A proposal circulates for written approval until everyone has sealed it, distributing responsibility so widely that nobody holds it.
The ringi-sho passes upward collecting seals, so authorship becomes collective by the time it is approved. The system produces genuine buy-in and genuine diffusion of accountability at once, and the second is the price of the first: when the decision fails, there is no one whose decision it was.
In practice
- A document with eleven signatures fails, and the review cannot identify a decision-maker to ask.
- A change nobody actively wanted is approved because refusing would have required breaking a chain of colleagues' seals.