Responsibility
is in simple terms an area in which one is entitled to act on one’s own accord.
It is the obligation of staff to their managers for performing the duties of
their jobs. It is thus the obligation of a person to achieve the desired
conditions for which they are accountable to their managers. Authority is in
simple terms the right to take actions and make decisions. The delegation of authority
permits decisions to be made more rapidly by those who are in more direct
contact with the problem. It is necessary for management to define who should
do what in order that the designated work is assigned to someone to carry out.
It is not cost effective to have duplicate responsibilities or gaps in
responsibility as this leads to conflict or tasks being overlooked. A person’s
job can be divided into two components: actions and decisions. Responsibilities
and authority should therefore be described in terms of the actions assigned to
an individual to perform and discretion delegated to an individual: that is,
the decisions they are permitted to take along with the freedom they are
permitted to exercise. Each job should therefore have core responsibilities,
which provide a degree of predictability, and innovative responsibilities,
which in turn provide the individual with scope for development. In defining
responsibilities and authority there are some simple rules that you should
follow:
Through the
process of delegation, authority is passed downward within the organization and
divided among subordinate personnel, whereas responsibility passes upwards.
A manager
may assign responsibilities to a subordinate and delegate authority; however,
they remain responsible for the subordinate’s use of that authority.
When
managers delegate responsibility for something, they remain responsible for it.
When managers delegate authority they lose the right to make the decisions they
have delegated but remain responsible and accountable for the way such
authority is used. Accountability is one’s control over the authority one has
delegated to one’s staff.
It is
considered unreasonable to hold a person responsible for events caused by
factors that they are powerless to control.
Before a
person can be in a state of control they must be provided with three things:
Knowledge of
what they are doing provided either from their own senses or from an instrument
or another person authorized to provide such data.
Means of
regulating what they are doing in the event of failing to meet the prescribed
objectives. These means must always include the authority to regulate and the
ability to regulate both by varying the person’s own conduct and by varying the
process under the person’s authority. It is in this area that freedom of action
and decision should be provided.
The person
given responsibility for achieving certain results must have the right (i.e.
the authority) to decide how those results will be achieved; otherwise the
responsibility for the results rests with those who stipulate the course of
action.
Individuals
can rightfully exercise only that authority which is delegated to them and that
authority should be equal to that person’s responsibility (not more or less
than it). If people have authority for action without responsibility, it
enables them to walk by problems without doing anything about them. Authority
is not power itself.
In the absence of the delegation of authority and assignment of responsibilities, individuals assume duties that may duplicate those duties assumed by others. Thus jobs that are necessary but unattractive will be left undone. It also encourages decisions to be made only by top management, resulting in an increasing management work-load and engendering a feeling of mistrust in the workforce.
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