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Felt Accountability in Indonesia: What is the Role of Ethical Leadership and Collaborative Culture?
Dwiaprinda Rachmawati1, Alice Salendu2
1,2Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Indonesia [email protected], [email protected]
I. Introduction
Felt accountability is a fundamental concept in behavior, especially when making decisions (Tetlock, 1992), and during social interactions (Brees et al., 2020). Felt accountability according to Hall & Ferris (2011, p.134) is “an implicit or explicit expectation that one's decisions or actions will be subject to evaluation by some salient audience(s) with the belief that there exists the potential for one to receive either rewards or sanctions based on this expected evaluation”. So, felt accountability is the expectation of an actor's actions who are aware that they will be evaluated by the audience and receive rewards or sanctions for their evaluation. The difference between felt accountability and responsibility is that there is a role for the audience to evaluate the behavior as explained by the Schlenker pyramid model (Schlenker et al., 1994).
Abstract
Felt accountability in employees is important to be fostered early in the organization, because it has a positive impact such as increasing performance on employees and also the company. The research focuses on factors that can affect felt accountability, such as leadership and culture factors in an organization that can affect felt accountability. A culture of collaboration has criteria such as management progress to change, good communication, trust and respect for all employees and leaders, teamwork, and encouragement to respect differences. Furthermore, leadership factors such as ethical leadership because it has characteristics such as fair, honest and trustworthy. These two factors can create a work environment which makes employees more productive because they can affect psychological safety of employees, which is included in the internal factors that affect felt accountability. This regression study aims to understand the effect of implementing collaborative culture and ethical leadership on felt accountability through psychological safety of its employees, so as to improve the performance of both the employees themselves and the company.
This quantitative research uses online self-reports that are distributed to employees of the ministry in the forestry and environment sector in Jakarta. The sampling method is the accidental sampling. Data analysis used the SPSS multiple regression test method. The results obtained from 330 respondents indicate that there is a significant influence between collaborative culture on felt accountability mediation psychological safety.
Based on the results found, it is necessary to do more in-depth research related to the factors that affect felt accountability from the internal side, and it is important to examine other leadership styles because the topic still needs to be developed a lot.
Keywords
collaborative culture; ethical leadership; psychological safety;
felt accountability
Budapest International Research and Critics Institute-Journal (BIRCI-Journal) Volume 5, No 3, August 2022, Page: 21253-21261 e-ISSN: 2615-3076 (Online), p-ISSN: 2615-1715 (Print)
www.bircu-journal.com/index.php/birci email: [email protected]
One important element that employees must have in carrying out their work is felt accountability, because it is synonymous with high responsibility (Dewi & Riantoputra, 2019). Positive behaviors such as good work performance, being cooperative and dedicated to their work, being innovative, and being responsible for their work are the characteristics of an accountable employee (Mero et al., 2014; Orakcı et al., 2020). If an organization has accountable employees, then the organization will be lucky in addition to a positive work environment, it will also increase productivity (Chen et al., 2016; Sacco et al., 2020).
Felt accountability of employees is influenced by two main interrelated factors, namely internal factors and external factors. Previous studies have shown that there are factors that have been shown to affect felt accountability, such as personality trait (Dewi &
Riantoputra, 2019) and psychological safety (Stühlinger et al., 2019), core self-evaluation (Chen et al, 2015) as a factor internal, and organizational support and structure (Dewi &
Riantoputra, 2019), organizational culture (Park, 2020), leader member exchange (Park, 2017) as external factors. Based on the description of previous studies, the antecedent research on felt accountability is still limited, especially on internal factors, so that researchers will explore more in relation to felt accountability with internal and external factors.
Organization must have a goal to be achieved by the organizational members (Niati et al., 2021). The success of leadership is partly determined by the ability of leaders to develop their organizational culture (Arif, 2019).
External factors such as leaders and organizational culture are of concern to the entire organization because they have an important role in the organization. According to Xiau & Lin (2020) through organizational culture can help get the market, so it is useful to increase sales targets which culminate in helping the survival of the company and the development of the company globally. Organizational culture is an order of values, a collection of meanings and beliefs compiled by organizational groups to be implemented and believed by all members of the organization which is reflected in attitudes and behaviors that describe how the organization's operations are carried out. With the applied organizational culture, all members of the organization or employees behave according to the cultural values that have been prepared to be carried out and believed by all members of the organization. In other words, the organizational culture that is believed to be shared becomes the basis for all employee attitudes and behavior (Hartnell et al, 2020).
Indonesian culture tends to emphasize the importance of teamwork, high employee morale, and human resource development as criteria for organizational effectiveness. In long-term organizational development, Indonesian culture values leaders who can be mentors, are committed to employee welfare, and can be held accountable. In addition, according to Dewi & Riantoputra (2019), leaders play an important role in making decisions so that they can influence employee behavior such as accountability, such as ethical leadership.
Therefore, it is important to conduct research related to organizational culture and ethical leadership, but based on previous research, there was a weak correlation between organizational culture (Park, 2020) and ethical leadership (Hu et al, 2018) felt accountability, so it is important to add other variables to mediate the correlation with felt accountability, for example, in the internal aspect, namely psychological safety.
In the theory of social exchange (Blau, 1964, p.91) the support provided by leaders and organizations is an important part in forming accountable employees, because employees will feel an interest in paying for it. Forms of organizational support such as the implementation of organizational values that prioritize employees are implemented into organizational culture, for example collaborative culture. According to Gupta et al, (2000),
the Collaborative culture is a culture that has a long-term view and progress of management for change, good communication, trust and respect for all employees and leaders, teamwork, empowerment, tolerance of ambiguity, risk and assumptions. and encouragement for respect and difference. Based on this description, the researcher uses collaborative culture as a variable that can affect felt accountability.
Collaborative culture was chosen because it has values that respect each other, good cooperation so that this creates a productive and safe work environment, as in Ridley et al (2020) research which says that collaborative culture can create psychological safety for employees so that employees dare to express opinions, respect each other and dare to take an action without the need to think about the negative consequences that will be obtained.
This is because employees feel valued, cared for and given the opportunity and confidence to show their potential (Zu & Yao, 2019).
Furthermore, as in the theory of social exchange, the leader plays an important role in forming a sense of desire to pay employees because they feel they have been given support by their leaders, so that accountability is also getting better. In this study, ethical leadership is used, because ethical leaders demonstrate high moral values including integrity, trustworthiness, honesty, and act in a fair and principled manner, and genuinely care about their employees, and set, communicate, and strengthen ethical standards high (Hansen et al., 2013; Lu & Guy, 2014). Ethical leadership is defined as “the demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonal relationships, and the promotion of such conduct to followers through two- way communication, reinforcement, and decision-making”. So ethical leadership is leadership by behaving according to the norms applied to its actions and interpersonal relationships with followers or members so that it can foster trust and also influence decision making. So the impact of ethical leadership is psychological security, as in the research of Hu et al, (2018) that ethical leadership can affect the psychological safety of its employees so that this can mediate the relationship between ethical leadership and felt accountability.
Psychological safety is the extent to which individuals feel psychologically safe so they are willing to show themselves or express opinions without fear of negative consequences (Newman et al., 2017). Based on social exchange, leaders who receive support from employees describe good leadership and employee relationships so that this has an impact on the formation of a positive environment (Park, 2017). A positive environment is characterized by solid coordination between employees, a fair and complementary division of tasks, so that employees can become accountable and increase employee responsibilities in their organization (Stühlinger et al., 2019). Therefore, researchers use psychological safety as a mediation between collaborative culture and felt accountability.
Based on this description, it is important to conduct research that discusses the overall variables, namely the relationship, psychological safety and ethical leadership to explain the role of the factors that influence the emergence of felt accountability in employees, so that research questions are obtained, namely how is the relationship between collaborative culture and ethical leadership to felt accountability through psychological safety?
H1: Collaboration culture has a positive direct relationship to felt accountability H2: Psychological safety has a positive direct relationship to felt accountability
H3: Psychological safety can mediate the relationship between Collaboration culture and Felt accountability
H4: Ethical leadership has a direct positive relationship to felt accountability
H5: Psychological safety can mediate the relationship between ethical leadership and felt accountability
Figure 1. Research Model II. Research Method
This study uses a quantitative approach with multiple regression analysis techniques using SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) version 26 software. Based on its nature, this research is included in non-experimental research because there are only a few control variables and also does not manipulate the variables studied. .
The sample used is civil servant employees and honorary staff/functional positions and honorary employees who work in government organizations, namely the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, especially in the central Directorate General of KSDAE. The type of sampling used is accidental sampling which is a sampling technique based on participant criteria according to the research (Cohen & Swerdik, 2009, p.118). The reason is because it is effective and easy to use. The number of samples in the study was 330 where according to Azwar (2018) if the population was 2,400, a sample of 331 was required.
In this study, the data collection technique was carried out by self-report online with assistance from the staff. The measuring tools consist of collaborative culture, psychological safety, ethical leadership, and felt accountability. Which consists of:
Collaborative culture. The measuring instrument used according to López et al.
(2004) consists of eight items. For example: “Organization (university) considers changes as something natural and necessary to happen; Organization (university) considers individual (staffs) as valuable asset and takes necessary effort to continuously respect their work”.
Ethical Leadership. The measurement tool ethical leadership uses a questionnaire adapted by Resick et al., (2006) consisting of 15 items. There are four different dimensions, namely integrity, altruism, collective motivation and encouragement.
Cronbach's alpha measurement tool ethical leadership is 0.984.
Psychological Safety measuring instrument psychological safety using a questionnaire compiled by Plomp et al., (2019) adapted from Edmonson (1999) consists of seven items and is classified as unidimensional and has a Cronbach alpha = 0.82 using a Likert Scale. Example items: “If you make a mistake on this team, it is often held against you; Members of this team are able to bring up problems and tough issues”.
Felt accountability. The tool for measuring felt accountability uses Hochwarter et al (2005) which is included in unidimensional and Cronbach alpha (α) = 0.72. This item consists of eight and uses a Likert scale. Example items: “I am held accountable for my actions at work, Top management holds me accountable for all of my decisions, if things don't go the way they should, I will hear about it from top management”.
Researchers get data as many as 330 respondents from a total distribution of 331 respondents. Gender is dominated by 80% of men or 264 respondents, and 20% of women or 66 respondents. Education is dominated by S1 as much as 41% or a number of 137 respondents. Length of work is dominated by more than 2 years with a total of 87% or 288 respondents. The following is the demographic data in table 1.
Table 1. Demographic Data
Category n %
Gender:
Male 264 80 %
Female 66 20%
Education : SMA D3/D4
124 25
38%
8%
Bachelor Degree 137 41%
Master Degree 44 13%
Length of Work:
0 – 1 Years 16 4.8%
1 – 2 Years 3 1.2%
2- 3 Years 24 7%
>2 Years 288 87%
Working Status
Full WFO 280 84.8%
Shifting (WFH & WFO) 39 11.8 %
Full WFH 11 3.4%
*Note: N = 330
III. Results and Discussion
3.1 Results
Researchers carried out several stages in the test, namely by testing validity, reliability, correlation and then regression testing. Validity test is a test conducted to determine the level of validity and validity of a research instrument. The validity test technique used is product moment Pearson correlation. The number of research respondents used for this test is 330 people so that the value of r table with a significant level of 5% is 0.12. Based on the results of testing the questionnaire instrument contained in the variables X1, X2, Y and Z above, the calculated r value obtained from all items is greater than the r table value. Therefore, it can be concluded that the questionnaire items used have passed the validity test and are considered suitable for use.
Reliability test aims to determine the consistency of research measuring instruments.
The results of the reliability test calculations can be seen from the coefficient ofCronbach's alpha as shown in table 2 as follows:
Table 2. Reliability Test Results
Variable N of items Cronbach Alpha
Ethical Leadership (X1) 10 0.74
Collaborative Culture (X2) 8 0.74
Felt accountability (Y) 9 0.70
Psychological Safety (Z) 8 0.70
The results of the reliability test above show that the Cronbach alpha of the entire questionnaire on each variable is greater than 0.60. These results indicate that the questionnaire used in this study is a reliable questionnaire.
Prior to the regression test, the researcher conducted a correlation test between variables. The aim is to determine the relationship between the main variables and demographics. The results of the correlation test showed a significant relationship between collaborative culture and ethical leadership (r = 0.63; p < 0.01), psychological safety (r = 0.20; p <0.01). Then, a significant relationship was also found between ethical leadership and psychological safety (r= 0.12; p < 0.05. Lastly, psychological safety had a significant positive relationship with felt accountability(r= 0.16; p < 0.01) between variables can be seen in table 3.
Table 3. Correlation between variables
No Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6
1 Length of work at the
current Satker 3.72 0.73 1
2 Last Education 2.30 1.11 -0 04 1
3 Collaborative Culture 4.89 0.69 -0.01 0.13* 1
4 Ethical Leadership 5.14 0.57 -0.02 0.08 0.63** 1
5 Psychological Safety 3.90 1.05 -0.11* 0.17** 0.20** 0.12* 1 6 Felt Accountability 4.86 0.51 -0.05 -0.01 -0.02 0.01 0.16** 1 Note: N= 330, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05
Prior to the regression analysis test, the researcher followed the goodness of fit to measure the fit level of the research model, Tucker Lewis Index (TLI > 0.90 accepted, >
0.95 very good;), Comparative Fit Index (CFI > 0.90 accepted, >0.95 very good), and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA < 0.08 accepted. < 0.05 very good) (Chan
& Leung, 2021). Measurement of the fit model obtained 2 = 18.49; TLI 0.99 > 0.90; CFI 0.99 > 0.95; RMSEA 0.02. Based on the fit index, it can be concluded that this research has a fit model.
Table 4. Model Fit
df2 . CFI TLI RMSEA
18.49 14 0.99 0.99 0.02
Then the researcher tested the hypothesis by using SEM ParcellingReferring to the results of the analysis, it is found that there is a relationship between collaborative culture and felt accountability through psychological safety. The regression coefficient value between collaborative culture and psychological safety is (β2= 0.04; p<0.05). This means that the higher the collaborative culture in a company, the higher the psychological safety equal to the regression coefficient value. Then, the result between psychological safety and
felt accountability is (β3= 0.01; p < 0.05). This means that the higher the psychological safety that is formed in the employee, the higher the felt accountability in the employee. In contrast to ethical leadership, it does not have a relationship with felt accountability either through psychological safety or directly.
Table 5. Squared Multiple Correlation and Standardized Total Effect
Variable R2 Ethical
leadership
Collaborative Culture
Psychological safety 1. Psychological safety 0.67 0.49 0.04*
2. Felt accountability 0.56 0.32 0.21 0.01**
Figure 2. Model Analysis Results
3.2 Discussion
This research has a contribution where collaborative culture can affect felt accountability through psychological safety. However, it is different from ethical leadership which cannot affect felt accountability either directly or indirectly through psychological safety theory Social exchange is used as a basis to analyze the factors that affect felt accountability.
Based on the results that the acceptable hypotheses are hypotheses 2 and 3 which are acceptable. There is a positive relationship between collaborative culture and felt accountability indirectly or through psychological safety. This is in line with research showing that psychological safety can create a positive environment so that employees can become accountable and increase employee responsibility in their organizations (Stühlinger et al., 2019). This study also proves that hypotheses 1 and 4 are rejected that collaborative culture and ethical leadership do not have a direct effect.
If we observe from the point of view of social exchange theory, that when an organization implements a collaborative culture, there is support provided by the company and company devices (coworkers), this can increase psychological safety in employees.
This means that collaborative culture has characteristics such as having values that respect each other, good cooperation so that this creates a productive and safe work environment for employees. This is supported by the research of Ridley et al (2020) which says that collaborative culture can create psychological safety.
In the theory of social exchange (Blau, 1964), with the implementation of an organizational culture that supports its employees, employees will have a sense of paying for what they have received from their leaders and organizations, proven that they behave well, and are more responsible and committed to the organization. Eisenberger et al., 1986;
Uppal, 2017). The success psychological safety will form a positive environment, and will
make employees feel that both themselves and their work are considered important, valued, and meaningful (Owens et al., 2013; Owens et al., 2012; Wang et al., 2018), so that growing can form responsible and accountable employees (Stühlinger et al., 2019).
Because trust has been created in the work environment, and does not hesitate to reprimand employees who make mistakes without any negative consequences.
This study has weaknesses such as collecting data from one self-report, thus allowing for bias. Further research can collect data using other reports, for example data collection from the leader's point of view, etc.
IV. Conclusion
Based on the background of the problem, the test results and the discussion that has been described, it can be concluded that there is a significant influence between collaborative culture on felt accountability through psychological safety. Therefore, it is important for companies to pay attention to what organizational culture is to be able to increase felt accountability in order to improve employee performance and also performance for the company.
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