More Decision Makers, Less Individual Accountability

  • Accountability tends to decline as the number of decision makers increases unless explicit mechanisms counteract it.
  • In small committees, members experience higher personal responsibility and clearer attribution of influence; in large committees, responsibility becomes diffuse and ambiguous.
  • Cognitive, normative, structural, and strategic mechanisms all explain how and why responsibility diffuses in larger groups.
  • Decision governance can counter diffusion by clarifying roles, documenting contributions, and maintaining visibility of individual reasoning.

Case Study: Two Committees, One Decision

A hypothetical medium-sized manufacturing firm, Advanced Machines Inc (AMI), is deciding which new product ideas to fund for the next fiscal year. Its research and development budget is limited, and leadership must choose among ten promising proposals.

In Scenario A, the decision is made by a small committee of five senior executives—the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Technology Officer, Head of Marketing, and Head of Operations. They meet several times over a month, review the proposals, debate their merits, and ultimately select three projects for funding. Each participant knows that the Chief Executive will brief the board on the outcome, and their names will be listed in the meeting minutes.

In Scenario B, AMI adopts a more participatory approach. The decision is assigned to a large committee of 40 managers from across departments, representing engineering, sales, finance, and manufacturing. The process is democratic: each member reviews summaries of the proposals and votes for their top three. The results are aggregated, and the three projects with the most votes are funded. Individual votes are not disclosed, and no member is explicitly responsible for the final choice.

After the decisions are made, both groups are asked how personally accountable they feel for the results. Members of the small committee report a strong sense of ownership—if a funded product fails, they believe they will need to explain their reasoning. Members of the large committee feel differently: while they care about the outcome, few believe they could be personally blamed or credited. The decision feels collective, even anonymous.

This contrast captures a consistent finding in academic research: as the number of decision makers grows, individual perceptions of accountability decline. The reasons are both psychological and structural.

How Group Size Influences Perceived Accountability

Accountability, in its basic sense, is the expectation that one must justify and take responsibility for decisions and their outcomes (Bovens, 2007). It depends on three conditions: (1) the ability to identify who made the decision, (2) the ability to evaluate their reasoning, and (3) the possibility of consequences. When decision-making becomes collective, each of these conditions weakens.

  • Reduced Identifiability: In small groups, everyone’s contribution is visible. Colleagues and superiors can easily link specific arguments, preferences, or votes to specific people. This identifiability sustains accountability: decision makers know their reasoning can be traced and evaluated. As group size increases, individual inputs blur into the collective output. The perception of being personally observed or evaluated diminishes, lowering accountability (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999).
  • Dilution of Causal Perception: Each member of a large group perceives their own causal impact on the outcome as smaller. When 40 people vote, one’s individual vote feels inconsequential. This weakens the psychological link between one’s actions and the decision’s outcome—a phenomenon well established in social psychology as the diffusion of responsibility (Darley & Latané, 1968).
  • Ambiguity of Attribution: As decision-making processes become complex, it becomes difficult to pinpoint who contributed to success or failure. Was it the engineer who supported a flawed prototype, or the marketing manager who oversold its potential? This ambiguity discourages personal ownership of decisions.
  • Lower Anticipation of Evaluation and Sanction: Accountability is sustained when individuals expect that others will evaluate their reasoning and impose consequences for poor judgment (Tetlock, 1992). In small committees, that expectation is high: everyone knows they may be questioned later. In large groups, post-decision evaluation is rare and diffuse, so the perceived need for justification fades.

The cumulative effect of these factors is a decline in perceived personal accountability as group size increases. The organization might believe it has achieved inclusivity, but the individuals involved often experience diminished responsibility.

Mechanisms Explaining Responsibility Diffusion

Researchers have proposed several mechanisms to explain why the perception of accountability decreases as group size increases. These mechanisms fall into four categories: cognitive, normative, structural, and strategic.

1. Cognitive Mechanisms

  • Reduced perceived causality: Individuals perceive their influence on group outcomes as marginal when many others are involved. In AMI’s large committee, a single vote seems negligible; in the small committee, each argument could shift the outcome. This aligns with findings from Bandura (1999) on moral disengagement and with experiments showing reduced intervention when responsibility is shared (Darley & Latané, 1968).
  • Social loafing: People tend to exert less effort when individual contributions are unobservable and rewards are shared (Latané, Williams & Harkins, 1979). Large groups encourage minimal participation because accountability cues—visibility, feedback, evaluation—are weak.
  • Moral disengagement: Group decision-making allows individuals to separate themselves psychologically from outcomes. Failures are attributed to “collective error” rather than personal oversight. This disengagement protects self-image but erodes responsibility (Bandura, 1999).

2. Normative Mechanisms

  • Pluralistic ignorance: Individuals interpret others’ inaction or silence as a signal that no response is needed. If no one takes responsibility, inaction becomes the perceived norm (Darley & Latané, 1970).
  • Conformity pressure: As groups grow, the desire for harmony outweighs personal conviction. Members conform to prevailing opinions, rationalizing that accountability lies with the group as a whole (Janis, 1982).
  • Diffused justification norms: Groups develop collective rationalizations—“we all agreed,” “everyone had a say”—which transfer moral weight from individuals to the collective, making personal defense unnecessary.

3. Structural Mechanisms

  • Fragmentation of decision processes: Large groups often divide work into subcommittees or stages. Each actor handles only part of the process, so no one feels responsible for the overall outcome (Bovens, 2007).
  • Anonymity of contribution: Formal voting systems or consensus mechanisms can obscure individual reasoning. Without public record of positions or justifications, accountability evaporates.
  • Hierarchical buffering: Layers of review—committees reporting to boards, boards to executives—create distance between decision and consequence. Each level assumes others will answer for outcomes (Hood, 2010).

4. Strategic Mechanisms

  • Blame avoidance: Decision makers sometimes prefer larger groups precisely because shared responsibility protects them from individual blame if outcomes fail (Weaver, 1986). A committee of 40 provides reputational cover that a committee of five does not.
  • Procedural camouflage: Complex procedures—consultations, votes, external reviews—allow participants to point to “the process” rather than personal judgment when explaining decisions (Hood, 2010).
  • Delegated ambiguity: Leaders may intentionally delegate decisions to collective bodies with unclear mandates to create plausible deniability (Kiewiet & McCubbins, 1991).

Lessons for Decision Governance

The relationship between group size and accountability is not inevitable; it is design-dependent. Effective decision governance can mitigate diffusion by:

  • Assigning explicit decision ownership within collective bodies.
  • Recording and publishing individual votes and rationales.
  • Ensuring post-decision evaluations that tie reasoning to outcomes.
  • Rotating leadership or spokesperson roles to maintain visibility.

In AMI’s case, introducing a transparent decision log and assigning a rotating committee chair could preserve individual accountability even in a large group. As organizations seek inclusivity and legitimacy through wider participation, they must remember that participation without accountability risks producing collective irresponsibility. The challenge is not merely to make decisions together, but to ensure that everyone involved remains answerable for the quality of those decisions.

Another View: More Decision Makers Does Not Always Mean Less Accountability

While most research emphasizes that accountability weakens as the number of decision makers grows, several studies introduce important qualifications. The relationship between group size and accountability is not purely negative; it depends on how groups are structured, the nature of the task, and the social context in which decisions occur.

First, group deliberation can strengthen accountability when decision procedures require members to justify their reasoning publicly. Lerner and Tetlock (1999) found that when individuals expect their arguments to be scrutinized by peers, they engage in more systematic and self-critical reasoning—a phenomenon known as pre-decisional accountability. Larger groups, if designed to foster open discussion rather than anonymous voting, can therefore generate greater self-awareness and responsibility.

Second, research in deliberative democracy and participatory governance challenges the idea that collective decision making dilutes responsibility. Mansbridge (1999) and Dryzek (2000) argue that collective deliberation can redistribute rather than erode accountability: members hold one another to reason-giving norms, creating mutual accountability rather than vertical, hierarchical control. In such settings, group size may enhance transparency and legitimacy, which in turn reinforce a collective form of accountability to the public or stakeholders.

Third, cultural and institutional context matters. Studies in East Asian and Scandinavian firms show that collective responsibility can be valued positively, as decisions are framed as shared obligations rather than individual burdens (Yamagishi, 1988; Czarniawska, 2008). Accountability in such contexts is relational and communal, not individualized.

Finally, empirical evidence from corporate boards suggests a nonlinear relationship between size and performance: while very large boards may suffer from diffusion, moderately sized ones (8–12 members) often provide better oversight than very small boards due to richer information exchange (Coles, Daniel, & Naveen, 2008).

In short, diffusion of accountability is not inevitable. When governance systems combine transparency, deliberation, and shared justification norms, expanding participation can strengthen rather than weaken accountability.

References

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