Philosophy of Management formerly Reason in Practice

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Guest Editors’ Introduction: Organisation and Decision Processes

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Howard Harris, Saadia Carapiet and Chris Provis ‘Adaptive and Agile Organisations’: Do They Actually Exist?

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Bernd Carsten Stahl Reflective Responsibility: Using IS to Ascribe Collective Responsibility

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Mark R Dibben Exploring the Processual Nature of Trust and Cooperation in Organisations: A Whiteheadian Analysis

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John Darwin Preventing Premature Agreement

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Petia Sice and Ian French Understanding Humans and Organisations: Philosophical Implications of Autopoiesis

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Gordon R Foxall Beyond the Marketing Philosophy: Context and Intention in the Explanation of Consumer Choice

Volume 4 Number 1 2004 Philosophy of Management formerly Reason in Practice 74a Station Road East Oxted Surrey RH8 0PG UK Tel and Fax +44 (0)1883 715419 Journal website: www.managementphilosophers.com © Copyright Reason in Practice 2004

Reflective Responsibility: Using IS to Ascribe Collective Responsibility Bernd Carsten Stahl

While work in modern corporations tends to take place in groups or teams it is not quite clear which status these groups have. Are they genuine agents or are they simply collections of individuals? The question is important because the answer is often held to determine whether collectives can be viewed as subjects of responsibility. This paper raises the question of collective responsibility and focuses on the impact the use of information systems (IS) has on it. Starting with an analysis of the concept of responsibility it argues that the ascription of responsibility is admissible if it achieves certain social goals and it reviews the arguments concerning responsibility and collective subjects. Turning to information systems, it argues that their use can affect the process of ascribing responsibility both negatively and positively. It proposes the idea of ‘reflective responsibility’ and employs the reflective approach as a basis for using IS to support and enable the ascription of collective responsibility.

On the one hand, it is a trivial observation to state that management in modern companies is a collective endeavour. While individual managers, particularly the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) may hold a considerable amount of power over organisations, they have to rely on the support of a whole range of others, ranging from the members of the board to administrative workers. Collective activity is the nature of modern management and the fact that the ability to engage in teamwork is one of the most important requirements for young graduates entering on a management career serves to accentuate this point. On the other hand, collective activities give rise to many fundamental philosophical problems. Does it make sense at all to speak of collective activity or is this just a shorthand expression for the collection of individual activities? If one can speak of genuinely collective activity, can one speak of collective agency? Does this mean that we are looking at collective subjects? And if so, what is the legal and moral status of these collective subjects and what is their relationship with the individuals who constitute them? These are just some of the questions raised by reflecting on collective activities. They touch on some of the deepest problems philosophy has to deal with, concerning personality, self, agency, ethics, anthropology, and metaphysics. Another area that is at first sight as trivial as collective action in management is the use of computers, or, to use a more general term, of information and communication technology (ICT) in management. Again, it is trivial because it is widespread, because almost every manager has a computer on their desk and very few modern organisations could function without them. But again, this is an area that, at a second glance, looks more complex and raises philosophical problems. Are computers just value-neutral tools or do they have a material influence on the way business is done? Which assumptions and structures are ‘embedded and hidden’ in computers and how do they affect the workings of the economy and of individual organisations? Here the question of interest is: how do computers and ICT affect the way people collaborate and which, if any, conclusions should we draw from this? This paper aims to look at these two problems together. On the one hand it will look at collective agency. More specifically, it will ask: if managers act collectively does this mean that there is collective responsibility? As this question has been discussed widely in business ethics, the paper will focus on the impact the use of ICT has on collective responsibility. Briefly, the paper will argue that reflecting on the concept of responsibility enables us to construct a framework that allows for collective responsibility regardless of the philosophical problems this may produce. The use of ICT in this framework has ambiguous consequences in that it can strengthen as well as weaken the ascription of collective responsibility. To determine which conclusions can be drawn from this and how collective managerial responsibility can be facilitated by ICT, one should go back to a conceptual analysis of the term responsibility. By applying the term to itself, by asking

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Bernd Carsten Stahl what responsibility means from a responsible point of view, one can identify several aspects which are relevant to the functioning of responsibility ascriptions. These aspects can then be applied to ICT and offer a perspective for instituting or improving collective responsibility ascriptions.

1 The Concept of Responsibility To discuss the influence that information systems have on collective managerial responsibility we need to understand the term ‘responsibility’ itself. This section therefore starts with an overview of possible definitions and meanings of the concept and then discusses the objectives that responsibility is generally supposed to achieve. It will subsequently discuss the conditions that should be met for successful responsibility ascriptions and finally distil those aspects that most, if not all, ascriptions of responsibility have in common.

1.1 Definitions of Responsibility One of the problems of responsibility is that it has a large number of meanings that are not always commensurable. Responsibility can refer to causality, to being guilty, to moral relationships, and other facts or relationships. Furthermore, there is an inflation of the term which seems to be accompanied by a decrease in actual discharges of responsibilities. Any attempt to capture the meaning of responsibility will therefore remain incomplete. However, a good starting point for understanding what the term means is its etymology. Responsibility has something to do with being able and willing or obligated to answer.1 This same etymology also applies to non-English versions of the word such as the French responsabilité2 or the German Verantwortung.3 Responsibility thus has a close and intrinsic link with communication. Furthermore, responsibility not only relies upon communication to be transported but is created by communication. Responsibility can thus be defined as a social construct, more specifically as a construct of ascription or imputation.4 The point of this ascription is the creation of a relationship between a subject and an object. The subject is the carrier of responsibility, the being that is responsible. The object, on the other hand, is the thing, fact or behaviour for instance that the subject is responsible for. The social construction of responsibility in our context of managerial decision thus might be expressed in statements of the following form: ‘The manager is responsible for the increase in revenue’ where the manager is the subject and the increase in revenue is the object. This definition of responsibility as a social construct of ascription is reflected or implied in most theories of responsibility and will therefore be used in this paper. Note, however, that if a responsibility ascription is to be manageable and practically useful it must include more than just subject and object. Responsibility ascriptions are usually done in the presence of some kind of deciding authority and in the knowledge of rules governing the ascription. Furthermore there are many different types of responsibility ascriptions that may correspond but that may also contradict each other. A person can, for example, be a father who has responsibility for educating his children and at the same time responsibility for his work, which may lead to irreconcilable demands. A teacher can have legal responsibility to protect intellectual property and moral responsibility to allow students to access a wide variety of material, which again can lead to conflicts. This paper will ignore most of these aspects and concentrate on the impact of IS on the ascription of collective

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H D Lewis ‘The Non-Moral Notion of Collective Responsibility’ in P French (ed) Individual and Collective Responsibility - Massacre at My Lai pp 116 - 144 Schenkman Publishing Company, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1972 2 Alain Etchegoyen Le temps des responsables Paris, Editions Julliard 1993 3 Hans Lenk & Matthias Maring ‘Wer soll Verantwortung tragen? Probleme der Verantwortungsverteilung in komplexen (soziotechnischen-sozioökonomischen) Systemen’ in: K Bayertz (ed) Verantwortung: Prinzip oder Problem? pp 241 - 286 Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 4 Kurt Bayertz ‘Eine kurze Geschichte der Herkunft der Verantwortung’ in: K Bayertz (ed ) ibid pp 3 - 71; Herbert L A Hart ‘The Ascription of Responsibility and Rights’ in: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 1948 pp 171 - 194

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Reflective Responsibility managerial responsibility. In order to proceed with this discussion we will have to pay closer attention to the objectives of responsibility ascriptions, their conditions and then to the specific problems that arise when the subject is not an individual but a collective entity.

1.2 Objectives of Responsibility Ascriptions Ascribing responsibility for an object to a subject is a process that will often lead to results, that may require prior investigation or negotiations, and therefore can incur monetary or non-monetary costs. To understand responsibility ascriptions, one therefore has to ask why they are instituted in the first place. The literature offers several reasons. Generally, the subject is linked to the object in order to encourage or cause something to happen, which requires the ascription. One of the reasons for ascribing responsibility, possibly the oldest one, is retribution. The subject is held responsible in order for retribution to take place. The biblical ‘an eye for an eye’ is a good example of this. The fact that the subject is responsible for the object is the moral basis for inflicting the same sort of condition on the subject itself.5 If making retribution legitimate is the aim of responsibility then one needs to ask what purpose retribution has. Possible answers include satisfying the desire for revenge, setting right a metaphysical imbalance because of some injustice, or, more in line with most other modern responsibility ascriptions, trying to improve the world by offering deterrence.6 This leads us to other rationales for responsibility which can be found more frequently today, namely the ascription of sanctions with the purpose of improving our circumstances. Responsibility, according to these ideas, serves as a basis for sanctions, whereby the sanctions themselves can be positive or negative. In the case of the manager who is responsible for the increase in revenue, the sanction might be a bonus or a promotion. In the case where a negative event is the object of ascription, the sanctions tend to be negative. The typical example for this kind is that of legal responsibility where the accused is the subject. He is accused of a punishable act, say a theft, and the sanction will be a fine or a prison term. The purpose of such a sanction is usually to deter people from stealing. The type of sanction varies widely and depends on the type of responsibility. Legal responsibility will lead to legal sanctions, moral responsibility may lead to blame, role responsibility will be linked to sanctions defined by the role. It is important to note that all of these are supposed to lead to change in individual and collective behaviour and that they therefore imply a vision of the way we want to shape our collective existence. Furthermore, all responsibility ascriptions affect in some way or other what we are supposed to do, what we can do; they affect rights and obligations, and they can severely change our freedom to act. All responsibility ascriptions therefore have a moral side in the sense that they affect our moral rights and obligations.

1.3 Key Characteristics of Responsibility The brief overview of responsibility to this point has shown that the concept is complex and has many aspects that are not always compatible. Nevertheless, taking the definitions and objectives of responsibility into account should allow us to define some features that are characteristics of most, if not all, responsibility ascriptions. A closer reading of the literature on responsibility shows that three features emerge as common to different theories. These are: openness, an affinity to action, and a teleological orientation. The characteristics will be important to answer the question later on how information systems can be used to facilitate ascriptions of collective managerial responsibility. Openness of responsibility refers to the content of the concept as well as to the outcomes of the ascription process. Responsibility ascriptions are open because, according to their nature as social constructs, they cannot be predicted comprehensively. Whenever we begin to discuss question of ascribing responsibility, the potential range of views and standpoints that will lead to an eventual

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Paul Fauconnet ‘La responsabilité: étude de sociologie’ in: M Neuberg La responsabilité - questions philosophiques pp 141 - 152 Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1997 6 Peter A French Responsibility Matters University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 1992

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Bernd Carsten Stahl outcome render it impossible to know in advance how it will end. That means that the object of responsibility may change during the ascription as well as the type of responsibility. An initial ascription in our example might be the responsibility of the board of managers for a decrease in profits. This might be initiated as a moral responsibility with the aim of imputing blame on the board. During the ascription, which in most cases will encompass the collection of facts, it may turn out that irregular activities occurred and the ascription may result in the legal ascription of responsibility for fraud. Accordingly, not only the content but also the outcome is open.7 While responsibility discourses may be started by a particular interest group or an individual with the aim of imputing specific sanctions to a specific subject, it is impossible to say whether the outcome will reflect this initial intention. The characteristic of openness is thus one of the great differences that distinguish responsibility as a means of realising morality from deontological moralities which aim to establish a clear relationship between action and consequence. Responsibility’s openness makes it a procedural rather than a material approach to morality. The second characteristic is affinity to action. The aim of imputing sanction in order to change our collective circumstances requires responsibility to have practical significance. This is why, regardless of type, responsibility ascriptions aim to affect social reality and individual behavirour. This is why it has been called a behaviouristic concept.8 The most visible and most immediate aspect of this is the sanctions that responsibility is usually linked to. When we impute legal responsibility to a criminal then this can lead to fines, to prison sentences, all of which affects the criminal’s freedom. Similarly, when we ascribe responsibility for a good performance to the managers of a branch of a company, then this may lead to promotions or bonuses and thus to a material change. While in practice one can also find examples of the opposite, of responsibility ascriptions that are meant to deflect any real changes, these are not representative of the concept. In fact, it can be argued that this apparent affinity to action is one of the reasons why responsibility as a moral concept has been rather successful over the last 150 years, in contrast to other approaches to morality such as religious morality, which are sometimes less immediate in their impact. A teleological orientation – a concentration on consequences - is the last characteristic of responsibility and results from the first two characteristics. As in the case of openness, this refers to the content of the ascription as well as its results. Consequentialism with regard to the content of the ascription means that responsibility ascriptions tend to be based on consequences, on observable results. While intentions can play a role in these ascriptions - prison sentences for shooting a person tend to differ vastly depending on whether it was done by accident, in a rage, or for money - these intentions need to be observable or inferable in some way. The results of responsibility are consequentialist because they depend on manifest changes in the environment. Responsibility aims at producing consequences. It does not seek to alter intentions or create insight or anything else unless they directly affect what people do. The teleology of responsibility means that it aims to create or improve the ‘good life’ of the community, even though there is no general way of determining what this ‘good life’ means and how it can be achieved. Determining this is part of the process of ascription and it is another sign of the openness and procedural nature of responsibility that it cannot be known in advance.

1.4 Conditions of Responsibility Having discussed the concept of responsibility and having arrived at a working understanding of responsibility and its main characteristics we need to look finally at its conditions before we can proceed to the question of collective subjects. We need to be aware of the conditions of responsibility because they determine largely who or what can be a subject. Traditionally, the subject of moral philosophy and therefore the subject of responsibility used to be the individual human being. The conditions of responsibility thus reflect the characteristics that human beings are supposed to have in order to be able to function as moral subjects of responsibility.

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Hartmut Kreikebaum Grundlagen der Unternehmensethik Schaeffer-Poeschel, Stuttgart 1996 John Staddon ‘On Responsibility in Science and Law’ in: E Paul, F Miller & J Paul Responsibility pp 146 174 Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al 1999 8

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Reflective Responsibility The first condition that is usually found in the literature is that of causality.9 There must be a causal relationship between subject and object. In the most straightforward case, the subject must have directly caused the object in order to be responsible. The criminal must have caused the damage in order to be sentenced.10 In many cases causal links may be hard to prove and then the usual condition of responsibility is that the subject should at least have been able to avoid the object, which can be seen as a sort of indirect causality.11 This condition of causality is convincing on a superficial level but it raises a number of philosophical problems. First of all, we know since Hume that causality cannot be observed and its status is not clear. Is causality a natural fact or is it a category of reason? Fortunately, in most real responsibility ascriptions this sort of fundamental problem is not decisive since most of the participants can agree on some sort of common-sense notion of causality. Nevertheless, causality is problematic because it comes in different degrees and nuances,12 and it is hard to determine the point from which onward responsibility can be ascribed. Hitler’s parents, for example, had an important causal influence on his existence, but it would be hard to ascribe responsibility for the Second World War to them. Then there is the problem of perception, which arises when the subject may have a causal influence on the object from an external observer’s position but does not see this himself.13 An example might be management of big companies who are sometimes ascribed responsibility for things they could arguably affect but do not regard as their job. Shell’s dealing with the Brent Spar oil rig might serve as an example. Another problem is that of doing and omitting. Are we responsible for omissions, and if so, is it the same kind of responsibility?14 In addition to being a part of the causal chain that leads to the ascription, the subject is also usually required to have played this role willingly, which means that the subject must have been able in some sense to avoid the object. Put negatively, the subject must not be ignorant of the object and it must not be forced to play its role in the events.15 Again this is a condition that has common sense plausibility but gives rise to fundamental philosophical problems from freedom of will and freedom of action to anthropological questions. Causality and freedom combined are conditions of responsibility because responsibility ascriptions are acceptable only if the subject had considerable influence on the object. What counts as considerable influence is not clear, however. This implies the next condition, that of power. Power in this context usually means that the subject brought about the causal chain that caused the object or that the subject could at least have influenced causality so as to avoid the object. ‘You cannot be held responsible for something over which you held no control.’16 Power is also a measure of the amount of responsibility and consequently sanctions that are ascribed to the subject. As a general rule, the more power the subject has, the higher the responsibility, and consequently, the stronger the sanctions will be. Finally, there is a group of conditions of responsibility that refer to the subject itself. These are conditions that are supposed to make sure that the subject can take advantage of the above conditions. Also, they rule out other subjects for whom the above conditions may be true but who, according to our general convictions, are not proper subjects, such as children or the mentally disabled. Among this group of conditions related to the nature of the subject and its personal qualities we find the possession of emotions, intentionality, knowledge, reason, and certain attributes of personality. On the one hand it is believed that only subjects that fulfil these conditions

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Richard T De George Business Ethics 5th edition Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 1999 Hans Jonas Das Prinzip Verantwortung Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a M 1984 11 John Ladd Bhopal ‘Moralische Verantwortung, normalen Katastrophen und Bürgertugend’ in: H Lenk & M Maring Wirtschaft und Ethik pp 285-300 Reclam, Stuttgart 1992 12 Alvin I Goldman ‘Why Citizens Should Vote: A Causal Responsibility Approach’ in: E Paul, F Miller & J Paul Responsibility pp 201 - 217 Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al 1999 13 Dieter Birnbacher ‘Grenzen der Verantwortung’ in: K Bayertz (ed) op cit pp 143 - 183 14 Dieter Birnbacher Tun und Unterlassen Reclam, Stuttgart 1995 15 John M Fischer ‘Recent Work on Moral Responsibility’ Ethics 110 (October 1999) Number 1 pp 93 139; Jean-Jacques Wunenburger Questions d’éthique PUF 1993 16 John Staddon op cit 10

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Bernd Carsten Stahl are capable of discharging responsibility and on the other hand, these conditions are necessary to make sure that the social utility of the ascription can be realised. It is hard to deter a subject lacking emotions from doing something; a subject lacking some aspects of personality may not be able to act and exert power.

2 Collective Managerial Responsibility Looking at the above brief summary of conditions of responsibility it is plain that the concept refers to the individual human being, the adult rational person. This is presumably so because the individual is the traditional subject of moral philosophy and responsibility carries a moral meaning. In this section we will discuss why the concept might be extended to collective entities, what collective responsibility means, which problems it faces and finally, what the relationship between individual and collective responsibility might be. For this purpose we will now concentrate on the application of managerial responsibility.

2.1 Reasons for Collective Responsibility The main reason for collective responsibility is that the classical subject, the individual human being, no longer fulfils the conditions of responsibility. Let us look at a manager as an example. The best example is probably the manager with the biggest burden of responsibility and that is the highest-ranked manager, typically the CEO of a company. The CEO lacks in most cases the necessary conditions of responsibility. She will usually not have the causal importance, the knowledge, the freedom, or the power to qualify for responsibility. Even though the CEO is presumably the most powerful, best informed and most important member of the managerial team, she quickly reaches her limits when confronted with the complexities of steering a large company. To be able to discharge responsibilities at all she requires extensive help from other managers and support staff. Only then can she decide which developments are relevant, which information is important, which actions should be taken and how they can be carried out. However, at every step she requires help from a host of others. When something goes wrong it is therefore hard to determine who is at fault, who should be called responsible and thus should be sanctioned. While this is true for the highest-ranking member of a hierarchy, it applies also to lower-ranking mangers whose power, information, and involvement will make it even harder for them to accept responsibility. The answer to these problems of responsibility can be either to discard the whole notion as no longer helpful or to modify it substantially, so that it fits our changing situation. Given the importance of the term for as a means of communicating matters of ethics and morality, this paper argues for the second approach. Modifying responsibility in this case then means admitting nonindividual entities as subjects. We thus argue that the failure of individuals to be able to live up to the demands of responsibility should pave the way for allowing collective responsibility.17

2.2 Types of Collective Responsibility Admitting collectives as subjects of responsibility may help us overcome some of the problems of the individual but it also opens up new problems. Among these is the question of the type of collective that can be a subject. The literature discusses a number of potential subjects which lead to further problems. Perhaps the most problematic type of collective responsibility is that of a group. An example might be a group of people witnessing an accident or a group of sports fans watching a

17 This paper is hardly the first one to argue for collective managerial responsibility. For a more detailed overview of the discussion see Peter A French ‘The Corporation as a Moral Person’ in: American Philosophical Quarterly (16: 3) July 1979 pp 207-215; Peter A French Responsibility Matters University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 1992; Patricia Werhane Persons, Rights, and Corporations Prentice-Hall Inc, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey1985; Larry May & Stacey Hoffman Stacey Collective Responsibility: Five Decades of Debate in Theoretical and Applied Ethics Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc, Savage, Maryland 1991

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Reflective Responsibility game. The people in the group may act (or omit to act) collectively but it is hard to see how they can be held collectively responsible.18 A group, to be responsible, thus needs some additional attribute to fulfil the conditions and thus be a subject of responsibility. This additional attribute is an internal structure that would allow it to act with something akin to intention. A responsible collective entity thus needs a structure that would allow it to act coherently.19 Fortunately, the type of collective we are interested in, namely collectives of managers or employees, escapes this problem by virtue of the fact that each person in the collective is a member of the employing organisation. Corporations and other organisations with explicit management functions can be seen as agents and the collectives that lead them can therefore be said to create this (collective) action. It is important to note that in the sphere of corporations and clearly defined organisations, collective responsibility is nothing new and the philosophical problems associated with it seem to be of secondary importance. It is, for example, established practice to regard corporations as subjects of legal responsibility. The relationship between the corporation as a moral subject and collective managerial responsibility is that they are similar and overlapping and that they are based on the agency of the subject. For agency to be plausible the collective should have something similar to intention, which is what French calls the ‘Corporate Internal Decision Structure’ (CID).20 This internal structure as well as the external appearance of intentionality and agency allow us to see collectives as subjects of action and consequentially of responsibility.

2.3 Problems of Collective Responsibility We have just argued that collectives such as managers in a corporation can be valid responsibility subjects because they act collectively and intentionally. Furthermore, this type of collective responsibility may overcome the problems of individual responsibility. A collective can know more and be more powerful and more rational than an individual.21 Where the individual fails in responsibility ascriptions, collectives may prevail. However, one should admit that collectives still raise problems when seen as subjects. The fundamental problem is that, according to many philosophers, moral philosophy and responsibility are concepts that refer exclusively to individuals. The term ‘collective responsibility’ is taken to be an oxymoron by many authors.22 Thus whether or not collectives are admissible is a question of metaphysics and anthropology. Another problem is the definition of collectives. While the board of directors of a large firm is easily recognised, the same is not always true for other collectives, even for collectives of managers. Do all the middle mangers of a company count? Or only the managers of one section? Do the collectives have to include members of different hierarchical structures? Finally, there is the most serious problem of collective responsibility, its relationship to individual responsibility.

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Virginia Held ‘Moral Responsibility and Collective Action’ in: P French (ed) Individual and Collective Responsibility - Massacre at My Lai pp 101-118 Schenkman Publishing Company, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1972 19 David Schmidtz ‘Taking responsibility’ in: D Schmidtz & Robert Goodin Social Welfare and Individual Responsibility Cambridge University Press, Cambridge/New York 1998; Kenneth Goodpaster & John B Matthews ‘Can a Corporation Have a Moral Conscience?’ Harvard Business Review (Jan - Feb 1982) pp 132 - 141 20 French 1992 op cit p 139 21 This argument presupposes that it is possible to speak of collective action. It assumes that collectives can draw upon the resources of their individual members and come to rational conclusions. The underlying idea is that of a Habermasian discourse which should combine the individuals’ viewpoints to find the most acceptable solution. 22 cf Walther Ch Zimmerli ‘Der neueste Angriff auf das Individuum’ in: Ethik und Sozialwissenschaften 5 (1994) 1 pp 182ff; Alain Etchegoyen La vraie morale se moque de la morale - Être responsable Editions du seuil, Paris 1999; Manuel Velasquez ‘Why Corporations Are Not Morally Responsible for Anything They Do’ in: L May & S Hoffman (eds ) Collective Responsibility: Five Decades of Debate in Theoretical and Applied Ethics pp 111 - 131 Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc, Savage, Maryland 1991

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Bernd Carsten Stahl

2.4 The Relationship of Individual and Collective Responsibility So far it has been argued that collective managerial responsibility may be a useful concept. This leaves open the question, however, of what happens to individual responsibility. If we argue, for example, that the board of directors is responsible, what does this mean for the responsibility of the individual members of the board? One criticism of this idea is therefore that collective responsibility is likely to hinder the ascription of individual responsibility, that it will be used to excuse individuals. The distribution of responsibility between the collective and the individuals constituting it is therefore a fundamental problem. There are several theoretical models according to which this distribution can be organised. On one view every member is held responsible in full for everything that the collective is responsible for. The other extreme is that only the collective is responsible and none of the responsibility finds its way through to the individuals. Finally, in the middle ground, collective responsibility leads to some kind of mediated responsibility for the individuals.23 It is impossible to discuss in detail how this relationship between individual and collective responsibility should be handled. One would have to look at each specific case and consider not only the subject but also the object, the normative background, the context and the type of responsibility. Essentially, the question of distribution of responsibility between individual and collective must be part of the ascription process and, as we have seen, the openness of responsibility precludes us from determining the details of an ascription in advance. Suffice it to say that collective and individual responsibility are not contradictory but can work in concert to achieve the goal of the ascription.

3 Information Systems and Collective Responsibility We now have a quite detailed account of the concept of responsibility and the questions that admitting collectives as subjects entail. This section will discuss the impact of information systems (IS) on collective managerial subjects. For this purpose the section will start out with a brief definition of the concept of IS and will then proceed to discuss their strengths and weaknesses in relation to collective managerial responsibility.

3.1 The Concept of Information Systems Businesses and all organisations need to process large amounts of information to achieve their goals. To do so they employ IS which, in the most general use of the term, is something that allows the organisation to meet its information and information processing needs. An IS could be a piece of paper and a reliable employee. Nowadays, however, most organisations employ information and communication technology (ICT). When we speak of IS here we therefore refer to computers, networks, and other means of processing information. However, an IS always consists of more than just technology. It can usefully be defined as a socio-technical system or as ‘an amalgam of hardware, software, procedures and activities’.24 In modern organisations IS are ubiquitous and of central importance to the way they operate. Most office workers today have a monitor or a PC on the desk. Production is often done with the help of information systems and the different parts of the company are linked by IS. For management they are important because they facilitate communication with employees, customers, and suppliers. Managers retrieve the information they need from IS and coordinate and control their areas with the use of IS. Finally, IS have become a driving force for innovation and change, they shape how organisations function and business is done. Many of the current fashions from enterprise resource

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David Cooper ‘Responsibility and the ‘System’ ‘ in P French (ed) Individual and Collective Responsibility Massacre at My Lai pp 81 - 100 Schenkman Publishing Company, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1972 24 Kalle Lyytinen & Rudy Hirschheim ‘Information Systems as Rational Discourse: an Application of Habermas Theory of Communicative Action’ in: Scandinavian Journal of Management 4:1/2, 1988 pp 19 - 30

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Reflective Responsibility planning to supply chain management to total quality management and others are possible only through the use of IS. Briefly, IS are central to what most managers do and they have an irreplaceable position in the work of managers.

3.2 Positive Contributions of IS to Collective Responsibility In order to decide how IS can be helpful or exert a positive influence on collective responsibility ascriptions we will take two approaches. One is to look at the concept of responsibility itself, the other can be developed from the conditions of responsibility and the problems that individuals encounter when trying to fulfil them. How does the concept of responsibility help us here? We earlier defined responsibility as the social construct of ascription. Responsibility is based upon communication and here IS, because they are based on information and communication technology, can have a positive influence. IS may allow ascription by virtue of the ease of communication they facilitate. Furthermore, IS can help create the collective entities that are supposed to act as subjects. Virtual groups or organisations can be interpreted as an example of how this might be possible. Organisations set up virtual groups to create teams independent of their geographical locations, which are set a task and collaborate, possibly without ever meeting face to face. While this idea is complicated and this paper cannot give a well-founded judgement on the reality of such virtual entities, the aim is clearly to create collective agents through the use of IS. If this works, then it is plausible to assume that the virtual agents could also be virtual responsibility subjects. While IS can thus be constitutive of collective subjects, they can also help them overcome the problems posed by the conditions of responsibility. IS increase the reach and possibilities of control by management and thus facilitate greater power and more specific influence on causal chains. They also allow the collection and use of more data, thereby overcoming the problem of a lack of knowledge that subjects face. Information systems can be designed in such a way as to allow wideranging access and, if used in this way, they can be an expression of the openness of responsibility. By allowing a large number of affected parties in responsibility ascription to participate in the process of ascribing, the entire process can become more viable because of a maximal knowledge base and more acceptable because important stakeholders are not excluded. In practice one usually finds different information systems which address parts of these tasks. Enterprise resource planning systems (ERP) are systems that attempt to model the entire organisation and allow real-time access to all critical data. This can be seen as an example of knowledge maximisation. A similar example are knowledge management systems which can support the ‘organisational memory’ of organisations and thereby help constituting collective subjects. Organisational intranets or discussion boards can be used as platforms for discourses which allow the creation of collective wills and corporate identity. Internet discussion forums can be used to include external stakeholders and facilitate exchange of opinions with relevant groups who are not part of the collective subject. The positive side is thus that IS can help create collective subjects and support them in their role by helping them meet the conditions of ascriptions.

3.3 Negative Contributions of IS to Collective Responsibility The aspects of IS that can serve to support of collective responsibility can also undermine it. Using IS can distort the identity of the collective subject in question. While the board of directors may be an obvious enough collective entity to warrant collective responsibility, the same may not be true for collectives that come into being for only specific projects. The virtual group may not be a subject because its existence is limited to a specific task and the members may not feel any kind of obligation to one another. Also, frequently shifting collectives will find it hard to meet the conditions because they do not think ahead beyond their current task and they are by definition not interested in information unless it concerns the task. Information systems may in fact be used to dilute responsibility by shifting blame to virtual members who are not there to defend themselves. With regards to communication, information systems have the potential not only to increase the base of participants but also to exclude participants. Moreover, information systems have the Philosophy of Management Volume 4 Number 1 2004 © Copyright Reason in Practice 2004

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Bernd Carsten Stahl potential to skew communication through implicit assumptions. For example, most current IS rely heavily on textual information which, for the purposes of responsibility ascription may not always be of central importance. In face-to-face situations we have access to a wealth of information, mostly visual, that allow us to judge our interlocutor. The non-verbal part of communication, such as body language, is of high importance but it is often not captured by IS. Similarly, IS may have negative effects on the conditions of responsibility. The increase in available data and information can obscure or hide the knowledge that a subject requires. Information overload can effectively paralyse subjects, be they individual or collective. But even if IS produce the type and amount of information intended this may not help in overcoming a lack of knowledge. IS contain algorithms and programs that the user frequently does not know and cannot influence. The user thus frequently relies on information without knowing how it has been created. It is possible that the most important aspect of a given situation may have been simply blended out, because it was overlooked during the systems requirement phase of the IS development process. A typical example of this is the moral considerations in systems design. The individuals who design a system follow their technical specifications but may not be aware of the meaning of data. A new IS may lead to changes in organisational processes and affect power distribution. This can be of high importance for responsibility ascriptions and also for the success of the system. However, such redistribution of power and the resulting change in moral rights and obligations is rarely expressly reflected upon.

4 Using IS in Collective Responsibility Where does all of this leave us? We have argued that responsibility is a useful construct to transport normative content in the business world. The social construct of ascription, which is our definition of responsibility, relies on several conditions that individuals find it difficult to fulfil. To overcome this it was suggested that we admit collective entities as subjects and we discussed the influence which the use of information systems has on these collective subjects. The impact of IS was seen to be ambivalent, with potential for helping and hindering collective responsibility. Is there a practical use to this argument? By taking into account the issues raised so far, it should be possible to use information systems in a way that enables and improves the ascription of collective responsibility. This, in turn, should improve not only the organisation’s normative validity, but also its viability in economic terms. But how can the discussion help users or managers of information systems? The answer to this question can be found in the concept of responsibility itself as discussed in the first section. Let us recapitulate the important aspects of responsibility. It is a social construct that ascribes an object to a subject. Responsibility is a normative concept that is distinguished by its openness, its affinity to action, and its teleology, the aim to facilitate the good life. These aspects can be used to identify areas and aspects that allow improving responsibility ascriptions to collectives. In order to spell out in some more detail what this means it is useful to try to apply the concept to itself.

4.1 Consequences of Reflective Responsibility One way to reveal the (practical) implications of our account of responsibility is to apply the concept to itself. The self-application of concepts is an old philosophical tool that allows us to check concepts for consistency and validity. The best-known example of this is that of scepticism, understood as the doctrine that there is no truth, which, if applied to itself, leads to a selfcontradiction. If scepticism is true then it cannot be true. While self-application and self-reference are highly complex issues that can produce a host of dilemmas and paradoxes,25 they offer an approach that can help us clarify some of the implications of responsibility. 25

For a discussion of some of the problems that self-referentiality creates in mathematics and formal logical systems see Douglas Hofstadter Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid 20th anniversary edition Basic Books, New York 1999.

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Reflective Responsibility Reflective responsibility is an approach to defining responsibility from a responsible viewpoint. This requires that the concept be assessed in terms of its three main characteristics. Is a responsibility ascription open, does it lead to consequences, and does it aim at improving the good life? Furthermore, reflective responsibility takes the normative aspect seriously and considers what should be done to ensure the validity of the main characteristics. Detailed discussion of this reflective approach to responsibility is not possible here.26 However, we can briefly summarise the results of the discussion which will then allow us to answer the question of how collective responsibility can be conceived. The reflective application of the concept of responsibility produces consequences in several respects. The first one is in the theoretical sphere. If ascriptions are to be open and viable then they have to be understandable and accessible to the involved parties. This means that the dimensions of the ascription are clear and that they are agreed upon by the parties involved. Furthermore, the nature of responsibility as a social construct should be clear as well as the purposes it serves. This allows us to answer what is perhaps the most important question about collective responsibility, namely whether it is admissible at all. Responsibility as a social construct aiming to improve social coexistence does not necessarily require individual human beings as subjects. If the objective of the construct can be achieved by imputing sanctions to a collective then there is no fundamental reason within this theory not to do so. The question of collective responsibility thus hinges on the consequences of the ascription, not on the metaphysical status of the subject. The next consequence of reflexivity refers to openness. How can responsibility be open to new perceptions and new participants? How can its result be kept open? Part of the answer is that the ascription relies on prudence. This is the old Aristotelian virtue of applying measured reason to given circumstances.27 Prudence and reason are thus central to responsibility ascription which, without them, turn into mindless algorithms which cannot do justice to the complexities of social situations. The aspect of openness also offers a direct hint as to the use of information systems in responsibility ascriptions. Viable ascriptions need to be open and thus IS have to support this openness. This allows managers and users to develop criteria for the suitability of systems. An information system that is supposed to support responsibility ascriptions must be transparent regarding the assumptions it is built on and it must facilitate the identification and discussion of the validity claims it carries. This is important for the constitution of the collective subject as well as for the process of ascription. The next consequences of reflexivity is realisability. A responsibility ascription that aims to fulfil the criteria must result in some sort of action or consequence. The question whether the intended consequences are achievable therefore needs to form part of the ascription process. Ascribing responsibility to subjects that cannot act or for objects they have no influence on is by this definition an infraction of the idea of reflexivity. In terms of IS and collective responsibility this means that the subject must have the internal structure that would allow it to act in a (quasi-) intentional manner. Information systems should support this, they need to be actionable and useful for steering and control purposes. Another consequence of reflexivity is that of accountability The terms ‘responsibility’ and ‘accountability’ are often used synonymously but here they have a slightly different meaning. Accountability here means that the norms and procedures that link subject and object are clear and transparent. Accountability is thus a precondition for the ascription of responsibility. Accountability contains the conditions of knowledge, causality, and normative acceptability of responsibility without being concerned about the process of ascription. Accountability is therefore a theoretical concept whereas responsibility has more of a practical nature. A subject can be accountable for an object but due to a lack of ascription never be held responsible for it. Information systems can be of great help in the area of accountability. They can provide the data and support the models that facilitate accountability. Again, it is in part a question of openness and

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For a detailed discussion of the idea of reflective responsibility see Bernd Carsten Stahl Responsible Management of Information Systems Idea Group, Hershey et al 2004. 27 Aristoteles Die Nikomachische Ethik Zürich & München, dtv/Artemis 1967

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Bernd Carsten Stahl transparency, whether information systems can fulfil this role. Are systems sufficiently flexible to allow the incorporation of unexpected models of accountability? Can they support the subjects and objects in question? These are highly important questions for collective responsibility. The last consequence of reflexivity of responsibility refers to institutions. So far, we have said little about the process of ascription. It should be clear, however, that these processes cannot always evolve spontaneously and without external support. To be successful there must be a supporting infrastructure and agents with experience in ascriptions. In short, there must be institutions of responsibility. These can range from formal institutions as we find them in the area of legal responsibility to informal ones which are more prevalent in moral responsibility. These institutions need to help identify subjects and objects, they need to contain rules of accountability and of sanctions. They also need to provide avenues for the process of ascription itself. Finally, they have to make sure that the characteristics are realised, that responsibility can be open, lead to action and achieve the good life. Again, there is a link to information systems here. For information systems to be conducive to responsibility there need to be institutions which control and supervise their design. These institutions could be standards, industry agreements or legal frameworks for instance. The individual user as well as most smaller collectives are generally not able to understand information systems in sufficient depth to ensure their usefulness and usability. Institutions can help overcome this problem.

5 Conclusion This paper has argued that collective responsibility in organisations is possible and useful and that computers and IS can support the ascription of responsibility to collectives. It has tried to spell out the rules which should govern how information systems are developed and used to make them conducive to collective responsibility. Due to the complexity of the topic and the openness of the concept of responsibility the paper cannot give a conclusive answer to how information systems can support collective responsibility. To do this one would have to look at each specific case on a case by case basis and take into account other aspects such as the object, the underlying norms, the type of responsibility and whether it points to the future or the past. However, this paper has given some indications for the use of information systems in collective responsibility ascriptions. It has shown that the concept of responsibility itself supplies us with hints on how to use them and what to consider. Furthermore, the reflective application of the concept allows us to identify conclusions to be drawn and directions to be taken. Finally, it has made clear that the use of information systems in the matter of collective responsibility is itself an object of responsibility that has to be accepted by individuals as well as collectives and society. If all accept this responsibility then collective responsibility stands a good chance of living up to its expectations, of being open and of leading to actions which help achieve the good life. Bernd Carsten Stahl

Bernd Carsten Stahl is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Computer Sciences and Engineering and a Research Associate at the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility of De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. His field of research comprises philosophical - more specifically, normative - questions arising from the use of information and communication technology. His main focus is on the notion of responsibility. He researches the application of such normative questions in business organisations, but also educational and governmental institutions. His other area of interest is the epistemological questions posed by Information Systems research. Bernd Stahl has published over thirty papers in journals, books, and conference proceedings. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Technology and Human Interaction. His thoughts concerning reflective responsibility have been published in Responsible Management of Information Systems (Idea Group Publishing 2004). Email [email protected]

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