How to combat a culture of excuses and promote accountability

Abstract

Purpose

The authors offer a leaders' guide to assess accountability problems, “take away excuses,” and promote a culture of accountability.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors believe that attribution error and bias influences much of the existing business literature and conventional wisdom around accountability, which focuses almost exclusively on individual responsibility and character. Under‐emphasized or ignored is the way that informal company practices and habits contribute to the widespread problem that employees are not doing what leadership needs and expects them to do.

Findings

The authors developed a predictive accountability model that asserts that most people in organizations will be accountable – that is, they will do what is needed and expected – if four factors are present: expectations are clear to employees; employees perceive that those expectations are credible and reasonable; employees anticipate that positive consequences will follow performance; and employees anticipate that negative consequences will follow poor performance.

Practical implications

Managing accountability is a process for which leaders have responsibility. Toward that end, the authors' experience has shown the culture of accountability model to be a highly reliable tool capable of diagnosing a wide variety of accountability problems.

Originality/value

The authors offer a program for diagnosing and addressing existing accountability problems and for preventing such problems from becoming endemic.

Citation

Grimshaw, J., Baron, G., Mike, B. and Edwards, N. (2006), "How to combat a culture of excuses and promote accountability", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 34 No. 5, pp. 11-18. https://doi.org/10.1108/10878570610684793