5.4 Types of responsibility
Responsibility requires attribution to a specific responsible person or group of people. More generally, one could also speak of actors instead of persons. We have already seen that the three question words "Who?", "For what?" and "Towards whom?" are necessary for the attribution of responsibility. We therefore need a subject (who), an object (for what) and an authority (towards whom) in order to clarify the question of responsibility in a situation. In addition, the reason (why) is very important. This is not least to clarify whether we are dealing with moral or ethical or legal responsibility. Based on these relationships and the basic dialogue structure concerning responsibility outlined above, it becomes clear that responsibility is a formal notion. However, it is by no means uniform and can be filled with different content in different contexts. Therefore misunderstandings and conflicts can quickly arise in the discussion about specific responsibilities. It is hence important and helpful to be able to distinguish between different types of responsibility. The following list explains some of the most important types of responsibility. See also Lenk[1][2] and Heidbrink[3] for more details.
Legal liability
Legal liability is a more or less concretely enforceable sanction for misconduct. This responsibility should be objectivised and satisfy legal criteria of guilt.
For example, the management of a raw materials company would be held legally responsible if it was proven to have deliberately violated the environmental laws of a country in which it mines raw materials. This would be sanctioned by a court.
Responsibility for a role or for a task
In a sociological sense, a role refers to the expectations of and demands on a person's behaviour that are linked to their social position.[4] A person is therefore responsible for fulfilling the expectations of their role or task - for example with regard to their professional position.
A mining professional is responsible for their role or tasks. For example, they are expected to fulfil certain duties of care or, in simpler terms, to fulfil their professional duties correctly and in a timely manner. In addition, further duties may arise from the professional position. These may include representing the company in public or certain duties of loyalty to the line manager and the employer.
At the same time, a person can also have several roles, which can be interwoven in complex ways depending on their position in society and in their professional field. It is not uncommon for the different expectations of the respective roles to collide.
Consider, for example, role conflicts that can arise when expectations from the private and family sphere collide with expectations from the professional sphere.
In the professional context in particular, role responsibility is by its very nature primarily formally imposed, i.e. linked to the position in the organisation. As such, this responsibility is usually initially ethically and morally neutral. It is about fulfilling the assigned exercises and being accountable to one's superiors in this sense. Nevertheless, an initially non-moral role responsibility can also become indirectly morally relevant in the job.[5]
So, if a mining engineer criminally manipulates an environmental report on the instructions of her superior, knowing fully well what she is doing, she will be held both morally and legally accountable. After all, blind obedience to perform exercises to the satisfaction of the boss that contribute to the company pursuing immoral or even illegal purposes can hardly be justified by referring to the role as an employee. Hence, it can also not excused with reference to that.
Responsibility for actions
Responsibility for the consequences of actions focuses on the result of one's own actions. A direct and strong causal link is assumed here. This means that it is assumed that the occurrence of an event can be traced back to a previous action. A strong cause-and-effect relationship is therefore assumed between an event that has occurred and a previous action.
For example, if a mining engineer fails to comply with prescribed safety standards when instructing employees in order to save time and an accident occurs in the mine as a result, then this accident is a consequence of the engineer's action and he is responsible for it.
Depending on the authority and context of the justification, the responsibility to act can be interpreted both legally and morally and attributed accordingly.[6]
The concept of action can also be interpreted in a negative sense, i.e. with a view to non-action. This means that you are not only responsible for what you do, but also for what you omit to do. You are also responsible for omitting actions that are actually required. Suppose the occupational safety departement of a mining company fails to react to a hazard report. In that case, it has not taken necessary and required measures and must take responsibility for this omission.
It can therefore be seen that one can be held responsible for the consequences of both actions and omissions.
Moral responsibility
Universal moral responsibility is the most comprehensive and fundamental type of responsibility. It can also include the aforementioned legal responsibility as well as the responsibility for roles and actions. Or it can play into these. In principle, it cannot be delegated and is orientated towards very fundamental authorities to whom one is responsible.
Possible fundamental values on which moral responsibility is based include humanity, dignity or the preservation of human life.
An excavator operator resists her supervisor's order because she believes the order would violate indigenous people’s cultural rights. For example, if she were to work near places of worship. To justify this, she invokes human dignity, which applies to indigenous people as much as to any other human being. In this case, she accepts her personal moral responsibility.
Further reading: ICMM: Indigenous Peoples: Position Statement(2024, August 8)
Retrospective and prospective responsibility
The fact whether an event for which responsibility is to be taken lies in the past or in the future is concretised with the terms retrospective (looking back) or prospective (looking forward) responsibility.
As a rule, one thinks of retrospective responsibility when no other details are stated. This applies to the conventional responsibility for action. According to this, a past behaviour has led to a current event. You did something in the past for which you are responsible today.
A mining engineer caused a system crash in his company yesterday, leading to a loss of revenues today because the monitoring and control of fundamental processes in open-cast mining can no longer be controlled. The loss of turnover is due to the engineer's previous misconduct, for which he is responsible.
Prospective responsibility, on the in contrast, refers to the fulfilment of tasks. This type of responsibility can be thought of as care or precautionary measure.
The management of a mining company, for example, has the task of developing further mines for the responsible extraction of raw materials. Its responsibility and competence extends into the future. Exactly how these mines are to be developed must only be determined during the authorisation process. Prior to this, it can be left to the responsibility of the team or individual stakeholders.[7]
Positive and negative responsibility
The distinction between positive and negative responsibility can also be emphasised in connection with prospective responsibility. However, this distinction is not an exclusive attribute of prospective responsibility; it can also occur retrospectively and in conjunction with other types of responsibility.
Positive responsibility
Positive responsibility aims to bring about a desired state of affairs that is considered positive. Example: This would be the case, for example, if the biodiversity department were entrusted with the development of a modern, nature-friendly recultivation concept of an old mine.
Negative responsibility
Negative responsibility, on the contrary, is aimed at avoiding an undesired state that is considered negative.
This would be the case, for example, if the workers in the mine were given the responsibility not to damage neighbouring natural areas.
More generally, and in a more fundamental moral sense, it can be said that negative responsibility must not harm the well-being of a person or a community. Positive responsibility moreover aims to create or improve the well-being of a person or a community.[8]
Individual and collective responsibility
In its basic model, the concept of responsibility is an individual attribution of responsibility. It is assumed that a single person bears responsibility because an event is directly attributed to that person. The attribution of responsibility to groups is more problematic. Particularly in today's working world, which is based on the division of labour and teamwork, ways must be found to determine responsibilities that result from group behaviour. Joint responsibility cannot function in an arithmetical sense. This means that, for instance, responsibility for damage that has occurred cannot be mathematically divided among those responsible. This would end up confirming the well-known office joke "We share responsibility until there is none left!". Shared responsibility in a joint project should therefore not lead to a dilution effect.[9]
Even if, for example, a company is seen as a collective actor that can be held liable as a legal entity in the event of a fault. This is not possible in the case of moral misconduct. Here, responsibility always remains tied to the individuals, even if collective responsibility is attributed to the group due to collective misbehaviour.
To illustrate this with a drastic example: If two people jointly and equally commit a murder, are caught and convicted, then both receive the full sentence; it cannot be assumed that their respective prison sentences will be halved.
Concluding remarks on this learning unit
The aim of this learning unit was to shed light on the complexity and diversity of the concept of responsibility. Depending on the context and situation, the use of the term responsibility can have different connotations. This can quickly lead to misunderstandings or even exacerbate conflicts. For example, when a decision is made based on a group's understanding of its role that no longer seems comprehensible from the perspective of an individual's responsibility for action. Nevertheless, a basic understanding of the concept of responsibility enables a better assessment of problematic situations. This may lead to more rational judgements and decisions.
Bernd G. Lottermoser /
Matthias Schmidt (eds.)
with contributions of
Anna S. Hüncke, Nina Küpper and Sören E. Schuster
Publisher: UVG-Verlag
Year of first publication: 2024 (Work In Progress)
ISBN: 978-3-948709-26-6
Licence: Ethics in Mining Copyright © 2024 by Bernd G. Lottermoser/Matthias Schmidt is licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Deed, except where otherwise noted.
