A Conceptual Map of Responsibility and Accountability in Bureaucratic Organizations

Arthur Schafer A wink and a nod: a conceptual map of responsibility and accountability in bureaucratic organizations Abstract: The article provides a conceptual analysis of the ideals of responsibility and accountability. It asks and tries to answer such questions as: When is it legitimate to blame top officials of an organization for mistakes made by personnel below them in the bureaucratic hierarchy? When things go wrong in a large complex organization, such as the Canadian Armed Forces, who is responsible? When, if ever, is a plea of ignorance - "I just didn't know about the coverup" - a good excuse? The multiple ambiguities of the term "responsibility" are explored, and it is shown how a failure to appreciate this ambiguity can easily result in confusion and misunderstanding. Sommaire : Cette etude presence une analyse conceptuelle des ideaux de la responsabilite et de 1'obligation de rendre des comptes. Elle pose et tente de repondre aux questions suivantes : Quand est-il legitime de blamer les hauts dirigeants d'une organisation pour les erreurs commises par leurs subalternes ? Quand les choses vont mal dans une grande organisation complexe telle que les forces armees du Canada, qui est responsable ? Est-il jamais justifie de plaider 1'ignorance - « Je n'etais tout simplement pas au courant du camouflage » ? Cette etude insiste egalement sur 1'ambiguite du terme « responsabilite » et montre avec quelle facilite cette ambiguite peut occasionner la confusion et les malentendus. Elle montre egalement les consequences d'affirmer que quelqu'un a « provoque » un evenement ou a fortuitement contribue, par un geste ou une omission, a ce qu'il se realise. Le lecteur decouvrira en quoi la responsabilite et la moralite ne font pas toujours bon menage. Responsibility is a slippery and ambiguous concept, and accountability is scarcely less so. Thus, any discussion of the relationship between them promises to be a hard slog. All too often, when abstract ideas are permitted to dance exclusively with each other, they have a tendency to levitate into the stratosphere and there expire from oxygen deprivation. Fortunately, recent Canadian politics provides a rich store of illustrative The author is professor. Department of Philosophy, and director. Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics, University of Manitoba, <[email protected]>. He would like to thank the Journal's anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. CANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION / ADMINISTRATION PUBLIQUE DU CANADA VOLUME 42, NO. 1 (SPRING/PRINTEMPS), PP.5-25 6 ARTHUR SCHAFER material that should be helpful in understanding the connection between responsibility and accountability. The Somalia inquiry into wrongdoing in the Canadian Armed Forces and the Krever inquiry into the tainted-blood scandal provide a useful starting point for a discussion of who is responsible for what when things go wrong in a large bureaucratic organization. Certain features of both scandals, tainted blood and tainted military, will be examined in an effort to draw a conceptual map of responsibility and accountability, but rather more attention will be paid to wrongdoing in the military than to wrongdoing in Canada's blood system. It is a central objective of this paper to analyse the criteria that might reasonably be applied to bureacratic officials when it comes to the assignment of blame for things that go wrong - or praise, when things go right. There are important lessons to be learned from each of these bureaucratic disasters. Begin and Boyle Former federal minister of health, Monique Begin, received plaudits from editorial writers across Canada when she volunteered to take her "share of responsibility" for the health disaster of tainted blood. By contrast, Canada's former chief of defence staff General Jean Boyle was pilloried by these same editorial writers when he attempted to transfer responsibility to his subordinate officers for a putatively illegal coverup of military wrongdoing. What seemed obvious to so many editorial writers - that Ms. Begin's behaviour was morally praiseworthy, while General Boyle's behaviour was not - provides a useful point of departure for a conceptual analysis of the ideals of responsibility and accountability. For, as we shall see, reaction to the behaviour of these two leaders reveals how easy it is to leap hastily to conclusions about the responsibility and blameworthiness of public officials. The sentiments expressed by The Globe and Mail in a lead editorial entitled "A return to ministerial responsibility" were representative of both elite and popular opinion.1 The centrepiece of the editorial was an invidious comparison between the purportedly virtuous behaviour of the former health minister and the less commendable behaviour of the former military chief. "The question," according to the Globe editorialist, "is General Boyle's responsibility as the top officer in the armed forces, and his willingness to accept responsibility for what happened on his watch." What seemed to offend the Globe most was General Boyle's view that he was not blameworthy for a document-tampering coverup because of his claimed ignorance thereof. Almost as bad, from the editorialist's point of view, was the fact that Boyle excused his own ignorance by attributing it to the culpable failure of his subordinate officers, whose lack of "moral fibre" and "integrity" resulted in a failure to inform him of serious wrongdoing.2 ACCOUNTABILITY IN BUREAUCRATIC ORGANIZATIONS 7 Ms. Begin, by contrast, is enthusiastically praised by the Globe ("courageous," "inspiring") for declaring in an unsolicited letter to the Krever inquiry that, as the cabinet minister in charge of Canada's blood supply during the time-period when the problem of tainted blood originated, she should not be absolved of responsibility. The Globe admiringly reprints her declaration that "[j]ustice is offended if people at the top of government in bureaucratic structures are not held responsible for their actions, but employees at less senior levels of the hierarchy are. Moreover, public ethics requires that those at the top be accountable." From all this, the conclusion drawn by the Globe is that "the people at the top are ultimately responsible for the actions of all those under their authority," to which it adds, as coda, "especially in the military." This sentiment was echoed by editorial writers in virtually every Canadian city and was duly reflected also in the letters-to-the-editor columns of our provincial newspapers. Although there is an important connection between the concept a/accountability and that of responsibility, the terms are frequently conflated in a manner that produces more muddle than enlightenment As is often the case when complicated philosophical questions are the subject of public debate, subtleties, ambiguities and genuine difficulties were overlooked in the rush to praise Ms. Begin and condemn General Boyle. If the Globe editorial writers had read Ms. Begin's letter more attentively, for example, they might have noticed that far from willingly accepting personal responsibility (either in the causal or blameworthiness senses of the term "responsibility," as will be discussed below) Ms. Begin strenuously insists that neither she nor any other member of her department bears personal moral responsibility for the tragedy. Indeed, she insists - despite some contrary evidence - that her "department in general [is] blameless." She continues, in her letter, to absolve even those departmental officials warned by the Krever inquiry that they could be individually named as blameworthy for actions and omissions that contributed significantly to the tainted-blood scandal. To understand what is really at stake in this discussion, we need to articulate and analyse some important conceptual distinctions, in particular, the many different senses of the terms "responsibility" and "accountability." It will also be necessary to analyse carefully the propriety of allowing the plea of ignorance - "I didn't know" - to excuse public officials from blame when things go wrong within the organizations of which they are meant to be the leaders. 8 ARTHUR SCHAFER A conceptual map of "responsibility" As the foregoing discussion has illustrated, the term "responsibility" is multi-ambiguous, and this ambiguity can easily result in confusion and misunderstanding.3 Some of the main senses of the term "responsible" are as follows: 1. A person (P) has responsibilities = P has duties and obligations. 2. A person/thing (P/T) is responsible for the occurence of an event = P/T caused the event to happen. 3. A person (P) is judged to be a responsible person = P is dependable and reliable. 4. One person (P) is responsible to another person (Q) = P is accountable or answerable to Q. 5. One person (P) holds another person (Q) responsible for the occurrence of some event (E) = P believes that Q deserves praise or blame, reward or punishment, for E. Although this is a subject of much philosophical controversy, according to one standard view, we are warranted in saying that a person (P) deserves or merits praise or blame from another person (Q) for doing or failing to do something or other (X), if and only if several things hold true. It must be true 1. that P is responsible for X in the sense of having caused X; and 2. that P has a responsibility, in the sense of duty, with respect to the doing of X; and 3. that P is responsible, in the sense of accountable, to Q for the doing of X; and 4. that X is an event or state of affairs that is beneficial (good) or harmful (bad); and 5. that P has no adequate defence or excuse regarding X, such as non-culpable ignorance. This conceptual map becomes complex when we attempt to analyse in detail what it means to say of a person that he or she "caused" some event to happen or causally contributed through action or omission to the occurrence of the event.

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