Responsibility in the development process – what and who?

Abstract

There were several cognitive and practical reasons to address the problem of responsibility in the development process, in particular its displaying in the title of a key document outlining the medium- and long-term developmental vision and policy of the state, in the Strategy for Responsible Development. In the elaboration based on the review of the rich literature on the subject and the latest documents, selected aspects of this capacious inter- and multidisciplinary issues were presented. Due to the ambiguity of the category of responsibility and the related difficulties of interpretation and the evolution of its links with freedom and development, it was considered essential to precede the main part of the study with the most general opinion regarding the nature of responsibility and short answers to two questions: – what is the responsibility? – what are its links with freedom? The starting point for further considerations is the assumption that responsible development must involve not only the government and politicians, but also managers and their enterprises as well as consumers and entire regional and local communities. Without their involvement, it is difficult to count on the effectiveness of even the best-developed developmental vision. The subjective layout of the article, the responsibility of the state, public officials, the socially responsible business community to the civil society and the common good has been recognized as the leading one. In summary, on the basis of the analyses carried out, quite general answers to the questions formulated in the introduction were outlined.