diffusion of responsibility

Diffusion of responsibility is when a group of people all share responsibility for something, and so none of them feel like they need to take action. It's like if you are all sitting around in a room and it starts to smell funny, but nobody notices and nobody does anything because they all think someone else must be the one to take care of it. Diffusion of responsibility can make it harder to get things done because none of the people feel like they need to do anything.