Question

What is the problem of "vanishing individual responsibility"? How does this notion apply to corporations and what is the impact on ethical conduct in the workplace?

Answer 1

Vanishing Individual Responsibility refers to a situation, when it becomes increasingly difficult for a corporate organization to assign individual responsibilities for deviated outcomes. This might happen in a case, where there lies a fault in the set process or a group-contributed product.

In today's corporate world, where most if not all end results of operations are driven by actions or small contributions of a large number of people, the lines of assigning individual responsibility for a particular outcome are increasingly becoming blur. And hence, diffusion of responsibility can be witnessed among individuals. Such a state may result in people escaping the personal responsibility on their part, and hence creating a situation of equivocation, which is not good for any organization in the long run.