Discussion Board Post
Introduction
Liability and accountability are a vital requirement for any profession in order to ensure that activities are done in a required manner, and that people can be held accountable in cases whereby such activities are not done in a required manner. Specifically, liability implies that an individual should rightly incur the costs associated with adverse effects of his/her actions on other people.
Most of the technical risks and failures are caused by lack of proper responsibility assignment (Hartman, 2010). This implies that liability and accountability can be used to establish an approach for the responsibility of actions undertaken by individuals. In addition, liability and accountability should vary in accordance to the effects associated with actions and decisions of professionals.
The assignment of liability and accountability should vary in different professions. This is because of the variations of the subjects of their decisions and actions that they undertake.
For instance, owing to the fact that a mistake done by a healthcare personnel can result to the death of a patient implies that they require high standards of legal responsibility and accountability (Gaylin & Bruce, 2000). This helps in ensuring that professionals who handle delicate matters such as human life exercise extreme care in order to avoid unnecessary losses that cannot be recovered.
On the other hand, professionals such as magazine reporters do not require higher standards of legal accountability and responsibility due to the fact that the mistakes that they commit cannot impose adverse effects on the society and human life, and that they can be easily rectified.
Variations in the levels of legal accountability and responsibility have various advantages and disadvantages depending on the nature of the risks and vulnerability of actions and decisions undertaken by the professional. One of the most significant advantages of this is that it ensures that professionals exercise extreme care when undertaking their actions and decisions. In addition, it gives the victims a better opportunity for reclaiming the costs associated with damages imposed by professionals.
The fundamental argument is that assigning higher standards of responsibility and accountability ensures the professional meets the costs that are worth the damage. A significant disadvantage of this approach is that some effects may have intangible adverse effects on the victims, and since they have low accountability and responsibility, experts in such professionals are bound to exercise less care during their actions and decisions (Bovins, 1998).
For example, a mistake done by a magazine reporter can go along way to affect the reputation of a company, which may in turn affect its profitability and ultimately the company’s shut down. Another disadvantage of this approach is that it eliminates the possibility of other causation factors of faults and the circumstances that compelled an individual to undertake a given action or decision.
Other professionals that require high accountability include engineers, public health, laboratory personnel and inspectorate personnel. This is because a single mistake undertaken by the named professionals can cost human life and invaluable damage than cannot be easily reclaimed (Gaylin & Bruce, 2000). For instance, an engineer that ignores some design requirements may result to a collapse of a house in the near future, which is somewhat considered to be a disaster.
The mistakes undertaken by public health and inspectorate officials can result to damages that cannot be recovered. Professionals such as teaching and journalism do not require higher levels of liability and accountability because adverse effects of actions and decisions can be reversed in a timely manner, thereby reducing any potential of risks and vulnerabilities (Hartman, 2010).
Discussion Board Peer Post Review and Reply
According to a post by Diangelo Wilson, liability and accountability should vary according to professions, as such, people holding higher professions require higher accountability. This is absolutely correct because with great jobs comes more responsibility, and care has to be exercised when handling delicate issues that can result to adverse effects due to mistakes undertaken by the professionals.
You explained the professions that require high accountability although you did not highlight the reasons why such high standards of accountability are required. In addition, you did not highlight the various professions that do not need high standards of accountability and the reasons why they do not need.
With respect to this posting, you should clarify more regarding why certain professions should be accorded high levels of accountability compared to others. Basically, the posting highlighted the significance of liability in career development; as such, it will help me in the development of my career through being help accountable and liable for any mistakes in my actions and decisions in the course of my career.
In Lisa Fondel post, certain professions should have higher standards of accountability than others. However, you need to clarify more on the reasons why you believe some professionals like doctors and police officers must be accorded higher standards of accountability compared to others.
In the posting, you did not differentiate between the advantages and disadvantages of allocating higher accountability standards to certain professionals. The basic inference from the posting is that every professional should be accountable to some degree depending on the nature of the job and the outcome of mistakes in actions and wrong decision making. This posting was helpful in facilitating my understanding of professional accountability, which is vital in career development.
References
Bovins, B. (1998). The Quest for Responsibility, Accountability and Citizenship in Large Organizations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gaylin, W., & Bruce, J. (2000). The Perversion of Autonomy: The Proper Uses of Coercion and Constraints in a Liberal Society . New York: The Free Press.
Hartman, D. (2010). Business Ethics: Decision-Making for Personal Integrity & Social Responsibility. New York: McGraw Hill.