Chain of Responsibility
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In the Australian transportation industry, Chain of Responsibility is a legal principle which allows an organization to hold supervisors accountable for setting unrealistic expectations that present a safety hazard.
For example: in a trucking business, a dispatcher might try to increase profit margin by reducing all of the drivers' schedules by 10%. The drivers in turn may try to satisfy these unrealistic deadlines by driving recklessly or with too little sleep. Under Chain of Responsibility, the dispatcher has an incentive to set feasible performance expectations, by holding the dispatcher responsible for any accidents that might result from an unreasonably set schedule. The dispatcher would be limited to giving the driver a realistic deadline for a load, obeying all the speed limits along the way, allow for traffic congestion at the relevant times of day, and including time for meal and rest breaks. A dispatcher who issued an unrealistic deadline could be convicted of an offense, especially in the event of a traffic accident.
In France in the 1990s, a shipper who ordered a truck driver to observe an unrealistic schedule was jailed for manslaughter.
