What I do or how I do it - the effect of accountability focus on individual exploration

Abstract

Because accountability is a central feature of many management practices, feeling accountable is a fact of life in modern organizations. Accountability has been found to have many beneficial outcomes, yet it may also increase certain cognitive biases. Building on the social contingency model of accountability, we examine the effect of accountability on manager's individual decision making about exploration vs. exploitation. We distinguish between outcome and process accountability and examine them as independent predictors of exploration behaviour. Although previous work suggests that outcome accountability may lead managers to quickly switch to old ways of working (i.e., exploitation), we propose that process accountability will increase individual exploration. Furthermore, employing the concept of disfluency, we propose that this positive effect of process accountability will be especially strong when outcome accountability is also high. Combining two survey studies (n = 361, n = 438) with employees and a lab experiment (n = 211), we find overall support for our hypotheses. Specifically, we find that process accountability increases exploration while outcome accountability decreases it (and increases exploitation). We also find partial support for a positive interaction of process and outcome accountability.

New world, or out of this world? Columbus – an exploratory study of HASS and STEM success factors in the first “space” race

“…Robertson and Funnell (2012) and Funnell and Robertson (2011) debate the role of the double-entry bookkeeping system in influencing modern capitalism. Verwaeren and Nijstad (2022) found that accountability focus is associated with the exploration strategy of firms. The overall message from these works is that accounting and accountability significantly influence human endeavors.…”

“…However, we did not find any literature relating the concepts of accountability and accounting to space exploration. The closest work we found that links accountability focus to exploration is that of Verwaeren and Nijstad (2022). They focus on individual managers' decisions regarding engaging in exploration vs exploitation.…”

“…Implicit in this definition is that there might be significant consequences for not supplying adequate justification. The lens of accountability has been used in the study of several outcomes, such as Corporate Social Responsibility (Baudot et al, 2022), block-chain systems (Tyma et al, 2022), religious organization (Moggi et al, 2016), customer-supplier negotiations (Chang et al, 2013) and innovation strategy (Verwaeren and Nijstad, 2022). We note that the accountability lens has not been used to study human expeditions, such as the "Space Race".…”

“…, 2016), customer–supplier negotiations (Chang et al. , 2013) and innovation strategy (Verwaeren and Nijstad, 2022). We note that the accountability lens has not been used to study human expeditions, such as the “Space Race”.…”

Taking a secong look - Revising the effects of process and outcome accountability

“…One fairly representative example of such an interview-manipulation of the two types of accountability can be found in a study by Verwaeren and Nijstad (2022), in which participants had to maximize the profits of a virtual lemonade stand. In this study, the authors presented participants in the process accountability condition with the following instruction before working on the task: "The researcher will ask you to justify the thinking process or strategy that you followed during the task.…”