Responsibility

Responsibility is frequently confused with blame. When harm appears, organisations search for the person who broke a rule, the supplier who signed the contract or the department whose name appears beside the target. Responsibility is broader. It concerns duties that arise from role, action, influence and relationship before a failure is reduced to one culprit.

Responsibility should also be separated from accountability and liability. Responsibility identifies what an actor ought to do or avoid. Accountability creates a relationship in which the actor must explain and may face correction or consequence. Liability is a legal determination under a particular jurisdiction.

An organisation can carry responsibility even where no court has imposed liability and no forum has yet required an account. The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights provide a practical structure.

Business enterprises should avoid infringing human rights and address adverse impacts with which they are involved. Their response differs according to whether they caused an impact, contributed to it or are directly linked to it through a business relationship. The categories do not exist to allocate moral labels; they help determine prevention, cessation, leverage and remedy.

Complex supply chains make responsibility easy to diffuse. A brand points to the factory, the factory to a labour agent, the agent to the worker and the buyer to market pressure. Yet purchasing price, lead time, order changes and cancellation practices can shape overtime, subcontracting and safety. Contractual distance does not erase the effects of commercial decisions.

Shared causation should produce differentiated responsibility, not collective escape.

The response after the 2013 Rana Plaza collapse illustrates the change in expectations. The Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh was a legally binding agreement between global brands and trade unions, with commitments concerning independent inspections, remediation and worker participation.

Whatever its limitations, the model rejected the idea that responsibility for building safety rested only with factory owners because brands did not own the premises. Responsibility also follows control over systems. An organisation that designs a risk model is responsible for its thresholds, data quality and appeal routes.

A scheme owner is responsible for claims its system permits, even when certificate holders publish them. A board is responsible for governance and incentives, not merely for receiving a sustainability report.

Delegation distributes tasks; it does not dissolve the duty to ensure they are performed. Benefit can matter without creating unlimited responsibility. An actor that benefits from low prices or weak enforcement may have greater reason to investigate and use leverage, particularly where its decisions reinforce the condition. But responsibility should remain proportionate to involvement and capacity.

Treating every connected actor as equally responsible obscures those with the greatest causal influence and decision authority.

Responsibility under uncertainty is often neglected. Managers may delay action because the evidence is incomplete or causation is shared. The appropriate response depends on severity, likelihood and reversibility. A serious risk can create a duty to investigate, prevent and protect before every factual dispute is resolved.

Precaution is not proof of guilt; it is recognition that waiting can transfer irreversible cost to others. Positive commitments also create responsibilities. A net-zero pledge requires decisions about capital expenditure, lobbying, procurement and remuneration that align with the pathway. A living-income commitment creates duties to examine purchasing practices, not only to fund training.

An organisation that publicly takes credit for an outcome assumes responsibility for the evidence, limitations and unintended effects of that claim. Responsibility needs role clarity.

The question is not only who owns the policy, but who controls the decision that creates the impact. Sustainability teams may advise, while buyers set prices, product teams choose materials, finance allocates capital and executives approve incentives. A responsibility map should follow decision rights and leverage rather than placing every duty in the function with 'sustainability' in its title.

For practitioners, responsibility becomes credible when it is translated into decisions, resources and response. State the duty, identify the actor with authority, specify what action is expected and define what happens when responsibilities overlap. The purpose is not to assign universal blame. It is to prevent complexity from becoming a reason that no one acts.

Practical application

Map significant impacts and commitments to the functions that cause, contribute to, control or can influence them. Include boards, commercial teams, suppliers, scheme owners and data providers. Define decision rights, escalation, resources and expected action for each relationship. Review contracts and incentives for conditions that undermine stated responsibilities.

Where roles overlap, establish a lead actor without implying that others are released. Track whether the duty changed the decision, not only whether an owner was named.

Why it matters

Sustainability harms often persist not because no actor is connected, but because every actor defines responsibility narrowly enough to place it elsewhere. Clear responsibility connects power and involvement to prevention, action and remedy.

Common misconception

Responsibility is often limited to legal ownership, direct control or the party that committed the final act. Commercial decisions, system design, contribution and leverage can create responsibilities beyond formal boundaries.

Connections

Due Diligence operationalises responsibility through risk identification and action. Accountability creates answerability and consequence. Remedy addresses harm already caused. Stakeholders and Rights-holders clarify to whom duties are owed, while Integrity tests whether incentives support them.

A question worth asking

Which sustainability impact is currently assigned to the team that reports it rather than to the function whose decisions create it?

Selected references

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. 2011. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. OECD. 2023. Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct. International Labour Organization. 2022. Tripartite Declaration of Principles concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy. Young, I. M. 2011. Responsibility for Justice.

Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. 2013. Agreement and Implementation Materials.