In modern corporations responsibility for actions become easily diffused so that "the individual often becomes disconnected from the consequences of his or her actions and doesn't feel personally responsible for them" (Trevino and Nelson, 2005, p. 181). There are many reasons why responsibility is easily diffused in modern organizations including the fact that management may tell individuals it is not their responsibility and that they will take care of it, because it is often "shared with others in decision-making groups, obscured by the organizational hierarchy, or diluted by psychological distance to potential victims" who will suffer the consequences of the actions (p. 181).

Many organizations have faced downsizing in recent years. Many of these examples can be used as an example of how responsibility for negative actions can be dispersed within an organization. For many years, I was a manager of an international training team for a large pharmaceutical company. Because of budget constraints it was decided that my team would have to be downsized. While our team was based in Europe and the Middle East, the world wide headquarters of the organization was based in New York City. It was determined that the decision of who would be cut from the team would be made with input from myself, the senior leaders of the training group, HR and senior managers of the region. I was the only individual who knew these individuals on a personal basis. All the others only knew them from a distance as they were each based in New York City.

As their immediate manager and because I lived in Europe and worked with them on a daily basis, I was asked to provide my recommendations of who should be let go based on performance and capabilities. I gave this decision a lot of thought knowing that I would have to justify the decision. I sent my recommendation to my manager in New York, based past performance reviews, feedback from the business partners who worked daily with the individuals, and the level of commitment and performance they had demonstrated. To my surprise, the final decision came back to let two of the individuals go that I had recommended to keep. In the end, the group making the decision also included information such as salary level, expense of keeping individuals in certain countries etc...

The recommendations I made went ignored. In addition, the team decided that each individual would be notified by email. In addition, the top performer of my team, a Turkish citizen living in Brussels would be repatriated to Turkey for several months and then let go. I soon discovered that because Turkey had no law that required a severance payment to be made, unlike the European Union, which required a large severance to be paid to each individual. When I protested about the decision criteria, each individual on the team claimed they made the decision as a team using guidance from other groups within the company. No one would take responsibility for the decision because the responsibility had been diffused to other team members and procedures made by other departments higher in the company. In addition, all the other decision makers where both physically and emotionally detached from the individuals affected by their decision, so they felt no emotional connection to them.

The only explanation that I was given was that this decision was made based on which what would be best for the largest amount of people. They were using consequentialist thinking to make their decision, claiming that the team could run more economically with the people who were to stay irregardless of the fact that two of the best people would be let go and the Turkish citizen would not be allowed a severance package like the European team members would receive. Because this decision was seen as unjust and severely damaging to the most capable of team members, me and several other team members soon left the company. Training suffered and they were unable to recruit other training professionals from within the company. While no one individual took ultimate responsibility the consequence to the department was devastating and long lasting References:

Trevino, L., and Nelson, K., (2005). Corporate social responsibility and managerial ethics. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Since founding Magnify Leadership and Development, James has developed, facilitated and coached programs including; Change Leadership, Coaching, Communication Skills, Sustaining Learning, Interviewing Skills, Leadership, Territory Management for dozens of leading global organizations; including, Advantis Research and Consulting, IMS, CMOE, Pfizer, Sinclair, Disetronic Medical Systems, StratX, ASTD, Coventry Health Care, Wilson Learning, and many others. James is bilingual and can facilitate and coach in both English and Spanish.

Prior to founding Magnify Leadership and Development, James headed Pfizer's Learning and Development for all of Europe, Canada, Africa and the Middle East where he was instrumental in the development of a global management curriculum and other training initiatives to enhance organizational effectiveness for over 30,00 employees.

Visit James website to learn how we can you with your leadership and communication development needs.

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Tags: Ethics, Responsibility, legal issues, social , business