Diverse perspectives: accounting for the felt accountability of understudied and underrepresented employees

Accountability is the fundamental building block of social order, as individuals strive to appease those to whom they are accountable in order to gain rewards and avoid punishments. However, how individuals experience and respond to their accountabilities varies greatly across cultures and social contexts. Discrimination not only imposes additional accountability burdens on marginalized individuals (e.g., the Black tax), but also shapes their perceptions of accountability by influencing the extent to which they are rewarded or punished. This chapter argues that prior research has largely treated accountability as a universal cognitive process, overlooking how it is shaped by cultural and structural inequalities. We explore variations in accountability experiences, with a focus on racial discrimination, and discuss how accountability frameworks intersect with concepts such as financial precarity, essential work, and structural barriers within organizations. Finally, we outline directions for future research that examines felt accountability in understudied and underrepresented employee populations, emphasizing the need for a more contextualized understanding of accountability in increasingly diverse workforces.