All employees within an organization are assigned with some tasks or activities which are within the scope of their job responsibilities. And here comes the main difference between Accountability and Responsibility. Clicke here & explore more about accountability & responsibility!
Differences Between Accountability & Responsibility
1. All employees within an organization are assigned with some tasks or activities which
are within the scope of their job responsibilities. And here comes the main difference
between Accountability and Responsibility.
According to Business Dictionary, Responsibility can be defined as “A duty or
obligation to satisfactorily perform or complete a task (assigned by someone, or
created by one's own promise or circumstances) that one must fulfill, and which has a
consequent penalty for failure”.*
Accountability, on another hand, is defined according to the same reference as “The
obligation of an individual or organization to account for its activities, accept
responsibility for them, and to disclose the results in a transparent manner”.*
This means that responsibility is the fact mindset of ownership of a task or job.
Employees accept doing their tasks and before getting into action. Thus,
accountability is a personal willingness, after-the-fact, to answer for the results of our
behaviors and actions. Therefore, accountability takes place after performing our
duties and responsibilities. It is our willingness to be transparent and show our
results, admit our mistakes and take responsibility for learning from them and
correcting them, and celebrate our successes.**
While Responsibility is an obligation of performing the task, Accountability has
nothing with performing the tasks, but the answer-ability for the consequences of the
task nevertheless who was the performer.
While the one with the responsibility has a specific ownership of the specific task
assigned to him, the one who is accountable has an ultimate ownership of the task,
this accountability would include other correlated tasks that he wouldn’t perform but
he is still accountable for their consequences.
In other words, the first is responsible for doing the task, & the latter is accountable
for having it done. A lot of references claim that a main difference between
responsibility and accountability is that responsibility can be shared while
accountability cannot. Being accountable not only means being responsible for
something but also ultimately being answerable for your action
Differences Between
Accountability & Responsibility