks of experimental manipulations of accountability (e.g., Pitesa & Thau, 2013 ). Through discussions with an expert on teams on content validity, we realized that our initial pool of items drawn from the individual accountability literature might not fully capture the ongoing team member interactions we had theorized were essential to formal accountability demands being interpreted and internalized. For that reason we wrote five additional items specific to team processes that would reinforce perceptions of being accountable to each other.

We also collected measures of team trust, identification, commitment, and viability so that we could examine the reliability of these measures prior to relying on them to test our hypotheses. Affective identification (Johnson et al., 2012 ) was measured with three items. Intragroup trust (Simons & Peterson, 2000 ) was measured with four items. Team commitment (Kirkman & Rosen, 1999 ) and viability (Marrone et al., 2007 ) were measured with five items each.

Eighteen teams of undergraduate business students enrolled in a required management course at a U.S. university pilot tested our accountability items. The students had been working together in randomly assigned teams of four or five members over the term to develop a video. The total sample size was 70 individual participants (45 percent women). Participants responded to an electronic survey link. Items were assessed by participants indicating the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with a given statement where 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree.

SPSS was used to evaluate the most suitable items from our list of 27 possible candidates. Redundant items and those that exhibited low inter-item correlations were discarded. We screened out accountability items that correlated too highly or not enough with team trust, identification, commitment, and viability. Corrected item-scale correlations were inspected and several more cuts were made to ensure retained team accountability items were representative of the whole theoretical domain. The eight selected items of the Team Accountability Questionnaire (TAQ) indicate a coefficient alpha ( α ) of 0.90. Item means and correlations with theoretically related scales are reported in Table 1 . The provenance of each piloted item is provided in the Appendix.

We then used exploratory factor analyses (EFA) to examine the convergent and discriminant validity of the TAQ. Large samples are always beneficial; however, when factors are well defined or their number is limited, small sample size EFA can yield reliable solutions (de Winter et al., 2009 ). We specified a two-factor solution with oblique rotation and examined accountability and trust, accountability and commitment, accountability and identification, and accountability and viability.

The accountability items loaded on their intended factor. Factor loadings for the accountability items ranged from 0.33 to 0.94 with an average of 0.65 across the EFAs. In all analyses there are 7 or more strongly loading team accountability items (0.50 or higher) which indicates a solid factor (Costello & Osborne, 2005 ).

Study 1b: Scale Validation

To examine the internal structure of the TAQ and ensure it is appropriate for use in more traditional work settings and with mature professionals, the lead author distributed an electronic survey to all the senior leaders of a large multinational pharmaceutical company headquartered in the United Kingdom. This site was selected because its senior leadership had chosen accountability as one of their core leadership themes and were tracking efforts to integrate shared accountability for decisions and results into their daily activities. One hundred leaders provided complete responses for a completion rate of 78 percent, of which 71 percent had worked at the organization for more than a decade. Two-thirds were based in Europe and the remainder in North America.

Each respondent reported on the accountability behaviors of their particular leadership team. The eight items from the piloted questionnaire were slightly modified to suit the organizational context (i.e., ‘I am part of a leadership team that … is accountable as a team for our performance’). Response options ranged from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. Coefficient alpha ( α ) of the measure is 0.86 in this sample.

We conducted EFA with principal axis factoring. Results of the scree plot and eigenvalue-greater-than-one rule indicate that the measure is unidimensional, which matches the theoretical factor structure. The item with the highest loading is ‘I am part of a leadership team that is accountable for our performance’ which is appropriate for the rationale for the TAQ. All item loadings exceed 0.60 per Table 2 . These exploratory results provide support for the internal validity of the TAQ in an applied setting with senior professionals.

Study 1c: Scale Validation

The purpose of Study 1c was to use confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) to examine the convergent and discriminant validity of the TAQ. 217 participants were recruited from an online commercial survey pool (Mechanical Turk) and received $1.00 in compensation for completing our questionnaire. The average age in the sample is 39 years. Slightly more than half of the participants were female and 28 percent consider themselves minority. Participants have been with their current employer for an average of eight years and with their primary team for an average of 16 months. Eight-eight percent indicated they interact daily or hourly with their team members.

Participants were asked to describe the purpose of their primary team, their role assignment, and how frequently they interacted with team members. After this reflection, team accountability was measured with the TAQ ( α  = 0.88), trust was measured with four items (Simons & Peterson, 2000 ), and team commitment was measured with five items (Kirkman and Rosen, 1999 ). We selected trust and commitment for comparison constructs because they are the most closely related to team accountability and we wanted to ensure the TAQ accounted for variance beyond these related constructs. All items were measured using a 7-point scale where 1 = disagree strongly and 7 = agree strongly.

A series of CFAs were conducted in MPlus. Consistent with previous scale development best practices (e.g., Chen et al., 2005 ; Hinkin, 1998 ) we first conducted a confirmatory factor analysis that placed all eight items of the TAQ on one factor. The CFA revealed a single-factor structure that provided an excellent fit for the data, χ 2 (15) = 20.77, n.s., comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.99, and standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) = 0.02 (Hu & Bentler, 1999 ). Per Table 3 , all items of the TAQ exceed the 0.30 cut-off value (Hair et al., 2009 ) and significantly loaded onto a single factor. The TAQ items exhibit a mean inter-item correlation of 0.51. These results provide evidence of a single-factor structure for the TAQ, supporting the previous EFA results.

Discriminant Validity

A two-factor model of team accountability and team trust (χ 2 (53)  = 143.83, CFI = 0.93, SRMR = 0.05) fits the data much better than a single-factor model (Δ χ 2 (1)  = 231.31, p  < 0.001). Similarly a two-factor model of team accountability and team commitment (χ 2 (64)  = 163.06, CFI = 0.94, SRMR = 0.05) fits the data better than a single-factor model (Δ χ 2 (1)  = 176.198, p  < 0.001).

Convergent Validity

As part of our CFAs, we also explored the correlation between latent variables and found the latent variables to be related but not overly so (i.e., TAQ & Trust, r  = 0.59, p  < 0.001; TAQ & Commitment, r  = 0.77, p  < 0.001). Taken together, these results suggest that team accountability as measured by the TAQ is a unique construct.

With a usable measure of team accountability in hand, we next tested our hypotheses regarding the emergence of accountability in teams and whether it predicts effort, performance, viability, and positive attitudinal states. To do so, we followed student teams competing in a business simulation for a span of three months.

Study 2: Hypothesis Testing

Sixty-five teams of students at an Irish business school participated in this study. These teams were tasked with using a simulation platform to develop a virtual business and then to compete over several months with fellow teams for market share and profits ( www.marketplace-simulation.com ). Participants were randomly assigned to a team. Membership was further stratified by gender and nationality to ensure each team included a randomly assigned woman and international student. All teams had 4 to 5 members except one team with only 3 members. These teams operated under identical formal accountability structures, were given the same team task, started and worked together for the same amount of time, and had similar resources at their disposal. Naturally controlling for these contextual features was deemed more valuable in testing our hypotheses about collective accountability than the external validity gained by conducting our research in a professional setting, particularly when business students have the requisite understanding to respond knowledgeably to basic issues such as their own team dynamics (Bello et al., 2009 ). The average amount of time spent by the team on the stimulation platform was 68 hours (h)—summed across team members—with additional time spent on preparation, report writing, weekly tutorials, team meetings, and presentations.

Of the 302 individuals working on these teams, we received responses from 268 individuals over the course of the study. However, only 253 individual responses were usable after removing participants due to incomplete data, missing consent forms, and/or failed attention checks. Most participants provided data at one or two waves rather than all three, reflecting in-person attendance trends in the module.

Each team was required to provide a written weekly report on its progress and member roles and individual contributions. Further formal accountability processes include monitoring of performance via the simulation platform, weekly discussion with a faculty expert, and a video recorded final presentation to two faculty experts. Of note is that the accountability expectations, timelines, and evaluation criteria were the same for each team in the competition. This context should ensure that any variability in accountability that remains is primarily due to internal team dynamics as opposed to formal structural accountability mechanisms.

Three waves of data were collected. The lead author distributed hardcopy study materials at the beginning of a weekly tutorial and returned after the end of each session to collect completed questionnaires. Time 1 occurred during the initial development of the team in February 2016. Time 2 occurred at the midpoint of the simulation in March 2016. At that point, teams had completed significant work together and had also received substantial feedback on their team performance. Time 3 occurred in April 2016 near the conclusion of the simulation. At that stage, there was little teams could do to change their performance on the simulation, but they were still collaborating on a presentation to a panel of experts. After the conclusion of the competition, team performance data were recorded from the simulation platform.

Previously used measures were used for data collection. Accountability was measured using the 8-item TAQ. Footnote 1 Affective identification and collective efficacy were measured shortly after the start of the project. Intragroup trust and team commitment were measured at the start, midpoint, and end of the team performance cycle. The viability of each team was measured at the end of the project.

We used financial performance in the simulation to operationalize overall team performance . The simulation platform measured financial performance as net profit from current operations divided by the total shares issued. A positive and large number is optimal. The simulation ran over 8 financial quarters. At the end of the fourth quarter, halfway through the simulation, teams received their first financial scorecard for their new business enterprise. At this time, the average was -0.8 across all 65 teams ( min  = -22.0, max  = 89.0, SD  = 15.7). Average team performance in the final quarter of the stimulation was 62.5 ( min  = -14.9, max  = 431.2, SD  = 82.4). Due to skewness and kurtosis, the square root of the data is used in our analyses of financial performance. Several teams operated at a loss, so a constant was added to the original data to ensure the lowest value was equal to one prior to taking the square root.

Effort as a measure of team effectiveness was measured as the time the team invested in the task. The simulation platform collected this data through the time each team member spent actively on the platform. We divided time spent on the platform by team size to account for the number of persons available to contribute to the task. During the fourth quarter, the average team member was spending 12.0 h on the platform ( min  = 4.5 h, max  = 22.5 h, SD  = 4.0 h), and during the final quarter, the average team member was spending 10.6 h on the platform ( min  = 1.8, max  = 26.8, SD  = 5.7). A logarithmic transformation was implemented as the data were markedly positively skewed.

SPSS was used to test our hypotheses. Analyses are reported at the level of the team unless noted otherwise. The rationale for this approach is that we are predicting team-level outcomes from team-level inputs as that matches our theoretical viewpoint of team accountability. We recognize that there is room for debate over whether this is the most accurate way to represent accountability at the beginning of the team lifecycle as some teams may have crystalized collective perceptions more quickly than others; however, our measurement and conceptualizations were at the team level so we report those analyses. Also, in the study environment teams received clear, uniform, and periodically reinforced formal accountability expectations which should have accelerated the sharedness of group accountability perceptions. In general, we found that relationships between constructs are stronger at the individual level than at the team level, so using team-level data yields more conservative estimates. Table 4 reports descriptive statistics and Table 5 provides details on reliability and variance statistics for all self-report measures.

Because we believe collective accountability to be an emergent state, we first explored the stability of collective accountability across time (Marks et al., 2001 ; Waller et al., 2016 ). To do this we retained the 46 teams for which we had data at all three collection points. Although there are significant differences in overall accountability perceptions between teams ( β  =  5.83, SE  = 0.08 , t  = 74.95, p  < 0.001), the descriptive statistics indicates that average accountability across the subsample of 46 teams with complete data does not vary much with time, i.e., Time 1 Mean  = 5.83, Time 2 Mean  = 5.83 and Time 3 Mean  = 5.88. An evaluation of the accountability within these 46 teams indicates that neither the linear nor quadratic polynomial growth rates are significant in explaining team changes in accountability over time. Random coefficient modeling with time as a repeated measurement at Level 1 and team membership as a Level 2 effect suggests that accountability does not appear to change much over time within teams. Bliese ( 1998 , 2000 ) argues that the ICC(2) is useful for detecting emergent states. The ICC(2)s were 0.67 at Time 1, 0.82 at Time 2 and 0.85 at Time 3, exhibiting increasing consistency in evaluations over time. Taken together, these exploratory analyses suggest that within a team accountability perceptions are relatively stable.

Hypothesis 1 states that initial team accountability during team development should emerge hand in hand with team (a) trust, (b) affective identification, (c) commitment, and (d) collective efficacy. The data indicate a strong positive relationship between initial team accountability perceptions and trust ( r  = 0.67), commitment ( r  = 0.45), affective identification ( r  = 0.58), and collective efficacy ( r  = 0.55) during the initial stages of team collaboration. The first hypothesis is therefore supported. Formative team accountability perceptions are part and parcel of other positive emerging team attitudes.

Our next set of hypotheses examined the ability of ‘established’ accountability at the project midpoint to predict subsequent team outcomes. We assumed that end point values of the dependent variables are in part a function of their midpoint values at time 2. For example, final performance is in some ways constrained by midpoint performance. Although including lagged dependent variables often decreases coefficient estimates for the independent variable of primary interest and has been argued to unduly suppress the explanatory power of the independent variable, we included interim trust, commitment, performance, and effort as lagged dependent variables to provide a less biased test of the hypothesized relationship between accountability and subsequent team effectiveness and attitudes (Keele & Kelly, 2006 ). Lagged trust and commitment are highly correlated with another ( r  = 0.85), therefore we added them together in a single linear composite to reduce collinearity. Regression results are reported in Table 6 .

Hypotheses 2 and 3 predict positive effects of team accountability on team performance and effort. Hypothesis 2 does not receive strong support. Our data find that accountability is positively related to subsequent team performance, but is not a statistically significant predictor when added to a model that includes midpoint performance ( β  = 0.17, R 2  = 0.41, Δ R 2  = 0.01, n.s.). The strongest predictors of team performance are previous performance ( β  = 0.36) and effort ( β  = 0.43). In support of Hypothesis 3, we found team accountability is associated with a significant increase in team effort ( β  = 0.51, R 2  = 0.29, Δ R 2  = 0.12, p  < 0.01).

The data support Hypothesis 4, that team accountability is associated with greater viability ( β  = 0.38, R 2  = 0.26, Δ R 2  = 0.07, p  < 0.05). Support for Hypothesis 5 is mixed. Accountability is positively associated with later trust (H5a) but this effect is not statistically significant ( β  = 0.21, R 2  = 0.24, Δ R 2  = 0.02, n.s.) when added to model with midpoint trust and commitment. The strongest predictor of trust is previous trust and commitment ( β  = 0.39). Although support is limited for Hypothesis 5a, Hypothesis 5b is supported: midpoint team accountability predicts subsequent team commitment ( β  = 0.36, R 2  = 0.24, Δ R 2  = 0.06, p  < 0.05). Footnote 2

Our approach follows a relational understanding of accountability because we position team accountability as an emergent understanding of how things are done on a team that depends in large part on multiple evolving subjectivities rather than formal accountability structures. We agree with the view that a team is a ‘forum’ for moral tensions that often must be worked through by the members themselves (Sewell, 2012 ). Our data suggest that differences can emerge between teams even when they operate in a highly structured accountability environment, report to the same authority figures, share the same geographical location, work on identical tasks, and are comprised of members of similar experience.

Following a team over time allows us to develop a construct of team accountability that embraces the social processes through which ‘thick’ ethical norms are socially constituted (Islam & Greenwood, 2021 ). During the early life of a group, team accountability is closely related to trust, commitment to getting the job done, identifying as a team, and the belief that the team can accomplish what it sets out to do. This constellation of positive attitudes persisted as the team evolved. It appears the lived experience of teamwork is of better quality when felt accountability is higher. Perhaps the strongest proof in the value of team accountability lies in members being keener to continue to collaborate after the end of the project.

Two results were unexpected. First, collective team accountability did not predict trust when we included lagged variables. Our inquiry was not intended to identify the strongest predictor of trust, but rather to test whether accountability measurably increased subsequent trust. One explanation for the lack of a relationships is statistical, namely that interim trust and accountability are highly correlated predictors and this makes it difficult for accountability to add predictive value in the hierarchical model. A more theoretical explanation is that once teams are up and running, trust is established and the strongest predictor of future trust is trust itself.

A second unanticipated result is that accountability did not meaningfully predict financial performance when previous performance and effort were included as predictors. Fostering a sense of collective accountability is often intended as a managerial tool for driving organizational objectives and reducing loafing behaviors. In our study, team accountability exhibited stronger ties to emergent and affective team states than to subsequent performance. In other words, accountability expectations are not a performance panacea, although they do encourage greater time investment in shared goals and precede measurable improvements in some dimensions of concrete task performance.

It is possible our results were limited by the number of teams in our sample size or by using a single number to encapsulate performance, but our interpretation is that ultimate performance is often somewhat outside the control of the team (de Leede et al., 1999 ). In the simulation for example, financial performance depended in part on decisions of competitors and market conditions. Work analyzing the ethics of teamwork have touched on this concern previously, for example highlighting violations of distributive justice where rewards are not in-line with collective efforts (Sewell, 2012 ).

Theoretical Contribution

Accountability is a sprawling theme that crosses disciplinary and methodological boundaries. The primary contribution of this study is to weave together philosophical ethics, management, and social psychology theories to explain the emergence, coherence, and consequences of teams developing a sense of accountability. By uniting a philosophical understanding of relational accountability (Painter-Morland, 2006 , 2007 ) with work on felt accountability (Hall et al., 2017 ) and emergent team states (Waller et al., 2016 ) we offer a perspective on accountability that is firmly situated in team dynamics. Our work grounds high level concepts of relational accountability in specific instances of team identification, efficacy, commitment, viability, and trust. Using contemporary philosophical thought to analyze team accountability introduces powerful ideas about the moral obligations and being accountable ‘toward’ rather than ‘for’.

Detailed learning about team accountability matters because autonomous and empowered teams are increasingly seen as the basic building block of agile organizations (Deloitte, 2020 ) and yet the existing accountability literature predominately views accountability as top-down compliance and formal mechanisms of control. A search of the Journal of Business Ethics in 2020 surfaced 183 abstracts for original research on accountability published since 1982. Over half of this work has been published in the past 10 years, suggesting an increase in scholarly interest. However, only two of these articles specifically examined ethical issues related to the accountability of teams (de Leede et al., 1999 ; Joosten et al., 2014 ).

Two practical limitations to understanding the intricacies of team accountability are the lack of an appropriate measurement instrument and the use of phantom or ephemeral teams (Hall et al., 2017 ; Kou & Stewart, 2018 ). Our work supports future cross-disciplinary research on collective accountability by piloting and validating the TAQ. We demonstrate that this measure is reliable across three distinct work environments (the USA, Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom), and use our findings to anchor accountability to the fundamental dynamics of a team. Another contribution to the study of accountability is to examine accountability in its natural environment, such as we did with the pharmaceutical leaders in Study 1b and the longitudinal study in Study 2. Most prior team accountability research has been conducted in experimental settings and few studies have utilized teams engaged in a task for real reward and punishment, and none to our knowledge have explored accountability over the life of the team.

Practical Implications

Our findings highlight that even within a highly structured accountability environment, accountability varies. Accountability policies and procedures are filtered through a subjective lens so managers should not expect teams to react identically to the same policies and procedures. For example, formal accountability features are often open to misinterpretation despite frequent verbal and written cues (Patchan et al., 2018 ). Relationships among teammates are therefore critical to understanding team accountability.

Our findings also suggest that initial levels of group accountability persist, so managers should support initial team interactions because they may count ‘extra’ in forming shared perceptions. If you seek a direct lever to improve team performance, look elsewhere, particularly when future performance is contingent on performance at previous levels. Accountability appears to serve the team best by increasing effort, viability, and deepening commitment.

Limitations and Future Directions

This study maps new territory and as such merits refinement and extension. We examine the relationship between relational accountability and team dynamics which is an essential step, but developing team accountability as a ‘thick’ rather than ‘thin’ ethical concept requires being descriptive and evaluative (Islam & Greenwood, 2021 ). Going forward, qualitative enquiries would be well suited to examining what might foster or derail team accountability. Future prescriptive work could carefully examine the general assumption that perceived accountability is morally ‘good’ and that a team without shared accountability is ‘bad’. Our study simplistically presumes more accountability is superior, but theoretical work is needed to identify when robust team accountability perceptions are procedurally unfair or can turn toxic to the welfare of the team, for example through stress responses, interpersonal conflict, and shunning or other punishment of norm violators. Such lines of inquiry could also examine when divergent perceptions of accountability are better for team outcomes than convergent perceptions, for example when a team is making sense of a failure to perform or processing decisions with ethical implications.

We also call for expanded outcome variables beyond the usual suspects. Based on research that connects workplace cultures of love and anger to employee loneliness (Ozcelik & Barsade, 2018 ), we believe future research should explore whether team accountability might have mental health benefits including increased feelings of belonging and reduced loneliness at work, particularly in the age of virtual collaboration. The connection between relational accountability and these well-being related outcomes is a reminder that examining what is ‘good’ for members’ mental health is an important ethical dimension missing from most team outcome variables. Techniques such as team interviews, observations, diary studies, and analyses of team artifacts would be particularly well suited to examining pivotal events and relationships that might foster or derail team accountability.

Future theory building could build bridges between shared team accountability and the formalistic or utilitarian ethical orientation of a team (Adler et al., 2021 ; Pearsall & Ellis, 2011 ), team ethical culture and climate (Cabana & Kaptein, 2019 ; Kim & Vandenberghe, 2020 ), and collective virtues such behavioral integrity (Palanski et al., 2011 ). Whether team accountability is a virtue or vice for a team likely depends upon what sort of team it is, and whether possessing this disposition makes it better or worse as that kind of group (Byerly & Byerly, 2016 ). Our work joins these in responding to the plea to situate the ethics of teamwork in the activities and multiple subjectivities of the team, rather than in abstract moral concepts (Sewell, 2007 ).

Unraveling the connection between leadership and collective accountability is also worth exploring. We utilized self-managed teams in which leadership emerges organically. However, in organizations with hierarchical structures and leader/subordinate relationships, team accountability may arise as a substitute for strong team leadership, or strong leadership may be the driving force behind initial differences in team accountability perceptions. Furthermore, teams are likely to develop different types of accountability perceptions depending on the quality of their relationship with an external leader. For example, when mutual respect is absent or lost, a leader is more likely to lean on formal control mechanisms. In response, the team may limit accountability perceptions to the obligations specified. In contrast, when a team and leader form an emotional attachment and have positive mutual regard, accountability perceptions are more likely to be internalized (Erdogan et al., 2004 ). Regardless of formal accountability measures, in this situation perceived accountability should expand to encompass collaborative activities that contribute to mutual goals and well-being. A relational understanding of team accountability should therefore explore leader-member exchanges and their formative role in perceptions of how work should be carried out by the team.

Accountability as a shared team characteristic has been explicitly incorporated into our theorizing and the subsequent measurement strategy is aligned with this conceptualization, i.e., the TAQ is based on a referent shift model and many of our analyses use the team mean (Chan, 1998 ). This approach is consistent with how the majority of emergent team states are conceptualized and operationalized (Waller et al., 2016 ), but future work could study relational team accountability through alternate models of emergence (Chan, 1998 ; Kozlowski & Klein, 2000 ). For example, analyses of variation instead of convergence in team accountability perceptions could indicate active fault lines, healthy disagreement about the necessity of accountability processes, or insufficient team experiences to form the basis of shared perceptions. To further understand the relational nature of team accountability, researchers could examine developmental patterns of accountability perceptions across a team and the extent to which they reflect networks of trust, friendships, and moral obligations.

A strength of our research design is that we are able to examine accountability over the team’s lifespan in a highly controlled situation with fixed external accountability measures and leadership, identical performance challenges and timelines, objective measurement of performance and effort, and by teams of similar demography, size and experience. The effects of these factors would have been difficult to control for in a corporate setting, but the simulation and academic context we use cannot realistically mirror the intensity of ‘real world’ accountabilities. Team accountability may well be reliably predictive of task performance when performance accompanies meaningful financial and professional implications or is measured along multiple dimensions rather than reduced to a single metric as in this study. Future research should explore the connection between team accountability and performance in contexts with higher stakes.

This paper unites concepts from relational and felt accountability and team dynamics to provide an initial explanatory framework of team accountability and a measurement instrument that can be used in practice and research to continue this work. If accountability is the glue that holds together organizations, and teams are the organizational unit of necessity and choice, then perceptions of team accountability are worthy of intense attention across disciplines.

Following Chen and colleagues’ framework for validating team-level constructs (2003) we conducted a team-level CFA on the TAQ using Time 3 data. The results indicate adequate support for the unitary factor structure of the TAQ at the team level, χ2(19) = 31.05, p  = .04; CFI = 93; SRMR = .08.

Supplementary analyses without lagged dependent variables yields notably stronger effects. In particular, the regression coefficient for team accountability predicting final team performance (H2) increases from β  = .17 to β  = .25 and approaches traditional statistical significance at p  < .06. The regression coefficient for team accountability predicting team trust (H5a) increases from β  = .21 to β  = .39 and achieves statistical significance at p  < .01.

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Acknowledgements

We are indebted to Mr. Paschal O’Neill, Dr. Ciaran Heavey, and Dr. Patrick Gibbons for supporting our data collection.

Open Access funding provided by the IReL Consortium. This project was funded by an internal grant of €2,000 from the University College Dublin.

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Dr. Stewart received a consulting fee for designing a leadership survey which included the Team Accountability Questionnaire (Study 1b). Dr. Kou and Dr. Snyder have no financial interests.

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Stewart, V.R., Snyder, D.G. & Kou, CY. We Hold Ourselves Accountable: A Relational View of Team Accountability. J Bus Ethics 183 , 691–712 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04969-z

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AI ethics in a controversial industry: the case of gambling and its ethical paradox

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Carr authored the Project 2025 chapter on the FCC and telecommunications policy, which 16 House Democrats said could be a violation of the Hatch Act and federal employee ethics laws because the document includes Carr’s official FCC title.

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“The Misuse of Position Rule clearly prohibits federal employees from using their government positions, titles, or authority to sign letters, write op-eds, speak in their personal capacity, or — as it were — draft the blueprint for archconservatives to take over their agency,” the representatives wrote , referencing part of the federal employee ethics law. 

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Results of the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters for the third quarter of 2024

19 July 2024

• Inflation expectations unchanged for 2024 and 2025, at 2.4% and 2.0% respectively, and revised marginally downwards for 2026 to 1.9%; longer-term inflation expectations (for 2029) stand at 2.0%
• Real GDP growth expectations broadly unchanged over the survey horizon; upward revision for 2024 largely reflects stronger than expected outcome for the first quarter of 2024
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In the ECB’s Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) for the third quarter of 2024, respondents’ expectations for headline inflation, as measured in terms of the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP), were unchanged for 2024 and 2025, at 2.4% and 2.0% respectively, and revised marginally downwards for 2026 to 1.9%. Expectations for core HICP inflation, which excludes energy and food, were revised upwards slightly for 2024 and 2025, reflecting data outturns and more persistent than expected services inflation and labour cost growth. Longer-term expectations for headline and core HICP inflation were unchanged at 2.0%.

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The expected profile of the unemployment rate was revised down over the period 2024 to 2026. Nonetheless, respondents continued to expect the unemployment rate to increase in 2024, to 6.5%, but to decline in 2026, to 6.4%, and then to remain at 6.4% in the longer term.

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• The SPF for the third quarter of 2024 was conducted between 2 and 5 July 2024 and 56 responses were received. The SPF is conducted on a quarterly basis and gathers expectations for inflation, real GDP growth and unemployment in the euro area for several horizons, together with a quantitative assessment of the uncertainty surrounding them. The survey participants are experts affiliated with financial and non-financial institutions based in Europe. The survey results do not represent the views of the ECB’s decision-making bodies or its staff. The next ECB staff macroeconomic projections for the euro area will be published on 12 September 2024.
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The Datasets and Benchmarks track serves as a venue for high-quality publications, talks, and posters on highly valuable machine learning datasets and benchmarks, as well as a forum for discussions on how to improve dataset development. Datasets and benchmarks are crucial for the development of machine learning methods, but also require their own publishing and reviewing guidelines. For instance, datasets can often not be reviewed in a double-blind fashion, and hence full anonymization will not be required. On the other hand, they do require additional specific checks, such as a proper description of how the data was collected, whether they show intrinsic bias, and whether they will remain accessible. The Datasets and Benchmarks track is proud to support the open source movement by encouraging submissions of open-source libraries and tools that enable or accelerate ML research.

The previous editions of the Datasets and Benchmarks track were highly successful; you can view the accepted papers from 2021 , 2002 , and 2023 , and the winners of the best paper awards 2021 , 2022 and 2023

CRITERIA. W e are aiming for an equally stringent review as the main conference, yet better suited to datasets and benchmarks. Submissions to this track will be reviewed according to a set of criteria and best practices specifically designed for datasets and benchmarks , as described below. A key criterion is accessibility: datasets should be available and accessible , i.e. the data can be found and obtained without a personal request to the PI, and any required code should be open source. We encourage the authors to use Croissant format ( https://mlcommons.org/working-groups/data/croissant/ ) to document their datasets in machine readable way.   Next to a scientific paper, authors should also submit supplementary materials such as detail on how the data was collected and organised, what kind of information it contains, how it should be used ethically and responsibly, as well as how it will be made available and maintained.

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• Utility and quality of the submission: Impact, originality, novelty, relevance to the NeurIPS community will all be considered. 
• Reproducibility: All submissions should be accompanied by sufficient information to reproduce the results described i.e. all necessary datasets, code, and evaluation procedures must be accessible and documented. We encourage the use of a reproducibility framework such as the ML reproducibility checklist to guarantee that all results can be easily reproduced. Benchmark submissions in particular should take care to ensure sufficient details are provided to ensure reproducibility. If submissions include code, please refer to the NeurIPS code submission guidelines .  
• Was code provided (e.g. in the supplementary material)? If provided, did you look at the code? Did you consider it useful in guiding your review? If not provided, did you wish code had been available?
• Ethics: Any ethical implications of the work should be addressed. Authors should rely on NeurIPS ethics guidelines as guidance for understanding ethical concerns.  
• Completeness of the relevant documentation: Per NeurIPS ethics guidelines , datasets must be accompanied by documentation communicating the details of the dataset as part of their submissions via structured templates (e.g. TODO). Sufficient detail must be provided on how the data was collected and organized, what kind of information it contains,  ethically and responsibly, and how it will be made available and maintained. 
• Licensing and access: Per NeurIPS ethics guidelines , authors should provide licenses for any datasets released. These should consider the intended use and limitations of the dataset, and develop licenses and terms of use to prevent misuse or inappropriate use.  
• Consent and privacy: Per  NeurIPS ethics guidelines , datasets should minimize the exposure of any personally identifiable information, unless informed consent from those individuals is provided to do so. Any paper that chooses to create a dataset with real data of real people should ask for the explicit consent of participants, or explain why they were unable to do so.
• Ethics and responsible use: Any ethical implications of new datasets should be addressed and guidelines for responsible use should be provided where appropriate. Note that, if your submission includes publicly available datasets (e.g. as part of a larger benchmark), you should also check these datasets for ethical issues. You remain responsible for the ethical implications of including existing datasets or other data sources in your work.
• Legal compliance: For datasets, authors should ensure awareness and compliance with regional legal requirements.

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

The following committee will provide advice on the organization of the track over the coming years: Sergio Escalera, Isabelle Guyon, Neil Lawrence, Dina Machuve, Olga Russakovsky, Joaquin Vanschoren, Serena Yeung.

DATASETS AND BENCHMARKS CHAIRS

Lora Aroyo, Google Francesco Locatello, Institute of Science and Technology Austria Lingjuan Lyu, Sony AI

Contact: [email protected]

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J.D. Vance’s A.I. Agenda: Reduce Regulation

Donald Trump’s vice-presidential pick has indicated he favors a hands-off approach to A.I. but also wants to increase scrutiny of the biggest tech firms in the field.

By Cecilia Kang

Reporting from Washington

Senator J.D. Vance, Republican of Ohio, is a strong skeptic of regulating artificial intelligence. He’s also in favor of reining in Big Tech, companies he says have grown so powerful that they stymie smaller companies’ ability to succeed.

That seeming contradiction could play a role in shaping the Trump administration’s stance on A.I. policy if former President Donald J. Trump is elected later this year. Mr. Vance — the Republican pick for vice president and a former tech investor — has pushed for looser regulations and has vocally supported open-source A.I., the public release of underlying code that can be copied and altered to create new technology.

But he has also broken with his party to support Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, for her aggressive stance on antitrust action against Big Tech. And he has strong ties with some of the tech industry’s most powerful backers, many of whom fund smaller A.I. start-ups.

Last week, during a committee hearing on privacy and A.I. , Mr. Vance accused Big Tech companies of predicting that A.I. could destroy humanity in order to solicit new regulations that only the largest companies could comply with.

Those regulations would “entrench the tech incumbents that we actually have, and make it actually harder for new entrants to create the innovation that’s going to power the next generation of American growth” and jobs, Mr. Vance said.

Mr. Trump has not said whom he would ask to lead the administration’s policymaking on A.I if he reclaims the presidency in November. But Mr. Vance could heavily influence the growing industry.

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