Paper - On Responsibility

This 1911 paper by John Hibben is the likely source of Rickover's principles on responsibility.

Key points:

• Responsibility can never be dissipated by diffusion

• Responsibility when shared has actually increased

• The head of an organization needs to devise ways of ensuring his responsibilities are being met by the people he shared it with

• A person may be held responsible for not getting in to the details or failing to see when his eyes are shut

• An irresponsible person is always defective in some respect

"Responsibility remains with us even though we may ask others to assume it; we share it with others, but our portion is the same; when we turn our backs on it, we find it still facing us; we flee from it, and however far it may be, we behold it is waiting for us at the journey's end."