The Misconceived Delegation of Responsibility

Abstract

The division of labor and the growing number of businesses have led to the situation where the superior is no longer able to make all decisions alone and therefore is required to delegate. Delegation has been around for a long time and has become critical to modern businesses. We must differentiate between delegating an assignment, in the sense of delegation work and delegating the responsibility. These aspects are often misunderstood or not differentiated at all. Employees should not only be delegated with the execution of tasks but also with the related power to act and decide. Managing through conventional authoritarian principles is no longer sustainable within the current economic trend. This paper aims to present the behavioral pattern of the wrongly-understood delegation of responsibility, instruments and fear of delegation and how this type of approach, which is currently implemented in so many organizations, is actually a misconceived delegation of responsibility.