ABSTRACT
University consortia want the sponsoring agency to give them the money, set the goal, and leave them alone so that they can take "full responsibility" for the operation of some facility or some program. Systems management has evolved a number of procedures to maintain the fiction that authority is equal to responsibility. It is a Solomon-like task to try to fix responsibility when a product or an effort is undergoing the rapid and interdependent changes so typical of advanced technologies. Responsibility is dispersed via a lengthy process of agreement, internalization, and dedication, and finally comes to fruition as part and parcel of the group effort. A project or functional manager's interpretation and perception of his "responsibility" will be affected by the control systems that are used. These are the control systems and techniques that receive the greatest emphasis in the engineering-management literature and in exhortations, both verbal and printed, to the technical manager.
