Responsibility—

Here's The American Heritage Dictionary's definition and usage of responsible.

Responsible: 1. Liable to be required to give account, as of one's actions or of the discharge of a duty or trust. 2. Involving personal accountability or ability to act without guidance or superior authority: a responsible position within the company. 3. Being a source or cause. 4. Able to make moral or rational decisions on one's own and therefore answerable for one's behavior. 5. Able to be trusted or depended upon; reliable. 6. Based on or characterized by good judgment or sound thinking: responsible journalism. 7. Having the means to pay debts or fulfill obligations. 8. Required to render account; answerable: The cabinet is responsible to the parliament.

Usage:
Note: Some critics have maintained that responsible should not be used to describe things, since only persons can be held accountable. The application to things is justifiable, however, when responsible is used to mean "being the source or cause of." In an earlier survey, a majority of the Usage Panel accepted the sentence Faulty construction was responsible for the crash. In recent years, many people have objected to the use of the phrase claim responsibility with reference to the authors of terrorist acts, as in A small separatist group claimed responsibility for the explosion, in which 30 passengers were killed. It is true that the phrase is not entirely felicitous, inasmuch as it does not convey the speaker's conviction that the action is deplorable. But alternatives such as admit or take the blame cannot be recommended either, since they would imply misleadingly that the instigators had themselves acknowledged that the action was wrongful.

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