Accountability and responsibility defined

Abstract

Purpose -To remove confusion surrounding the terms responsibility and accountability from the general and project management arenas by creating 'refined' (with unnecessary elements removed) definitions of these terms.Design/methodology/approach -A method of deriving refined definitions for a group of terms by ensuring there is no internal conflict or overlap is adopted and applied to resolve the confusion.Findings -The confusion between responsibility and accountability can be characterised as a failure to separate the obligation to satisfactorily perform a task (responsibility) from the liability to ensure that it is satisfactorily done (accountability). Furthermore, clarity of application can be achieved if legislative and organisational accountabilities are differentiated and it is recognised that accountability and responsibility transition across organisational levels. A difficulty in applying accountability in RACI tables is also resolved.Research limitations/implications -Clear definition of responsibility and accountability will facilitate future research endeavours by removing confusion surrounding the terms. Verification of the method used through its success in deriving these 'refined' definitions suggests its suitability for application to other contested terms.Practical implications -Projects and businesses alike can benefit from removal of confusion around the definitions of responsibility and accountability in the academic research they fund and attempt to apply. They can also achieve improvements in both efficiency and effectiveness in undertaking organisation-wide exercises to determine organisational responsibilities and accountabilities as well as in the application of governance models.Social implications -Refined definitions of responsibility and accountability will facilitate building social and physical systems and infrastructure, benefitting organisations, whether public, charitable or private.Originality/value -Clarity resulting in the avoidance of confusion and misunderstanding together with their consequent waste of time, resources and money.

Do steering committees really steer?

“…This confusion emerged from the responses to Q3. These two terms have been defined by McGrath and Whitty (2018) as:Responsibility: an obligation to satisfactorily perform a taskAccountability: liability for ensuring a task is satisfactorily done.…”

Anti-bribery and Corruption Policies in International Sports Governing Bodies

“…This includes clear lines of reporting for members, employees, and other stakeholders being available, usually defined in policies and procedures. Non controls (mainly policy) definitions of accountability focus on actions over liability, although there is confusion over the definition (Mcgrath and Whitty, 2018). Accountability was defined in the controls sense in this paper, as having a set of standards such as reporting on specific tasks, having named senior officers responsible for clearly identified specific tasks, and/or the organization or senior officers being explicitly responsible for particular functions or actions within an organization.…”

Improvement Path for Resource-Constrained Cities Identified Using an Environmental Co-Governance Assessment Framework Based on BWM-mV Model

“…Because the environmental co-governance system has no clear initiator, a responsibility constraint mechanism based on the concept of the pursuit of common interests is required to ensure the successful completion of environmental protection tasks [ 23 , 79 , 80 , 81 ]. While pursuing common interests, stakeholders must also share the costs of environmental protection and economic development [ 82 , 83 , 84 ].…”