ABSTRACT
Accountability is fundamental to any social relation. Accountability, however, is not a unitary concept – even if this is what many stakeholders may think when aiming to improve people's performance under the banner of "holding them accountable". There are as many types of accountability as there are distinct relationships among people, and between people and organizations, and only highly specialized subtypes of accountability actually compel people to expend more cognitive effort. The desire to balance learning from failure with appropriate accountability has motivated a number of safety-critical industries and organizations to develop guidance on a so-called "just culture." Equating blame-free systems with an absence of personal accountability is inaccurate. The question is not whether practitioners want to skirt personal accountability. Of particular concern is the sustainability of learning from failure through incident reporting: if operators and others perceive that their reports will not be treated fairly or lead to negative consequences, the willingness to report will decline.
