Some Notes on the Social Organization of Responsibility

This paper is intended as a preliminary contribution to the ongoing discussions in the Responsibility Theme of the DIRC project. The paper’s aim is to present some ideas from the point of view of Sociology, prompted by the claim that most computer system design fails to adequately understand and model both the notion and the distribution of responsibility within complex organisations. In accord with the TA ‘Making Ethnography Accessible ’ we will illustrate the approach using fieldwork material drawn from our ethnographic studies of complex organisations, in this case a multi-national bank as a perspicuous example of an organization expressly, manifestly, interested in issues of responsibility. 1. Introduction: ‘what’s i