I don't think these two ideas are as opposed as you're implying. They're describing two different perspectives on the same process. To wit:

1. Individuals have values and ethics that they'll make a reasonable effort to comply with. Society recognizes this and rewards and punishes individuals for the ethical bent of the projects they are clearly responsible for.

2. As the size and complexity of a project grows responsibility becomes diffuse until there's no single individual to hold responsible for any given decision. Once this happens the informal, personalized ethical safeguards begin to break down.

3. Once the informal individual scale safeguards have dissolved they usually can't be rebuilt. Instead they need to be replaced with formal safeguard mechanisms that operate at the project scale.

I don't know of any good writeup on the side of blaming the individual. On the side of fixing the system, I think the canon would be to look at systems theory (at the more human centered flank, like Meadows). You can get to the same conclusion on administration theory from Deming and his following, or any of the X-safety groups, like work-safety, aviation-safety, nuclear-safety, etc.

What really confuses the discussion is that a well working system that deals with ethical failures does necessarily hold people personally accountable. But you can't fix it by focusing on the "holding people accountable" part, it never works. You have to focus on the "system" part.