Architectural Responsibility Configuration (ARCM): A Responsibility-Oriented Theory for Multi-View Architecture Descriptions

Multi-view architecture descriptions are widely used to manage complexity, yet architecture documentation frequently degrades even when all relevant viewpoints and concerns are covered [12]. Existing coverage-oriented theories fail to explain this phenomenon because they remain silent on where representational authority resides and how relations across views are epistemically maintained. This paper introduces Architectural Responsibility Configuration (ARCM), a responsibility-oriented theory that elevates representational responsibility-the assignment of epistemic authority over architectural facts and relations-to a first-class theoretical primitive, following a theory-building approach in software engineering [28].ARCM yields a closed, falsifiable theory that explains documentation decay and stability as predictable outcomes of responsibility configurations under epistemic gravity and evolutionary pressure.