The Issues of Accountability and Responsibility of the Employees - Coursework Example

Decision Making Student’s Name Professor University/Institution Location Date Introduction In the contemporary world of business every manager is aiming at maximizing output in his or her firm. Maximize sales, take the biggest market share and thus improve the organizations profits. These and other firm’s objectives can’t be achieved without the managers making informed decision, disseminatingproper guidelines to the employees and controlling various operations of the organization accountably. This paper therefore seeks to critically analyze the impacts and the advantages of having accountable and wellinformed management in the business.The paper will address the issues of accountability and responsibility of the employees as well as the management at large. J.R.D Tata puts it that, “one of the drawbacks of the modern organizations, with their large and concentrated labour forces, is the difficulty of maintaining personal touch between management and employees. As a result, many petty grievances, negligible individually but substantialin the aggregate, which might have been eliminated by a friendly word or timely action, are allowed to build up a sense of discontent and frustration among the workers.’This simply insinuates that both employees and the management have a role to play in ensuring the success of the firm; that is accountability and responsibility. This two are also clearly discussed in this literature review. Historical background The British government announced a second rescue package on the 19th of January 2009 in response to the global financial crisis that was ongoing. The package offer had been designed to raise the amount of money that banks were supposed to lend to private individuals and businesses. The larger part of the aid was to be made available to big corporate borrowers while the second undisclosed amount was to form insurance against banks making big losses. Following this announcement, there was a large criticism by the by the UK media and the opposition parties. Following the October 2008 bailouts of RBS, HBOS and Lloyds TSB’s January 2009 merger with HBOS, the government had in its possession a 43% stake in Lloyds Banking Group. However, on March 6, 2009, it became clear that the HBOS merger was not the best for Lloyds since HBOS had been making losses. This was a case where information was not clear hence the right decision was not arrived at. The merger was wrongly timed leading to a great loss. The government had had to increase its stake in Lloyds to 65% (Kickert 2012). NBC a TVstation in USA made a decision to drop the program that used to be broadcasted by renowned presenter so as to give way to a drama program that used to come later after Leno’s presentation. Leno’ presentation earnedthe station about $300,000 while they projected the drama program to earn them about $3million. By dropping the presenter the station lost so much because the viewers moved to another station to which Leno transferred. What the NBC did while making its decision is that it failed to seek for more information from its affiliates so as to gauge for the consequences of its action. Its uninformed decision therefore made it to make such a tremendous loss. Today equally all firms and organizations are bestowed with all kinds of information necessary for making proper and meaningful organization decisions. Information such as consumer behavior, current economictrends, levels of competition, financial positions of various existing companies, demographic information and international trends and conditions among others are now made available to the firms. For instance, Hood(2006), posits that over the past thirty to twenty years measurement of performance has been the main area of focus for almost alldisciplines of the economy,ranging frompractitioners and scholars toboth private and public sectors. This implies that firm need formation so as to move on. Herrman (2001) in his study he points out that company managers nowadays have a lotof data at their disposal though they lack the relevant information. In 2001 Chopooranconducted a study on how business analyses their data, he concluded that among all the information that businesses collect, they are only able to analyse about 9% of that collected information.Neely et al (2002) laments that, “there is a proliferation of data in organizationsdriven by the demands of information from an increasing number of stakeholders and an increasing number of initiatives.” The rate of generation of data by firms seems to be far much faster than how than how that data is being used to generate important decisions. A research by (Ittner and Larker 2006) providence evidence that better use of information helps in promoting proper decision making in organizations. The researchers argues thatgood use of effective tools of analysis helps in delivering improved financial performance.( Davenport and Harris 2007), asserts that the modern modes of competition are no longer based on traditional ways but firms that are leading in terms of performance are competing on the ability to make critical analysis of the available data. He posits that these well performing firms are investing heavily on employing information technology systems that can even perform sophisticated qualitative and statistical analysis. This dataanalyses is able to improve the capability of the managers to make informed decisions. Several other authors have sought to understand the relationship between decision making and information. Bezerman (2005) suggests that decision making requiresknowledge for one to be able to evaluate an issue critically.For this reason he posits that knowledge and decision making are inseparable. Moreover it can be noted that many technologies,tools and techniques have been designed in bid to help the conversionof the collected data into relevant information upon whichsolutions and conclusionspertaining a given organizational problems can be drawn. This has been proved positive by a number of existing firms insinuating that well utilized information is vital and important when making decisions. (Neely et al 2006) If the employees lack to be responsible, the organization is adversely affected to a great extent. There is lack of cooperation with the management in many areas like the assessment, training programs and the actual execution of duty. The endeavor by the employee to create the best working environment for there to be results is therefore not enhanced thus hindering optimum production by the organization. Responsibility of the employee will therefore need to be thoroughly sought for if real success is to be realized by the organization (Drucker 2012). The employees should loyally own up their roles and perform them to their best so as to attain the organization’s standards. This enables an existence of a cohesive system that links the employee, the management and the organization in general for the best returns to be achieved. A lot of harm can be realized if the management fails to ensure that there is accountability. There will be a failure in acknowledging the right course of actions. This will mean that the cohesive system that ensures there is answerability is torn apart. The obligation that accountability dictates within its scope is that of revealing or reporting the situations plainly and accurately for there to be a flow in the rightful direction. This will bring about breakages in the information structure that is so necessary for decision making. Lack of a good accountability system may even mean a total failure in the entire organization in the long run (Frederickson & Ghere 2013). According to Daniel McCallum, there is a direct link between the concept of accountability and management. He advocated for a firm system of individual accountability in every level of service. In this case, accountability of subordinates and their directions is to be directed to the superiors only. The officer was needed to have authority as approved by the general superintendent to do an appointment of all people for whose acts he is held responsible. The power to dismiss any of the subordinate when in the judgment of the officer in line with the company’s interest is granted. The issue of accountability therefore is wrapped up in being answerable. This follows from the acknowledgement and assuming responsibility for actions, policies and decisions.There is an obligation to report to the management and be answerable to any particular consequence that results. Responsibility needs to stem out of loyalty to the organization involved and adherence to the goals. Daniel McCallum asserted that the issue of responsibility requires an appropriate division. For the responsibilities to be real in character, sufficient power needs to be conferred to give room for these responsibilities to be thoroughly carried out. A clearly set out means of ensuring whether the responsibilities are carried out or not need to be adopted. The management therefore needs to establish a clear haste in the report of all derelictions of duty so that the wrongs may be quickly corrected. The management therefore ensures that this information is collected in such a way that does not embarrass the supervisors. The influence they have on their subordinates needed to be corrected to allow them to show responsibility. The management ensures that accountability and responsibility is reinforced by use of various means. The supervisors majorly are required to be accountable to the management on the issue of the performance of the subordinate. The chain need to move on according to the hierarchy of leadership to ensure that there is a flow of duties from the least to the highest of the ranks in the business (Dekker 2012). The management therefore creates a basis for appraisal that closes every gap for breach of duty at any level. If violation occurs, the management responds immediately to avoid other departments of the organization from being affected. The directives that management set are therefore those that gives chance for accountability to be thoroughly affected. The organization performance consists of the actual results or the output of an organization when it is compares to the intended level of output that is set out in the goals and objectives (Tian 2012, p.13). It is a very important concept since it is able to evaluate the financial performance, stakeholder return and the product market performance. The key areas under this focus therefore includes profits, return on investment and assets, sales, market share, economic value added, total shareholder return etc. All these issues are considered in this concept of the organization performance and integrated together comprehensively for the realization of optimum results. Accountability is fundamental for there to be performance improvement. Through accountability, there is a good measure and report of the progress. It is the nerve center running through the entire organization creating a working relationship that enhances growth because of an improved performance. If accountability is not efficient in an organization, then efforts towards performance improvement is ineffective and inefficient. The ability to yield results is in a direct link to the accountability attitudes, systems and practices that are being followed in an organization (Frederickson & Ghere 2013). The employee’s plays very key role in any organization and their input cannot be underestimated when the organization performance is concerned. The more responsible they are, the more the organization is at a position to achieve its output goals and objectives (Drucker 2012). The responsibility of employees ensures that there are flows that clearly run through an organization to enhance best results. References Chopoorian J A, Witherell R, Khalil O E M, Ahmed M 2001, ‘Mind your business by mining your data’, SAM Advanced Management Journal, Vol 66, No, 2, pp 45-51 . Davenport, T; Harris, J; De Long, D; and Jacobson, A 2000, Data to Knowledge to Result building an analytic capability Institute for Strategic Change Andersen Consulting Dekker, S 2012 Just culture: Balancing safety and accountability Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. Drucker, P 2012 Management Routledge. Frederickson, H G, & Ghere, R K Eds 2013 Ethics in public management ME Sharpe. Herrmann, K 2001, Visualizing Your Business – let graphics tell the story, John Wiley & Sons. Hood, C, & Lodge, M 2006 The politics of public service bargains: reward, competency, loyalty-and blame Oxford University Press. Ittner, CD and Larker, DF, 2006, Moving from Strategic Measurement to Strategic Data Analysis, in Chapman, CS Ed, Controlling Strategy,Oxford University Press. Kickert, W. (2012). How the UK government responded to the fiscal crisis: an outsider's view. Public Money & Management, 32(3), 169-176. Neely, A and Al Najjar, M 2006, “Management Learning not Management Control: The True Role of Performance Measurement?”, California Management Review, Vol 48, No 3, pp 101-114. Neely, A, Adams, C and Kennerley, M 2002, The Performance Prism: the Scorecard for Measuring and Managing Business Success, Pearson Education Ltd, London, UK. Tian, X 2012 Empirical Research on Organization Performance and the Influential Factors of Corporate Philanthropy International Journal of Digital Content Technology and its Applications, 613. Read More