Accountability and Ownership

Questions: 1. What is the difference between Accountability and Ownership? 2. From your perspective, what are the 3 key challenges in holding people Accountable? 3. What mechanisms do you use to motivate your employees? 4. Read Case Study 1 and respond to the following questions: a. Did Bhanu Shankar do the best he could? b. Who was to blame for the failure? c. Could the expectation setting be managed better? d. What could Bhanu Shankar do to ensure Commitment from the various teams? 5. Read Case Study 2 and respond to the following questions: a. Was Vijesh accountable for the project failure? Was it right to blame him for the project failure? b. How do you see Nirmalas role in this situation? c. Was it possible for her to ensure shared accountability? How? Answers: 1. The difference of accountability and ownership is that accountability is doing what people suppose to do because other peoples expectation is assigned to it (Dawkins et al. 2015). On the other hand, ownership is all about own expectations which needs to be fulfilled at times (Reed 2015). Ownership is taking responsibility of himself/herself. 2. The three key challenges in holding people Accountable are as follows: Goals and expectations are confusing at times Penalty and reward structure is flawed Organisational performance may not reviewed on daily basis Performance related issues might be raised It often mislead because there is no connection between final results and recognition 3. The common mechanisms used to motivate employees are as follows: Changing approach of the employee Control over choices Proper cooperation to work with other people Positive recognition Happiness at work Showing trust towards the other working people4. a. Yes he did.b. His team members accountability approachc. Yes, if the team has taken its ownership seriously, the expectation can be managed better.d. Performance related issues relating to the team should be solved at the initial stages. By taking this approach, Bhanu Shankar could increase his team commitment.5. a. No. Vijesh was not accountable for the project failure. It is not right to blame him because all of a sudden he accepted to take the post of a project manager within 2 days. However, it was his accountability to take care of the project, but it was already an outdated project plan and team was already taking things lightly and this was the main cause of project failure.b. According to the situation, Nirmala was a manipulator. She should aware the situation in front of Vijesh before h e takes up the role of the project manager.c. Yes. If she shared the correct situation of the project to Vijesh, then he would assess the situation in advance. References: Dawkins, S., Tian, A.W., Newman, A. and Martin, A., 2015. Psychological ownership: A review and research agenda.Journal of Organizational Behavior. Reed, C., 2015. Information in the cloud: ownership, control and accountability.Chapters, pp.139-159.