We hold ourselves accountable: a relational view of team accountability

Date published

2021-11-18

Free to read from

Supervisor/s

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Springer

Department

Type

Article

ISSN

0167-4544

Format

Citation

Stewart VR, Snyder DG, Kou C-Y. (2023) We hold ourselves accountable: a relational view of team accountability. Journal of Business Ethics, Volume 183, March 2023, pp. 691–712

Abstract

Accountability is of universal interest to the business ethics community, but the emphasis to date has been primarily at the level of the industry, organization, or key individuals. This paper unites concepts from relational and felt accountability and team dynamics to provide an initial explanatory framework that emphasizes the importance of social interactions to team accountability. We develop a measure of team accountability using participants in the USA and Europe and then use it to study a cohort of 65 teams of Irish business students over three months as they complete a complex simulation. Our hypotheses test the origins of team accountability and its effects on subsequent team performance and attitudinal states. Results indicate that initial team accountability is strongly related to team trust, commitment, efficacy, and identifying with the team emotionally. In established teams, accountability increases effort and willingness to continue to collaborate but did not significantly improve task performance in this investigation.

Description

Software Description

Software Language

Github

Keywords

Collective, Commitment, Felt accountability, Group, Longitudinal, Measure, Performance, Relational accountability, Team, Trust

DOI

Rights

Attribution 4.0 International

Relationships

Relationships

Supplements

Funder/s