In modern corporations responsibility for actions become categorically diffused so that "the personel 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 categorically diffused in modern organizations along with the fact that administration 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 length to inherent victims" who will suffer the consequences of the actions (p. 181).
Webster University
Many organizations have faced downsizing in up-to-date 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 employer of an international training team for a large pharmaceutical company. Because of funds 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 assosication was based in New York City. It was considered 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 personel who knew these individuals on a personal basis. All the others only knew them from a length as they were each based in New York City.
As their immediate employer 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 execution and capabilities. I gave this decision a lot of view knowing that I would have to illustrate the decision. I sent my advice to my employer in New York, based past execution reviews, feedback from the business partners who worked daily with the individuals, and the level of commitment and execution 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 manufacture the decision also included facts such as salary level, expense of retention individuals in distinct countries etc...
The recommendations I made went ignored. In addition, the team decided that each personel 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 cost 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 personel 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 relationship 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 whole of people. They were using consequentialist mental to make their decision, claiming that the team could run more economically with the citizen who were to stay irregardless of the fact that two of the best citizen would be let go and the Turkish citizen would not be allowed a severance holder 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 personel took greatest responsibility the consequence to the branch was devastating and long continuing References:
Trevino, L., and Nelson, K., (2005). Corporate communal responsibility and managerial ethics. Hoboken, Nj: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
individual responsibility and Ethics in the society
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