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Distribution of responsibility in socio-technical networks: the Promest caseNeelke Doorn a , Rob P.J.M. Raven b & Lambèr M.M. Royakkers ba Department of Technology, Policy & Management, DelftUniversity of Technology, Delft, The Netherlandsb Department of Technology Management, Eindhoven University ofTechnology, Eindhoven, The NetherlandsPublished online: 21 Mar 2011.

To cite this article: Neelke Doorn , Rob P.J.M. Raven & Lambèr M.M. Royakkers (2011) Distributionof responsibility in socio-technical networks: the Promest case, Technology Analysis & StrategicManagement, 23:4, 453-471, DOI: 10.1080/09537325.2011.558403

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Technology Analysis & Strategic ManagementVol. 23, No. 4, April 2011, 453–471

Distribution of responsibility insocio-technical networks: the Promest case

Neelke Doorna∗, Rob P.J.M. Ravenb and Lambèr M.M. Royakkersb

aDepartment of Technology, Policy & Management, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands;bDepartment of Technology Management, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

The aim of the present paper is to show how (informal) responsibility issues within the contextof a network are essentially related with the way networks are organised in order to pursue theirobjectives. We conceive of organisations as having at least three relevant dimensions: power,coordination and control. The case of the Dutch manure processing factory Promest is analysedin terms of these three dimensions. The analysis provides an illustration of how the dimensionsenable actors to discharge their responsibilities, thereby offering insight in responsibility issueswithin a group of actors and contributing to the prevention of the problem of many hands.

Keywords: responsibility; organisational structure; networks; problem of many hands;technology and innovation studies; socio-technical; agriculture

1. Introduction

The shift in corporate strategy, from vertical integration to strategic alliances, has developed handin hand with the evolution of organisational structure, from the vertically integrated firm to thenetwork organisation. The result has been the elimination of boundaries and a greater interac-tion among individuals and organisations. Accordingly fields like Innovation Studies and Scienceand Technology Studies have since the 1980s developed a range of conceptual tools and theo-ries to better understand relationships between networks and technological change. Approachessuch as actor–network theory (Latour 1987; Callon 1992), systems of innovation (Lundvall 1992;Malerba 2002; Hekkert et al. 2007) and more recently the multi-level perspective (Rip and Kemp1998; Geels 2002) all emphasise the importance of socio-technical networks for understandinginnovation. Agency is seen as distributed across networks rather than located within single organ-isations and technical change can only be understood from a system and network perspective.Also governance approaches that were derived from the above-mentioned analytical perspectivessuch as strategic niche management (Kemp, Schot, and Hoogma 1998; Raven 2005) and PROTEE(Hommels, Peters, and Bijker 2007) emphasise networks. They correctly see networks as cru-cial resources for innovation providing necessary knowledge, competencies, financial means andhuman resources that go beyond the ones available within traditional organisational boundaries.

∗Corresponding author. Email: N.Doorn@tudelft.nl

ISSN 0953-7325 print/ISSN 1465-3990 online© 2011 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/09537325.2011.558403http://www.informaworld.com

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On the negative side, however, fields such as Organisational Studies and Ethics of Technologyhave observed that it becomes increasingly difficult to monitor and relate individual actions tocollective outcomes and that there is disaggregation of moral and legal responsibility (Klijn 1997;Kilduff and Tsai 2003). The problem becomes increasingly critical with larger network settingssince these lack executives overseeing the whole enterprise (Daboub and Calton 2002). Addition-ally, networks involved in technological development face the problem that consequences oftenmaterialise during use, what makes them more difficult to foresee or connect causally to the actionsof one of the actor (Swierstra and Jelsma 2006). This so-called ‘problem of many hands’ becomesespecially urgent when things go wrong (Bovens 1998; Thompson 1980). For example, in a reviewof a hundred shipping accidents, Wagenaar and Groenewegen (1987, 596) conclude: ‘Accidentsappear to be the result of highly complex coincidences which could rarely be foreseen by the peopleinvolved. The unpredictability is due to the large number of causes and by the spread of the infor-mation over the participants.’ This was also the case with the ferry the Herald of Free Enterprisethat capsized on 6 March 1987, where 197 people died (Gibson 2002). Overcoming ‘the problemof many hands’requires attention for the distribution of responsibility (Van de Poel and Royakkers2011), since this can be a very powerful and persuasive tool in working out the nature and extentof moral accountability in networks, as well as telling participants the duties they can expect.

Hence, there is a need for better understanding relationships between organisational structuresin socio-technical networks and the way responsibilities are distributed. For that purpose we usethe case of the manure processing plant Promest in the Netherlands. In the Promest case theorganisational structure typically exhibits network features: the organisation is non-hierarchic,there are different actors involved with conflicting agendas and interests and decision makingtakes places through negotiation. The Promest factory was closed in 1994 after six years of pooroperation and the reasons for failure have been well investigated and documented (Bloemendaal1995; Krajenbrink 2005; Raven 2005). Our aim, however, is not to explain the Promest failurefrom its specific network design, nor do we want to explain the Promest failure from a lack of clearresponsibilities. Rather, with this article we want to contribute to Science and Technology Studies,and in particular those concerned with organisational questions, by exploring how organisationalstructures in socio-technical networks can explain the way responsibilities are distributed. Not onlycan this provide promising grounds for future research (and move beyond the single-case studyin this paper), but it also holds the potential to contribute to future design tools for socio-technicalnetworks to reduce potentially high responsibility and moral risks.

The article is structured as follows. The section following this introduction describes the con-ceptual framework and methodology used in the present paper. In this section the guiding researchquestion is formulated. Section 3 gives a brief description of the Promest case. Successively thenetwork is further analysed in terms of the actors involved and their agendas. In Section 5 the net-work is analysed in terms of the structural dimensions power, coordination and control. Expandingon the results found in Section 5, in Section 6 the structural dimensions are related to the distribu-tion of responsibility within the network, providing an answer to the research question formulatedin Section 2. In the last section conclusions are given.

2. Conceptual framework and methodology

Work on organisations presents organisational structure as something essentially mono-dimensional (by, e.g., an organisation chart), usually considered to be a ‘hierarchical’ structure,though it often, but only implicitly, considers a multiplicity of structured aspects: authority,communication, delegation, responsibility, control, decision-making, etc. However, organisations

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Figure 1. Three structural dimensions (caps) and the relevant activities (italic) of an organisational structure.

do not exhibit one single structural dimension, but they are instead multi-structured objects. Inparticular, we view organisational structure as having at least three relevant dimensions, basedon Grossi, Royyakkers, and Dignum (2007) and inspired by work on social and organisationtheory (cf. Ebers 1999; Giddens 1987; Hammer and Champy 1994; Horling and Lesser 2004;Morgenstern 1951; Podolny and Page 1998; Spector 2007): power, coordination, and control.These different dimensions can be conceived of as different cross-sections of or different ways tolook at a particular organisation. Each of the dimensions involves certain activities taking placebetween the actors in the organisations, which is graphically shown in Figure 1. These activities,which are called ‘organizational activities’, consist in ‘managing the interdependencies betweenthe activities’ (Decker and Lesser 1995) of the network. In other words they guarantee the network‘to act in an organized way’.

The organisational structure enables these activities to be carried out. Power relates to theability of actors to pursue their own objectives and to set their own agenda accordingly. Foran actor to have power over a second actor is to be able to impose actions that serve the firstactor’s interest. Other activities related to dimension power are lobbying, the delegation of tasksetc. Coordination is related with the flow of knowledge within the network. Typical activitiesbelonging to this dimension are informing and disseminating knowledge. Control relates to theability to have a backup in case of failure or violations of certain tasks. The corresponding activitiesindicate the appropriate action if some particular task is not carried out correctly (whether or notintentionally). This may be delegation of the task to some other agent or the means to enforce theoriginal actor to perform the task as yet. Although other dimensions can be identified as well, itis chosen to limit the present study to the three aforementioned dimensions.

With organisation conceived as a system of consciously coordinated power activities, powerand coordination relations constitute the organisational structure (Selznick 1948). In other words,in order to act as organisations, i.e. to realise their objectives, organisations need to attributeor delegate tasks to actors (power) according to specific plans (coordination) for the realisa-tions of these objectives (Grossi, Royyakkers, and Dignum 2007). In addition, every organisationcalls for a supervisory or monitoring activity to appropriately react to potential failure (Giddens1987). As such power, coordination and control are minimally required to adequately describeorganisational act.1

Given that the three dimensions each exhibit a different organisational structure, each of thedifferent network dimensions can be classified according to a particular organisational paradigm.

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We will use the division of multi-agent organisations as described in Horling and Lesser (2004).This classification has been chosen since it presents a rather fine-grained subdivision of severalorganisational paradigms, instead of the simple hierarchical-nonhierarchical distinction.Althoughthe descriptions are paradigmatic, and hence a reduction of the real-world complex organisations,the characteristics reveal some of the strengths and weaknesses of different network types, therebyoffering insight in the way the institutional design (in terms of its structural dimensions) enablesand constrains actors to discharge their responsibilities. Although Horling and Lesser distinguish10 different organisational paradigms, the focus within the present context will be on the followingthree: federation, congregation and coalition.2

The main thesis of this article consists in claiming that responsibility issues within the contextof a network are essentially related with the way networks are organised in order to pursuetheir objectives. In order to support this thesis, we try to link the organisational structure toresponsibility distributions. We focus on the following question: how are the three organisationaldimensions power, coordination and control related to the distribution of responsibilities within thenetwork?

In order to answer this question, the case of the manure processing factory Promest is analysedin terms of the three aforementioned relations. The analysis of responsibility in connection withthe structure of a network will show what notions of responsibilities can be meaningfully appliedto a given network structure.

The description of the Promest case builds heavily on the work of Raven (2005) and Geelsand Raven (2006). The original data were collected in the context of a 4-year Ph.D. project andfollowed a qualitative case study approach. Yin (1994) argues that the interpretation of data andadvocacy of an argument should come from multiple sources of evidence. In this case data havebeen collected from various heterogeneous sources including policy documents, research reports,scientific journals, conference proceedings, minutes and slides from meetings, newspapers. A sec-ond source of data was provided by 10 interviews with involved actors including policy actors,field experts and biogas plant operators. In addition to the data collected by Raven, additional pro-fessional publications were consulted for more specific information on the policy choices maderegarding the construction and closure of the plant. All data have been carefully cross-referencedand categorised into organisational dimensions and responsibilities.

3. The Promest case

Because of the growing societal concern about the environmental impact of intense agriculture,Dutch agriculture was confronted with increasing opposition in the early 1980s. This provoked areorientation in the world of agricultural interest organisation. Of all the problems surrounding theagricultural sector, the manure problem was the problem that gained by far most public attention.

In the southern part of the Netherlands, where the manure problem was most urgent, the aware-ness of the urgency of the manure problem came first. A steering committee called StuurgroepMestproblematiek Noord-Brabant, in 1984 established by several agricultural organisations andpublic authorities, considered large-scale manure processing the best strategy for reducing thelarge manure surplus. Fertiliser granules were the intended end product, which would be soldto foreign farmers. The promising business of manure processing attracted many companies thatwanted to take advantage of the large amounts of money that came available. In 1986 Promest B.V.(here onwards Promest) was established, in which agricultural organisations, chemical companiesand financial companies cooperated to construct a large demonstration plant for the processing of100,000 tons of manure annually. Construction started in 1987.Although struction costs were high

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(23 million guilders or ¤10 million) Promest expected to reduce costs through the constructionof larger plants and lower investment costs in the following years. When construction started in1987, the preparation for an upgrade of the plant had already started.

Promest experienced many technical difficulties, some of which could only be solved by meansof expensive remedies. Moreover, the granules leaving the factory were very unstable, if therewas a market for them at all (Bloemendaal 1995, 82). As a result of poor design choices andtechnical problems the overall plant performance was low. Nevertheless, the plan to upgrade theplant was carried through and in 1992, against advice by the operational staff of the plant, anupgraded plant was opened, which led to a processing capacity of 600,000 tons of manure peryear. The total investment costs increased to more than 100 million Dutch guilders (¤45 million) ofwhich 40% were investment grants. Technical problems continued, just as the problems with themanure supply and the production of the granules (Bloemendaal 1995, 85). Attempts to secure thecontinuous supply of manure and to cover the exploitation costs were forbidden by EC regulation.Eventually, the plant was shut down in 1994, less than two years after the upgrade. The upgradedplant had never operated at full capacity.

4. Network formation

Although the overall picture of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in the 1980s shows a shiftfrom a client ministry, solely oriented towards the agricultural interest, to a ministry of generaladministration (Frouws 1994; Wisserhof 2000, 176–177), and hence a changing agenda setting,the actual formation of the network and the relevant actors involved in the Promest case can beconsidered stable during the period of construction and operation of the plant (1986–1994). Therole the different actors fulfilled within the network remained more or less the same within thegiven time span.

Besides the Promest consortium itself, the four dominant actors in the Promest network werethe regional agricultural organisations (at the national level united in the Agricultural Board),the public authorities, the National Manure Bank and the farmers. The latter were not activelyinvolved in the design and operation of the plant. At some distance the European Communityand the General Inspection Service (in Dutch: Algemene Inspectie Dienst, AID) were involvedas well.

4.1. Promest consortium

In 1986 the Promest consortium was established as the first manure processing company(Bloemendaal 1995, 81). In the Promest consortium two regional agricultural organisations (NCBand LLTB) cooperated as well as two financial and several technical companies, such as chemicalprocessing companies, machinery suppliers in the cattle feeding industry and suppliers of dryingand separation machinery. These technical companies tried to apply their knowledge and equip-ment to the technology of manure processing, without having any experience in this specific field.Whereas research institutes, such as the Agricultural-Economic Institute (in Dutch: Landbouw-Economisch Instituut, LEI), showed that the manure processing would lead to an exploitationshortage of 30–40 Dutch guilders per ton of manure at minimum, most companies were overlyoptimistic about the costs. Some even predicted to be able to gain a net profit from the pro-cessing. Figure 2 shows a schematic picture of the Promest consortium. Together the partnersin this consortium established the private company Promest B.V. (equivalent to the English Ltdlegal form).

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Figure 2. Schematic picture of Promest consortium.

4.2. Agricultural organisations

The regional agricultural organisations that took the initiative for construction of the Promestplan also had representatives in the local and national public authorities. As such they were pow-erful actors. Established in the late nineteenth century, these regional agricultural organisationsrepresented the majority of the farmers in the southern Netherlands.

On the national level the agricultural organisations cooperated in the Agricultural Board (inDutch: Landbouwschap), which was established in 1954. In the Agricultural Board, organisedfarmers and agricultural workers successfully cooperated and succeeded in obtaining a represen-tational monopoly, excluding other bodies to negotiate with the Ministry of Agriculture on behalfof the farmers. In the 1980s, owing to the growing environmental concerns, especially regardingthe problems related to the manure surplus, the Agricultural Board was confronted with politicalopposition to the expanding livestock. In 1984 an interim bill on the limitation of expansion ofpig and poultry farming was passed through Parliament without consultation of the Board. Thismeant that the first ‘tangible’ crack had appeared in the tight link between the Agricultural Boardand the Ministry of Agriculture.

Because of the fact that the manure problem was not equally urgent in all parts of the country thedifferent regional agricultural organisations had different interests to promote within the Board.Since the manure problem was most urgent in the southern part of the country the regional organ-isations from this part urged for solutions based on solidarity, whereas the regional organisationsin the northern part of the country were more in favor of a ‘polluter pays’ approach to the manureproblem. As such the outlook of the Agricultural Board became less univocal and, as a result, lesspowerful towards the policy makers.

Partly because of the changing position of the Agricultural Board within the policy regimeand also owing to the internal disagreements, the agricultural organisations lost their credibilitywith the individual farmers and consequently their support, which ultimately led to the request todissolve the Board in 1995 (Krajenbrink 2005, 409; Wisserhof 2000, 186).

4.3. Research institutes

Although several research institutes dominated the biogas niche in the late 1970s and early 1980s,their role in the Promest case was limited. Some research institutes participated in a national

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Distribution of responsibility in socio-technical networks: the Promest case 459

research programme on manure processing in 1988 and 1989 and performed research on (partsof) the plants. Their role in and influence on the technological development was small, however,and their warnings for too optimistic expectations about the economics of manure processingwere discarded (Raven 2005, 77).

4.4. Individual farmers

Although the cooperation of the individual farmers was essential, in the sense that the farmers hadto supply the manure, they were not actively involved in the design and decision process of thePromest plant. Hence, there was no alignment between the design choices made by the technologycompanies and the agricultural organisations on the one hand and the preferences and practicesof the farmers on the other.

Partly because of the failure of the agricultural organisations to promote the farmers’ interestsin the manure legislation and owing to the internal disagreements within the Board, the farmersno longer felt represented by the agricultural organisations from the late 1980s onwards. Theylacked a sense of urgency concerning the manure surplus. Accordingly, they made short-termeconomic choices. Processing manure proved to be twice as expensive as distributing the manureunprocessed. Hence, most farmers chose to distribute the manure instead of supplying the Promestplant with it.

4.5. Public authorities

Until the early 1980s the agricultural policy was structured according to an institutionalisedexchange between the Ministry of Agriculture, the Board of Agriculture and members of theParliamentary Committee on Agriculture (neo-corporatist model), together referred to as the‘green front’. Owing to the growing opposition from the public, a change in the agriculturalpolicy was required. In the course of the 1980s the gradual decline of this green front resulted ina shift from consensus building with the agricultural organisations to top-down decision makingand interference. Instead of the technocratic ideal of optimisation of the livestock production peranimal per acre and the promotion of unlimited growth, the Ministry of Agriculture was forcedto consider the limits of growth. As a result of public and political pressure and legislation bythe European Community, agriculture in general and the intense livestock farming in particularbecame the subject of political debate. Manure processing was seen as one of the dominantsolutions to deal with environmental problems and the government provided support for largecentralised plants. In the late 1980s, the Ministry of Agriculture set the agricultural sector anultimatum to establish sufficient central manure processing capacity, or else a reduction in livestockfarming would be enforced.

4.6. National Manure Bank

The National Manure Bank was established by the Agricultural Board in 1986. It was supposedto mediate between manure buying, selling and processing and to keep the administration of themanure. The Bank was financed with general levies (as opposed to the surplus levies), so thefarmers in the areas without a manure surplus had to contribute to the payment as well.

Owing to the opposite regional interests, the agricultural organisations disagreed on the discre-tionary power on inspection, disciplinary law and administration of the levies that should be givento the National Manure Bank. During the discussion on the interim bill in 1986 the disagreements

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within the Agricultural Board could not be bridged. The most controversial point was whether theNational Bank should be entrusted with a so-called buying duty. In the end, this task was indeedimposed on the National Manure Bank and in the beginning of 1988 sufficient storage capacitywas arranged. The result was a National Manure Bank with only limited power, which made itimpossible for the Bank to organise and manage the manure supply (Frouws 1994, 115–117).

4.7. AID

The General Inspection Service (AID) is the controlling body of the Ministry of Agriculture. Itscore task is to control and maintain the regulation with regard to the agricultural sector. From thestart of enforcement of the manure legislation onwards the role of the AID remained not clearlyarticulated. In the late 1980s the AID warned that it was not equipped with sufficient capacityto fulfill the controlling duty with respect to the manure legislation. Supported by the Ministryof Justice and the consultancy firm Oranjewoud that investigated the ‘maintenance of manurelegislation’, the AID complained that the manure legislation was not controllable and that therewere too many opportunities for fraud. Consequently, in the policy report of the AID in 1993it was officially stated that ‘due to the limited controllability … the commitment to the manurelegislation will be reduced’ (Bloemendaal 1995, 69).

Also, in relation to the National Manure Bank, the task of the AID was ill-defined, as a resultof which the bookkeeping of the manure flow became problematic.

4.8. European Community (now European Union)

Established in the 1960s the EC Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was aimed at creating asituation of self-sufficiency within Europe such as to reduce the risk of food shortage in themember states. However, by subsidising production of basic farm products almost permanentsurpluses were created. In the 1980s, owing to the combination of growing environmental concernand excessive expenditures by the EC, the agricultural policy gradually changed to the broaderaim of sustainable agriculture, including a focus on food quality and safety, animal welfare andpreservation of the environment. In 1984 quota on the production of dairy were introduced andin 1988 an upper limit to the expenditures by the EC was set. In the 1980s the large agriculturalcountries of the USA, New Zealand and Australia urged the EC to reduce its European pricesupport and export subsidies. The 1992 reform of the CAP included an adjustment to the needsfor a more free agricultural market, as a result of which the support by national governmentsbecame limited (Krajenbrink 2005, 311). It was with regard to the latter that the EC becameinvolved in the network: it forbade the structural subsidy of the exploitation costs of the plantsince that would hamper fair competition between member states.

5. Organisational dimensions

In order to explore how organisational structures can explain the way responsibilities are dis-tributed one issue has been selected to study in more detail, viz. the issue of manure supply.This issue is selected since it turned out one of the main reasons for failure of the Promestplant. The organisational dimensions power, coordination and control, as defined in the intro-duction, played an important role in the distribution of responsibilities. They thereby turned outto be crucial in the ability of the different actors to discharge their responsibilities with regard

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Distribution of responsibility in socio-technical networks: the Promest case 461

Figure 3. Graphical representation of power relations involved in manure supply.

Figure 4. Graphical representation of control relations involved in manure supply.

to the supply of (sufficient) manure. As such they provide sufficient ground for this explorativeresearch.

In the remainder of this section, the issue of manure supply is analysed in terms of the threeorganisational dimensions of power, coordination and control. For each of the dimensions relationscan be drawn, which are shown in Figures 3–5, depicting the power, control and coordinationrelations respectively.3 Solid lines are used to denote relations that have in fact been established(e.g. effective enforcement of law), the dashed lines denote relations that the actors intendedbut failed to establish effectively (e.g. the lack of knowledge transfer or a subsidy that has notbeen granted). The arrowhead indicates the direction of the relation: a power relation from A toB indicates that the actor A is able to influence the agenda setting of actor B (i.e. the actor towhom the arrow is directed); an information relation from A to B indicates that the actor A givesinformation to actor B; and a control relation from A to B indicates that actor A is able to controlor monitor the activities of actor B.

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Figure 5. Graphical representation of coordination relations involved in manure supply.

5.1. Manure supply

In 1989 the governmental Committee on Realisation Manure Processing (in Dutch: CommissieRealisatie Mestverwerking) was established to identify potential obstacles to the realisation oflarge scale manure processing. One of the issues that came out as potentially problematic to thefunctioning of the plant was the lack of sufficient manure supply (Van Eijkelenburg 1989). To medi-ate between the supply and the demand of manure the National Manure Bank was established.The manure legislation comes into play as it influences the options for action of the farmers.

Power relations regarding establishment of the National Manure Bank (Ministry, Board,Manure Bank, Promest, farmers)In terms of responsibilities, the establishment of the National Manure Bank is a crucial matter.The Ministry of Environment and the agricultural organisations (represented by the AgriculturalBoard) disagreed on the nature of the Bank: was it to be a centralised governmental body or anaddition to privately-owned initiative? The Agricultural Board turned out to be the most powerfulplayer in the establishment of the nature of the Bank and its discretionary power (power linesbetween Board and Ministry and between Board and Manure Bank) and the National ManureBank became a powerless institute regulated by the sector itself. With this construction, theagricultural sector avoided any compulsory regulations towards the farmers, which would havebeen implemented in case the National Manure Bank was established as an official governmentalbody. In the latter case, the National Manure Bank would have been able to enforce farmers tosell their manure to the National Manure Bank (and hence to Promest). In other words, althoughthe National Manure Bank was established in order to increase participation by the farmers, nomeasures were taken to guarantee or enforce this participation. The Bank did not have sufficientdiscretionary power to effectively mediate the buying and selling of manure (dashed lines betweenthe Bank and the farmers and between the farmers and Promest), notwithstanding the fact that theBank was explicitly given this task.

Power relations regarding manure policy and legislation (Ministry and Board)

The issue of manure supply cannot be analysed without taking into account the manure policy andlegislation. In the establishment and implementation of this policy there was a tight power relation

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Distribution of responsibility in socio-technical networks: the Promest case 463

between theAgricultural Board and the Ministry ofAgriculture (solid lines in Figure 3). Both weredependent on one another: the Ministry ofAgriculture needed the support of theAgricultural Boardto implement the legislation. The implementation of the interim bill in 1986 without consultationof the Board was met by the Board with an explicit announcement to delay the process. The powerrelation, however, was directed both ways. The Minister of Agriculture warned the agriculturalorganisations that a reduction in the amount of livestock would be inevitable if there could notbe a manure processing capacity of six million tons of manure a year in 1996. The Ministryofficially stated that it was the responsibility of the agricultural sector to generate this capacity.As a result, the agricultural organisations were forced to generate large-scale manure processingplant initiatives. These mutual power relations eventually led to inertia in the implementation ofthe manure policy. In 1993, the Agricultural Board introduced an alternative to the Ministerialmanure legislation, which was eventually accepted by all the parties. The President of the Boardrevealed that it was the pressure exercised by the governmental authorities that eventually madethe Board develop this alternative plan.

Coordination relations regarding manure policy and legislation (Ministry and farmers)The inertia in the implementation of the manure policy, in its turn, translated into a waiting attitudeby the farmers (dashed line between Ministry and farmers in Figure 5, indicating the absence ofinformation). As long as manure legislation was surrounded by uncertainties, the farmers werenot willing to invest or enter into long-term contractual obligations (such as supply contracts).Concerning the information flow, the diverging opinions about the manure problem also causedthe implementation of solutions to be delayed and, maybe more important, to be met with someskepticism.Although it had been denied in the 1980s, eventually it was accepted by the agriculturalcommunity that the manure surplus was a severe problem. In the early 1990s some agriculturalscientists again published articles in which they argued that the manure surplus was not significant(or event non-existent) and therefore not something to worry about. Others, on the contrary, arguedthat central manure processing was not sufficient to reduce the manure surplus and they said thatreduction in the amount of livestock was inevitable. As a result the manure policy was basedon the uncertainties and numbers that were not supported by all the parties involved and whichparalysed the farmers.

Power relation regarding exploitation levy (Ministry and EC)

The Ministry of Agriculture proposed a system of obligatory levies to subsidise the Promest plant.However, this so-called exploitation levy was not allowed according to the EC rules (Raven 2005,76), which together with the lack of manure supply, led to Promest’s bankruptcy. Although theMinistry of Agricultural actively lobbied for permission to impose this exploitation levy, it wasrejected by the EC several times. If we recall that power was defined as the ability to pursue one’sown objectives, we can interpret the rejection of the exploitation levy as an unsuccessful powerrelation (dashed line from Ministry of Agriculture to the EC in Figure 3). After all, the Ministryfailed to pursue its own objective of being allowed to impose the exploitation levy.4

Control and coordination regarding bookkeeping Promest (Manure Bank, Promest,AID and Ministry)During the few years of operation, rumors rose on fraudulent bookkeeping by Promest, concern-ing both the manure supplied by the farmers and the amount of manure actually processed. The

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different controlling bodies disagreed on the question whose task it was to inspect the book-keeping of Promest (Bloemendaal 1995, 87–88). The Manure Bank asked the AID to subject thebookkeeping to closer inspection, but the latter answered the request by apportioning the respon-sibility for inspection to the Manure Bank itself (dashed lines between the Manure Bank/AID andPromest). However, the Manure Bank lacked the required information to verify the bookkeepingsince Promest was exempted from its obligation to prove the selling of the processed products(dashed information lines between Promest and Manure Bank/AID). This exemption was neverofficially approved and it was denied by the Ministry of Agriculture that it had ever been granted atall (dashed power line from Promest to Ministry and information line from Ministry to Promest).

The graphical representation of the relations discussed above in Figures 3–5 shows the lack ofdiscretionary power of the Manure Bank (dashed lines in Figure 3) and the lack of control (i.e.monitoring) by the AID (dashed lines in Figure 4). Because of gaps in the legislation, unofficialdispensation with some of the bookkeeping granted to Promest and unwillingness of the AID tocontrol the bookkeeping of Promest, the National Manure Bank was unable to close the manurebalance.

In terms of information flow (Figure 5) the situation is even worse: no solid lines (i.e. reliableinformation flow) can be established. The line between the farmers and the Ministry depictsthe information concerning the manure legislation and is therefore only distantly related to thefunctioning of the plant itself. This means that one of the most crucial actors – after all, the successof central manure processing was fully dependent on the supply of manure by the farmers – wasnot actively part of the coordination structure. Accordingly, the farmers did not sufficiently knowwhat was expected of them. The research institutes form another important, but neglected, actor.These institutes warned for the overly optimistic expectations expressed by the technologicalcompanies in the Promest consortium, but their warnings were discarded. As such they did notplay the role they should have played and they were excluded from the network. The technologicalcompanies presented a false picture of the economic feasibility of manure processing, therebyinfluencing the decision makers in the agricultural sector.

If we focus on Figure 3, showing the power relations, the problem of many hands clearly revealsitself. Power is transferred from the Agricultural Board to the National Manure Bank and to thefarmers subsequently, without any adequate control activities. As a consequence, the actor whoat first initiated the idea of large-scale manure processing (the Agricultural Board) did not ‘own’the process anymore. This lack of ownership can cause major performance problems owing to thefact that no single person is responsible for the whole process (Hammer and Champy 1994). Ifsomething goes wrong in the chain of tasks between the different actors, it is difficult to identifythe actor responsible for the ultimate outcome. This holds even more if actors contribute jointly(i.e. in parallel) to a certain outcome. In the present case of the manure supply it is difficultto exactly pinpoint the actor responsible for the lack of manure supply: is it the farmers (as acollective) who found cheaper ways to get rid of their manure, is it the Manure Bank who did notsucceed in influencing the manure flow or is it the Agricultural Board who was internally dividedowing to conflicting interests between the different regional bodies. As such the issue of the lackof manure supply presents itself as a problem of many hands.

One of the striking things is that especially the role of the intermediary organisations (i.e. theNational Manure Bank and the AID) remained unclear throughout the period. Although theseintermediary organisations were in fact established to solve certain problems (here: mediationin the supply of manure), they seemed to have created problems of their own (here: unclarity inthe monitoring tasks). In the present case it seemed that especially these intermediary organisa-tions could have played a crucial role in distributing responsibilities. This suggests that if these

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crucial intermediaries fail in their tasks, the network organisation as a whole becomes weak. Thatintermediary organisations play a crucial role within networks is confirmed in the literature oninnovation management, where it is shown that intermediaries can both enable connectedness ina network but also create institutional inertia (cf. Howells 2006).

This points to another important observation.Although the Promest network is a typical exampleof a non-hierarchical organisation, it seems that hierarchical elements can sometimes emergewithin network organisations. These hierarchical elements are not grounded in the actors’ formalpositions within the network, but emerge from power differences between them. Compared to,for example, the Agricultural Board, the National Manure Bank was a rather powerless actor andit therefore failed to mediate between the supply and selling of the manure.

If we try to classify the relation between the agricultural organisations (by way of theAgricultural Board) and the farmers according to organisational paradigms identified in Horlingand Lesser (2004), the relation resembles most the so-called agent federation or federated system,having the characteristic of a group of agents which have ceded some amount of autonomy toa single delegate (i.e. the Agricultural Board) which represents the group (i.e. the collective ofindividual farmers). The group members interact only with this agent, which acts as an interme-diary between the group and the outside world. However, this requires the intermediary to beprovided with information from the agents it represents. Moreover, it also requires at least somelevel of homogeneity of the total group. In the case of Promest this was not the case: within theAgricultural Board the different regional organisations disagreed on the strategy to address themanure problem, which had its effect on the formation of manure policy and legislation. As aconsequence, the organisations lost their credibility to the farmers. The lack of representative-ness is confirmed by the absence of information flow between the farmers and the agriculturalorganisations.

The relation between the Agricultural Board and the Ministry of Agriculture seems to havebeen in a transition from a typical long-lived congregation to a more strategic short-lived coalition(Horling and Lesser 2004). Congregations can be characterised as groups of individual agentswho have united in order to derive additional benefits. They are not formed with a single specificgoal in mind, but they do have a stable set of capabilities or requirements in common whichconstitutes their continuance. The danger of congregations is that relevant actors are excludedfrom the negotiation process. Actors within a congregation do usually not interact with agentsoutside the congregation. In the implementation of the manure policy this was clearly revealed inthe role of EC and to a lesser extent by the growing power of the Ministry of Environment. Becauseof the increasing disagreement and discontent between the regional agricultural organisations andthe growing role of other players in the policy community, from the 1990s onwards the relationbetween the agricultural organisations and the Ministry became more of a strategic short-livedcoalition. Aiming at individual utility, the different actors no longer shared a common goal.The lack of long-term perspective of coalitions was confirmed by the request to dissolve theAgricultural Board in 1995.

Summarising the findings of the present section, the following points can be identified:

(1) The power relations between the Ministry of Agriculture and the Agricultural Board weregrounded in the representational function of the Board. From the late 1980s the agriculturalfield became more diverse. As a result of the fact that the manure surplus was not equallyurgent in all parts of the country the different regional agricultural organisations had differentinterests and diverging agendas. As such the legitimacy of the representation weakened andso did the influence of the Board in the development of the manure policy. Accordingly, the

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support by the farmers decreased as well. Proper representation and support for negotiateddecisions requires some minimal sense of homogeneity within the group.

(2) The problems related to the shortage of manure supply are a typical example of ‘lack ofownership’. Tasks were imposed on subordinates without providing the proper means tocarry out such tasks. The Manure Bank, e.g. was given the task to steer the manure flowbut it lacked the juridical means to enforce the farmers’ cooperation. This shows that also innon-hierarchical organisations hierarchical elements can arise as a result of informal powerdifferences between the actors.

6. Discussion

In the previous section the organisational structure of the network as a set of relations was iden-tified. It was found that some of the relations were intended but not effectively established. Wewill now use these results to answer the guiding question, as stated in the introduction: howcan the organisational dimensions explain the way responsibilities are distributed in a socio-technical network? This question focuses on the relationship between the organisational structureand responsibility. Responsibility in the present context is related to the allocation of tasks withinthe network. Ascribing responsibility to actors requires that certain criteria or conditions are met(Bovens 1998; Feinberg 1968; Fischer and Ravizza 1993; Swierstra and Jelsma 2006; Thompson1980). In the simplest form, an actor is causally responsible for a certain outcome (be it goodor bad) if the actions of the actor causally contributed to a certain outcome. We can, e.g., saythat the farmers, as a group, were causally responsible for not supplying Promest with sufficientmanure. However, this does not necessarily imply that they can also be held accountable. If anactor ascribes a certain task to a subordinate agent who fails to execute that task, the subordinateagent is causally responsible but the ‘delegating’ actor will be held accountable. This holds forboth hierarchical and non-hierarchical organisations, since the latter can, as we have seen in theprevious section, also have emergent hierarchical elements. In the Promest case, this happenedwith regard to the manure flow. The Agricultural Board in a sense handed over the task (viz. tosupply the Promest plant with sufficient manure) to the Manure Bank, which in its turn handedover this task to the farmers.Although the farmers were causally responsible for the lack of manuresupply, the Agricultural Board can be held accountable for it. Here we see how the organisationalstructure relates to the ability of an actor to carry out one’s task-responsibilities. The handing overof tasks to other actors within the network is related to the power structure of the organisation.If a certain actor wants a subordinate actor to carry out a task, the first actor must also have themeans to do so. In the example of the manure flow, the Manure Bank did not have the meansto impose its demands (viz. supplying the Promest plant with sufficient manure) to the farmers.Consequently, the farmers failed to carry out their task. This handing over of tasks (or delegating,in more hierarchical terms) is also related to the monitoring activity (i.e. the control dimension)within the network. As stated in the introduction control relates to the ability to have a backup incase of failure or violations of certain tasks. As such it is an indispensable activity in which anyorganisation has to engage (Grossi, Royyakkers, and Dignum 2007). In philosophical literatureon responsibility this monitoring activity is sometimes mentioned as a separate responsibility,accompanying task responsibilities. These monitoring responsibilities take the form ‘A ought tosee to it that X’ where X denotes a state of affairs in which B does the particular task (Goodin1995). Applied to the issue of the bookkeeping of Promest, we can say that one of the actors fellshort in its monitoring activity, be it the Manure Bank or the AID. However, the problem with theinspection of the bookkeeping was not so much the unwillingness to carry out this task but more

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the lack of adequate information. This brings us to the third organisational dimension: coordi-nation. For an actor to be responsible for a certain task requires that the actor has the necessaryinformation to carry out this task. In other words, to be task-responsible for something requires acertain coordination structure. As such the coordination structure enables the actor to carry out thetask. Conversely, if the required information does not reach the actor, the actor cannot carry out thetask and can therefore not be blamed for not fulfilling the task. Instead the person responsible forthe information flow will be held blameworthy. In the case of the fraudulent bookkeeping, we cansay that the Ministry of Agriculture can be blamed for not providing the necessary information.

As the previous discussion has shown, the different types of responsibility (causal responsibility,accountability and blameworthiness) are related to the way the network is organised. The structuraldimensions enable actors to discharge themselves from their responsibilities, but this holds theother way as well: the less a group of agents is organised, the more difficult it becomes for actorsto carry out their tasks and consequently, to discharge themselves from their responsibilities.This points to the problem of many hands. If different actors each contribute to a certain outcomewithout a clear organisational structure, the assessment of the responsibilities becomes difficult, ifnot impossible, to attain. As such the structural dimensions in a way form the boundary conditionsfor an organisation to effectively pursue a certain objective. This confirms how the organisationalstructure and the distribution of responsibilities are related. The absence of required relations,e.g., those concerning the flow of information, might point to the exclusion of relevant actorsfrom the network. If that is the case, the organisational structure will not be suitable to facilitatethe pursuing of a certain objective, either because information is missing or because certain taskshave not been appointed. In the present case the absence of information provided by independentresearchers is an example of such a missing relation, just as the lack of power relations by theintermediary organisations.

This points to another characteristic of network organisations. Besides the formal responsi-bilities related to the organisational structure, informal responsibilities can be distinguished. Intheir study on the development of a new sewage system, Zwart et al. (2006) consider, besidesthe formal responsibilities of actors, how the different actors in the network, whether tacitly oropenly, allocate responsibilities informally to each other in the network. Such informally allocatedresponsibilities are relevant for example when unforeseen and undesirable consequences of theconstruction and exploitation of the system, which are not accounted for in formal contracts or thelaw, occur. Whereas the formal responsibilities are related to the top-down enforcement of tasks,the informal responsibilities relate to strategic behavior and negotiation, characteristic to networkorganisations. In the present case, the role of political and lobby groups in the decision makingprocess played an important role in the allocation of these informal responsibilities. By settinga political target for the centralised manure processing capacity, the lobby groups had a power-ful argument to continue constructing and even upgrading the plant, despite technical concernsexpressed by the independent researchers and the operational staff.

7. Conclusions

In the present paper, the Promest case has been analysed to understand how the organisationaldimensions power, coordination and control relate to the distribution of responsibilities. Graphicalrepresentation of the networks was used to visually map the different actors and their mutualrelations, hereby giving a clear picture of what can be considered the most powerful actors andtheir mutual dependencies. By using dashed lines instead of solid lines to reflect the relations that

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were not established the difference between the intended structure and the actual structure wasidentified.

The main aim of the present paper was to explore how the organisational dimensions arerelated to the distribution of responsibilities. Analysis of the Promest case has shown that theability to perform a certain task is essentially related to the way the organisation is structured,i.e., the distribution of responsibilities could not be assessed without taking into account thestructural dimensions and the accompanying organisational activities. The organisational structuremay facilitate a certain distribution of responsibilities and accordingly, enable the pursuit of anorganisation’s goal, but conversely, a group of actors may also be organised in such a weak way thatit is impossible for the actors to carry out their tasks that should eventually lead to the organisation’send goal. It turned out that also in the non-hierarchical Promest network hierarchical elementsarose as a result of power differences between actors. This suggests that the strict dichotomybetween hierarchical and non-hierarchical organisations is somewhat arbitrary and that typicalhierarchical relations may occur in network organisations as well, including activities such as taskdelegation and the imposition of tasks.

With regard to the different positions in the network, it appeared that the role of the intermediaryorganisations was especially crucial. Since their task remained rather vague and unarticulatedthroughout the whole period, their position was powerless compared with the other actors. As aresult, they lacked the means to fufill their tasks. Although it is premature to draw firm conclusionson the basis of this one-case investigation, it seems worthwhile to investigate further the role ofintermediaries within these kind of network organisations.

Further research is also needed to investigate the relation between network design and respon-sibility in more detail, for example the relationship between the different requirements for (moral)responsibility and the network structure. The results may feed into recommendations for designsof network structures that may help to overcome the problem of many hands in complex networks.One example would be to provide recommendations for present-day networks for manure pro-cessing and biogas production. A more general field for further exploration is to relate the currentresearch on informal responsibilities with transition research (Raven and Verbong 2007; Hegger,Van Vliet, and Van Vliet 2007; Hendry, Harborne, and Brown 2007; Smith 2007; Geels, Pieters,and Sneiders 2007; Harborne, Hendry, and Brown 2007). Transitions are systemic socio-technicalinnovations, which are inherently uncertain and have multi-actor and multi-level characteristics.They include major shifts in social networks, supporting rules and institutions and technologicalartifacts and infrastructures. In such situations distribution of informal responsibilities might bea rule rather than an exception.

Acknowledgements

This research is part of the research programme ‘Moral Responsibility in R&D Networks’, which is supported by theNetherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) under grant number 360-20-160. We would like to thank thethree anonymous referees and Ibo Van de Poel for reading an earlier draft of the present paper. The article has profited alot from their comments and the helpful suggestions they provided.

Notes

1. Although the present approach might suggest that the three dimensions are independent, it is realised that they arenot: for example, the way the control relations are structured can be the result of an actor’s act of power. However, asan analytical concept it seems useful to separate the three types of activities since they each serve a different purposeand as such they are distinct activities.

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2. Besides federations, congregations and coalitions, Horling and Lesser distinguish between hierarchies, holarchies,teams, societies, markets, matrix organisations and compound organisations. In federations a group of agents cedessome of their autonomy to a single delegate who represents the group. Congregations can be characterised as groupsof individual agents who have united in order to derive additional benefits. Coalitions are goal-directed and short-livedorganisations, which are formed with a specific purpose in mind. These three organisation paradigms are especiallyinteresting since they cover the change in the Dutch agricultural policy community from a neo-corporatist model toa more politicised policy community.

3. Although it is realised that other relations could be drawn as well, we choose here to focus on the relations that areminimally required to answer the guiding question and to explain how responsibilities are distributed.

4. One of the reviewers correctly pointed out that this could also be considered a successful power relation if consideredfrom the perspective of the EC. However, since the Ministry of Agriculture explicitly put (lobbying) effort in beingdispensed from the EC regulations we prefer to view this relation from the perspective of the Ministry of Agricultureand hence, to interpret it as an ‘unsuccessful’ power relation.

Notes on contributors

Neelke Doorn has a background in civil engineering and philosophy. She is currently affiliated to Delft University ofTechnology, where she is preparing a doctoral thesis. Her research focuses on responsibility issues in collective settings.She has recently published in Science and Engineering Ethics, the Journal of Business Ethics and the Bulletin of Science,Technology & Society.

Rob Raven is an assistant professor in the School of Innovation Sciences at the Eindhoven University of Technology.His main research interests include transitions to sustainability, strategic niche management and social embedding oftechnologies, especially in the energy domain.

Lambèr Royakkers is associate professor in Ethics of Technology in the School of Innovation Sciences at the EindhovenUniversity of Technology, and associate professor in Military Ethics at the Netherlands Defence Academy. His researchfocuses on the conceptualisation of (collective) responsibility and ethics of military technology.

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