RE: Accountability

[Myron Tribus <mtribus@home.com>]

There is a difference between the meanings associated with the words 
"responsibility" and "accountability".

Suppose that I am the principal of a high school.  I am given the 
responsibility for the building, the people, the curriculum, the 
teachers and a host of other things.  I cannot do it all, so I 
delegate some of these responsibilities to others.  However, though I 
delegate the responsibility, I keep accountability.  I cannot 
delegate accountability.  I can only delegate responsibility and 
authority.
If I have delegated responsibility for financial matters to my 
business manager, she in turn may delegate a responsibility to a 
secretary.  She still is accountable to me.
This distinction creates the need for me to manage those to whom I 
have delegated a responsibility.  In fact, the way I manage is my 
method to protect myself and assure that I meet my obligations when I 
am accountable.
I may adopt various methods of management... from micro-management, 
which deprives my of the brain power of my subordinates to laissez 
faire, which gives me no protection.
When Homer Sarasohn got to Japan he found there was no equivalent 
Japanese word for accountability.  He told me this in the video I 
made of him several years ago.  I was a bit skeptical of this but 
recently I consulted a friend who has translated several books from 
English to Japanese.  At my request he consulted a Japanese 
dictionary and found that in that dictionary the words were defined 
as essentially synonymous.   I haven't checked but I believe that the 
same may be true of many American dictionaries.

I learned of this distinction while an ROTC cadet in 1941.

Myron Tribus,  350 Britto Terrace,  Fremont, CA 94539
Ph:510 651 3641  Fax: 510 656 9875   e-mail: mtribus@home.com
Mathematicians believe that the Normal Distribution of errors has 
been established experimentally; experimenters believe it is a law of 
mathematics. (Henri Poincare
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