Difference Between Accountability And Responsibility

What is it that makes some people play the blame game while others do not?

It is simply the “Accountability Factor”.

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.**

We can solicit these differences between the accountability & responsibility:

• While Responsibility is an obligation of performing the task, Accountability has nothing with performing the tasks, but the answerability 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

It is easy then to conclude that by accepting job roles and responsibilities, then accountability will follow.

*http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/accountability.html
** https://www.diffen.com/difference/Accountability_vs_Responsibility

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