Most enterprises can name who owns procurement. They can name who owns maintenance. They can name who owns the budget.
They struggle to name who owns the equipment after it stops being used.
Surplus is where accountability goes to dissolve. When an asset is productive, ownership is implicit. The plant runs it, maintenance maintains it, finance depreciates it, and procurement replaces it. When it becomes surplus, those roles remain, but the organizing principle disappears.
Why Ownership Becomes Unclear
Surplus sits between categories the enterprise already understands. It is too operational to feel like a finance responsibility, too financial to feel like an operations responsibility, too physical to fit neatly inside IT, and too situational to live in facilities.
The enterprise still has custody. It no longer has a decision system. Custody is not ownership.
Ownership Means Decision Rights
Many organizations answer the ownership question with the nearest warehouse. That is not ownership. That is proximity. Ownership in surplus means four things are true:
If any of those are missing, the enterprise does not have an owner. It has a caretaker.
The Functional Disconnect
FNThe CFO's View
"What is the recoverable value? What is the exposure?"
OPOperations' View
"Remove it quickly. Reduce on-site liability."
The Core Problem
Enterprises conflate "Who Touches It" with "Who Owns It".
Responsibility is distributed, but authority is not. Multiple functions touch the asset, so everyone assumes someone else owns the decision. This is not a coordination issue. It is a decision rights issue.
A Practical Ownership Model
Surplus ownership cannot be solved by assigning everything to one function. It must be solved by separating the decision system from the execution tasks.
Portfolio Owner (Governance)
A single enterprise role owns the portfolio outcomes (recovery rates, time-to-decision). Typically Finance, but paired with execution authority.
Execution Owners (Action)
Operations and facilities own the physical execution steps. They do not own economic policy; they execute within defined thresholds.
System Owner (Truth)
IT owns the system of record and traceability. IT does not decide outcomes. IT makes outcomes governable.
What Shared Governance Changes
Shared governance shifts the enterprise from person-dependent decisions to system-dependent decisions. It defines:
- A common surplus definition
- A risk-based decision framework
- Approval thresholds
- Standard outcome paths
- Traceability requirements
- Outcome feedback loops
The System-Level Takeaway
The ownership question is not “Which team should handle surplus?” The ownership question is “Which role owns the decision system that determines outcomes?”
Enterprises that answer that question explicitly reduce value leakage, reduce conflict, and regain control over capital after use. Those that do not will continue to experience surplus as a recurring surprise.