Q7. “Diffusion of responsibility within an organisation often allows individual wrongdoing to become institutional misconduct.” Elucidate. (10 M)
Difficulty Level: Medium
Reference: TH
Why the question
Divided roles and collective decision-making can weaken personal accountability, allowing isolated ethical failures to become accepted organisational practices.
Key demand of the question
Explain the concept of diffusion of responsibility and the mechanisms through which it produces institutional misconduct. Briefly indicate how individual and organisational accountability can be restored.
Structure of the answer:
Introduction
Introduce diffusion of responsibility as a situation where individuals feel less personally answerable because responsibility is distributed among several members of an organisation.
Body
- Transformation into institutional misconduct: Explain how fragmented duties, hierarchical obedience, target pressure, conformity and moral distancing gradually normalise individual wrongdoing across an organisation.
- Restoring ethical responsibility: Suggest clear allocation of duties, protected channels for dissent, ethics-based performance assessment and independent oversight to establish answerability at every level.
Conclusion
Conclude that collective functioning should strengthen shared accountability rather than provide individuals with anonymity from the consequences of their decisions.
