Linh Bui

Accountability is inherently multilevel and ethical. However, research has paid limited attention to understanding its multilevel nature within organizations, and the ethical foundations shaping accountability across different levels of analysis remain underexplored. We contend that a multilevel perspective is necessary to clarify where accountability functions, while an ethical perspective helps to explain why it matters. To integrate these perspectives, we adopt the multilevel input-process-output model (Mak & Kozlowski, 2017) to synthesize the accountability literature from individual to team levels through three major ethical lenses: deontology, teleology, and virtue ethics. Our synthesis of 112 papers across multiple disciplines published between 2015 and 2025 reveals that accountability operates differently across these levels and that each ethical perspective offers unique insights into how individuals and teams experience, interpret, and respond to accountability. Based on this review, we propose a multilevel and ethical agenda for future research. We also discuss practical implications for fostering ethics in accountability in organizations.