-

2. Advantages of accountability
 Clearer direction. Honesty about faults and failures will
open you to receive right counsel and encouragement. This
process will increase your potential to do and become all that
God has in mind for you.
 Increased integrity. If you have to give an account to
somebody, you’re more likely to live transparently.
 Better stewardship. Accounting for the way you use your
money, time, or talent makes you careful not to waste those
resources.

3.  Protection against excess. As believers, we’re free in Christ,
but an accountability partner helps us to stay balanced and
refrain from taking liberties.
 Healthy self-examination. Another person can often point out
what we cannot see in ourselves. When we allow someone to
be an accurate mirror of our faults, we’re in a better position to
make improvements.
 Safeguard against unwise relationships. If you have to give
an account of where you go and which people you spend time
with, you’ll be more likely to avoid problematic places and
relationships.

4. Accountability Theory
 As explained by Vance, Lowry and Eggett (2015),
accountability theory explains how the perceived need to
justify one’s behaviors to another party causes one to
consider and feel accountable for the process by which
decisions and judgments have been reached. In turn, this
perceived need to account for a decision-making process
and outcome increases the likelihood that one will think
deeply and systematically about one’s procedural behaviors.

5.  A useful way to understand accountability is to distinguish between
its two most prevalent uses:
As a virtue
As a virtue, accountability is seen as a quality in which a person
displays a willingness to accept responsibility, a desirable trait in
public officials, government agencies, or firms; hence, in this use,
accountability is a positive feature of an entity.
As a mechanism
As a mechanism, accountability is seen as a process in which a
person has a potential obligation to explain his or her actions to
another party who has the right to pass judgment on the actions as
well as to subject the person to potential consequences for his or
her actions. Accountability theory focuses on the process of
accountability.

6.  Accountability theory proposes several mechanisms that
increase accountability perceptions.
For example, “even the simplest accountability manipulation b
necessarily implicates several empirically distinguishable sub
manipulations” including the presence of another person,
identifiability, and expectation of evaluation. Recent research has
shown that IT design artifacts of systems can manipulate the four
core components of accountability theory and thus improve
employees’ felt accountability toward organizational system
security without disruptive interventions or training
(1) identifiability
(2) expectation of evaluation
(3) awareness of monitoring
(4) social presence.

8. Principal-Agent Theory
 All agency relationships are fiduciary relationships. This means the
relationship involves a certain level of trust and confidence. The agent is
obligated to act in the best interests of the principal because the agent's
actions will create legal obligations for the principal. The agency
relationship allows the agent to work on behalf of the principal as if the
principal was present and acting alone.
 For example, let's say Wilma contracts with Rusty's Rawhide to buy 500
rawhide bones. Rusty's delivers the bones, but Barks and Bubbles fails to
pay the bill. As the principal, I'm legally responsible for Rusty's bill even
though I never personally made this business deal. If Rusty's decides to
sue for collection of the bill, they'll likely sue Barks and Bubbles and me,
rather than Wilma. As long as Wilma was properly acting as my agent
when she made this deal, she's not legally responsible.

10. Principal and Agent
 Wilma works for me at my pet grooming business, Barks and
Bubbles. I'm the owner and in the process of restocking my inventory
in my pet supply department, so I send Wilma to order some
products for my store.
 This means Wilma is an agent, or a party who is legally authorized
to act on behalf of another party in business transactions. I, on the
other hand, am a principal. A principal is a party who gives legal
authority to another to act on his or her behalf in business
transactions. Both principals and agents can be individuals or can be
business entities.
 Wilma and I have an agency relationship. This is a business
relationship where a principal gives legal authority to an agent to act
on the principal's behalf when dealing with a third party. When Wilma
places orders for my store, I am the principal and Wilma is working
as my agent.

11. Acceptance
In a work situation it may be that you:
 Accept a decision made by Management.
Comply with a procedure you don’t think is
necessary.
Acknowledge a mistake (your own or a
colleagues’).
Respect a perspective that is different to your
own.

12. How to Encourage Acceptance of
People in the Workplace
Hold sensitivity training sessions for staff. This is particularly poignant if
you have a diverse staff -- or are in the process of building one -- and
want to ensure that everyone's diverse beliefs and cultures are not only
accepted overall, but understood enough to ensure that no one on your
staff thinks it's acceptable to be culturally divisive or offensive. Allow
employees to give feedback on how well they feel they are accepted and
to give input on what you -- as an employer -- can do differently to
encourage acceptance of various differences.
Place employees in teams to approach various project assignments.
When employees learn to work together in a team environment, they
may better be able to overcome their differences and accept one another
professionally as well as personally. Educate management staff on how
to facilitate conflict resolution for teams should the need arise, with a
focus on accepting each other's differences and appreciating them
instead of allowing them to cause conflict.

13. Plan retreats for staff to allow them a relaxed environment to get to know one
another better. This can be hard to do in a strict and staid work environment.
When employees get out of the office and interact with one another, it gives
them a chance to chat and network on a more personal level. A more
personal understanding of each employee's personality may give way to
better working relationships upon return to the office.
Distribute literature to your staff touting your commitment to diversity. This
makes it a matter of policy, rather than just something you encourage among
staff. Use the literature to detail ways to get along despite differences, conflict
resolution when working styles are the issue and tips on remaining
professional and learning from one another's cultural differences.

14. Ethical Accountability
“It is a readiness to have one’s actions judged by others and, where
appropriate, accept responsibility for errors, misjudgments and negligence
and recognition for competence, conscientiousness, excellence and
wisdom.” While responsibility is defined as a bundle of obligations
associated with a role, accountability could be defined as “blaming or
crediting someone for an action”—normally associated with a recognized
responsibility. The accountable actor is “held to external oversight,
regulation, and mechanisms of punishment aimed to externally motivate
responsive adjustment in order to maintain adherence with appropriate
moral standards of action.”

15. In the professional context, accountability is about answering to
clients, colleagues and other relevant professionals. The demand to
give an account of one’s judgments, acts and omissions arises from
the nature of the professional-client and the professional-professional
relationships. For communication professionals, accountability has
more specific implications. Recent years have seen more practical
and concrete interpretation of the concept of accountability by
communication specialists. It is associated with responsiveness to
the views of all stakeholders, which includes a willingness to explain,
defend, and justify actions.

While tracing the lines of responsibility and accountability can be
difficult, in the end, if one is responsible in any way for an action, then
one must accept some degree of accountability. On the other hand, if
responsibility and accountability are not equitably shared and if the
process by which they are assigned is not transparent, then problems
will arise. In the corporate world, not every actor is blame-worthy,
especially if the actor’s autonomy is limited by structure, process, or
circumstance. However, lack of autonomy is not an excuse for
avoiding accountability entirely.

16. Thank you