Leadership pitfall:Diffused accountability is formula for organizational failure

livemint.com:

Death by firing squad is a sentence usually meted out in the military for heinous crimes like murder or desertion. The condemned prisoner is tied to a post or stood against a wall. A group of five or more soldiers aim at him, and on command, fire their rifles simultaneously.

Notably, one of the soldiers is randomly and anonymously given a rifle loaded with a blank round, thus allowing each one to find solace in the chance they weren’t personally responsible for taking a life. This idea of deliberate diffusion of accountability is used by several US states where executions are done by lethal injection. There are two syringes and two buttons pressed by two different individuals simultaneously and a computer chooses which syringe is to be injected into the prisoner, thus absolving both executioners of absolute certainty of whose action caused the death.

While the concept may offer psychological comfort in macabre tasks such as executions, it also leads to ethical lapses and decision-making failures in other circumstances, including in the day-to-day operations of businesses and governments. On 20 April 2010, an oil rig off the Gulf of Mexico named Deepwater Horizon had a massive blowout. The disaster killed 11 people and was considered one of the worst ever environmental catastrophes, causing severe damage to marine ecosystems and several regional economies.

It was a classic case of diffused accountability gone horribly wrong. The rig was operated by Transocean, but it was drilling on behalf of BP, and a third company, Haliburton, was responsible for cementing the borewell. The involvement of multiple entities in various aspects of operations had blurred the lines of accountability and responsibility.