Accountability Sinks — Martin Sustrik

Organizations create structures in which bad things can happen and no one is meaningfully accountable.

Classic examples from Dan Davies' The Unaccountability Machine:

440 ground squirrels arrived at Schiphol without proper papers. No one could forward or return them. The Department of Agriculture ordered them destroyed. Airport staff put 440 live rodents into an industrial shredder designed for day-old chicks. Later, KLM called the order unethical but said the employees had acted "formally correctly." The board expressed "sincere regret."
Airline gate attendant delivers bad news (bumped for frequent flyer). You want to complain to someone who can actually decide, but you are told it is "company policy." The human in front of you is only a mouthpiece for anonymous corporate processes. You cannot get angry at the person; the airline speaks as an amorphous entity while you must speak to a person.
Credit company card design only allowed 24 characters for names. Long names → applications rejected, no explanation, no one to complain to. A technical limitation was turned into an unaccountable process outcome.

The system presumes that the safeguard is individual conscience or "assessment mistake" on the 100th instance — which is neither psychologically plausible nor managerially realistic. People are trained to follow the process 99% of the time.

These structures allow organizations (and the people inside them) to produce grotesque or unfair results while diffusing responsibility so thoroughly that no one can be pinned down.

See its placement in the generalist reading list under Interpersonal/organizational understanding: a-reading-list-for-generalists-dylan-bowman.

The concept is central to navigating and contributing positively inside complex organizations.