Responsibility and
accountability
Session 1
Objective
•Create awareness about consequences of each and every action/
inaction in formal and informal structure.
What is responsibility?
What is your responsibility? Enumerate
Responsibility
They are all related to doing the things we are supposed to do.
It is also accepting the consequences for what we say and do.
• What is your responsibility?
• Could there be a situation where you are responsible for more than
one thing? How do you decide which responsibility is higher than the
other?
Organization Pyramid and
Responsibility
That’s a lot of power, and in the words of Uncle Ben to Peter Parker,
“With great power comes great responsibility.”
I know you didn’t ask for this power; no one asked if you wanted to be
a human being just like no one asked Peter Parker if he wanted to be
Spider-Man.
He was bitten and you were born, and now you both have a choice.
Will you use your powers for good or for evil?
Responsibilities of an Individual
• Can different responsibilities be in a conflicting state with each other?
Difference between
Ethics and Morality
• Morals refer to an individual's own
principles regarding right and wrong
• Ethics refer to rules provided by an
external source
Ethical Dilemma
• An ethical dilemma is a problem in the decision-making process between two
possible options, neither of which is absolutely acceptable from an ethical
perspective.
• Also, ethical dilemmas are extremely complicated challenges that cannot be
easily solved. Therefore, the ability to find the optimal solution for ethical
dilemmas is critical to everyone.
Some examples of ethical dilemmas
examples include:
• Taking credit for others’ work
• Offering a client a worse product for your own profit
• Utilizing inside knowledge for your own profit
What is Moral dilemma
• A situation in which a difficult choice has to be made between two courses of
action, either of which entails transgressing a moral principle. A moral dilemma is
a conflict in which you have to choose between two or more actions and
have moral reasons for choosing each action
Examples?
Using office stationery for personal use?
Forged bills on food travel etc
Using social media during office hours
Misusing internet policy
Bribing the traffic guy after jumping the signal…
The recipe for responsibility/
Responsible decision making
• Responsible behavior is made up of five essential elements:
• Honesty, Compassion/Respect, Fairness, Accountability, and
Courage.
Honesty:
• Good guideline to live by —tell the truth, and tell it with respect
for the people who hear it.
• Honest people make decisions about people and things based on
evidence rather than emotions. Sometimes, it’s easy to make
judgments based on what we think we know. But, being honest
means being willing to consider all the facts before we draw those
conclusions. As humans, our perspectives can sometimes be
skewed. When we’re being honest, we’re willing to consider
alternative explanations.
• Finally, honesty also means being willing to consider that there are
aspects of ourselves we need to change.
• It’s dishonest, both to ourselves and to others, to think we’re perfect.
Everyone has room for improvement. Being honest with ourselves
means being open to constructive criticism.
Respect
• One of the most important things to remember about respecting
others is to not judge people who are different from you.
Everywhere you look, you see people of different ethnicities,
religious backgrounds, and sexual orientations.
• You see rich people, poor people, men, women, Democrats,
Republicans—you name it. The point is, everyone’s different, and
there’s no such thing as “normal.”
• So, there’s no reason to draw distinctions between people. Everyone
is unique and deserves to be treated with kindness and respect
It means that we don’t show favoritism or give one group special
privileges at the expense of another.
Accountability
• Suppose you haven’t submitted your assignment and your prof’s been
bugging you about it.
• What do you think will happen when s/he checks on you again and sees that
you haven’t done what s/he asked?
• Are you going to whine and make excuses, or are you going to own up and
face whatever consequence might come?
• That’s what accountability is all about. It’s acknowledging and accepting
whatever happens as a result of your decisions, actions, and mistakes.
Blaming other people for things you did wrong is both dishonest and unkind.
• The more excuses you make for bad behavior, the less likely people are to
trust what you say in the future. So, do what you say, and say what you did.
It’s better for everyone in the long run.
Fairness
• In our society, we put a high value on our rights and on making sure
no one takes them away.
• We believe there are certain things everyone deserves, and if there’s
injustice somewhere, it has to be fixed.
• Fairness can be tricky. It doesn’t mean that we always get what we
want. In truth, no one gets their way all the time.
• Being fair really means balancing your personal needs with the needs
of others. It means making sure one person doesn’t always win out
over the other. It means not always seeking your own way at the
expense of others.
Courage
• To do the right thing even when it’s not easy, fun, or popular takes a lot of
courage. If everyone tells you to do one thing, and you know that it’s wrong
or unwise, you have to be brave enough to stand up for what you believe.
• Sometimes it’s extremely difficult to do that. Many people find it a lot easier
to just go with the crowd, even when the crowd is acting in a way that doesn’t
mesh with their personal values
• When you waver on your own values, you lose credibility with both yourself
and others. The more you stick to what you know is right, the easier it gets.
You’ll find it easier to trust yourself to make the right decisions.
• And, people who trust themselves are people who can be trusted by others to
make the right call
