Just Culture and the Role of Accountability Continued from page 41 justice, frequently ignoring systemic issues in favor of the temporarily satisfying punishment of the bad apple. But what should we do when someone messes up—ignore it? Blame the system? For many, this feels empty, lacking a sense of real resolution or true accountability. How then do we balance Justice’s scales? The trap we tend to fall into is in viewing the choice of individual culpability versus blaming the system as a false dichotomy, rather than as a balancing act itself. The reality of work in organizational systems is that there is a combination of both system influence and individual discretion, and so, as Berlinger (2005) sug- gests, we must work to understand not only the human and the system as constructs, but also how humans function within the system and with each other. Dekker (2007) echoes this as a focus “not [on] individu- als or systems, but individuals in systems” (p. 131). An organizational culture that is blame-free is not one without personal accountability, but creating and sustaining that sort of culture may be difficult to do. ACCOUNTABILITY IN PRACTICE To achieve accountability, we must first agree on what it looks like and what it does. Of course, the question of defining accountability is fraught with pitfalls, not the least of which is deciding who gets to define it in the first place. Virginia Sharpe (2004) describes the need to think direction- ally about accountability and to shift from a backward-looking version of accountability that devolves to the “blame and shame” so many of us have witnessed after an accident Aviation Business Journal | 3rd Quarter 2018 or error. Instead, Sharpe suggests a forward-looking orientation for accountability: one that acknowl- edges a mistake and the resultant harm and moves forward creating opportunities for reflection and systemic responses to the mistake and to the harm. The point, says Sharpe, is that this sort of account- ability focuses on identifying obliga- tions and ownership for responding by asking questions like: 1) who was harmed, 2) what do they need and 3) who is obligated to meet that need? The resultant conversation is neces- sarily quite different, and instead of an arbiter on high handing out punishment, achieving system and individual wholeness becomes a more community-centered effort toward restorative, rather than retributive justice. Operationally, only a forward- looking view of accountability allows for organizational learning, address- ing the true sources of harm, and for building trust within our teams. STEPS TOWARD A JUST CULTURE There are countless stories from which we might extract some of the themes of just culture as applied in real life, but it can be difficult to wrap our arms around the core tenets. Dekker (2016, pp. 36-37) identifies a number of concepts within just culture that stand out as important: » A single account cannot do jus- tice to the complexity of events —the more diverse the descrip- tions of events and systems are, the closer we are to reality » A just culture accepts no single account as true or right—as in Rashomon, varying accounts avoid a sort of moral high ground in favor of understanding » A just culture is not about abso- lutes, but about compromise —justice is not enforced, it is bargained as a social construct » A just culture pays close atten- tion to the “view from below,” i.e. those involved at the tip of the spear—learning requires a user-centered perspective » A just culture is not about achieving power goals—protec- tion of power and just culture cannot co-exist; humility is a precursor to justice » Disclosure matters—dis- closure is a duty » Protecting those who disclose matters just as much—an unwavering devotion to protecting those who disclose builds trust in the system » Proportionality and decency are crucial to a just culture— context drives response Building toward a just culture requires a multifaceted approach and one of the central components is getting people to trust in the system, including the reporting function, the reliability, legitimacy and fair- ness of investigations, and critically, who decides what is acceptable. “The greatest responsibility, and therefore, accountability for a just culture resides with organizational leaders,” note Mayer and Cronin (2008, p. 429). As with all matters of culture, specificity is important, and many leaders find it easier to narrow the focus from the broader concept of just culture, and instead Continued on page 45 43
