Prescription in Management Decisions

Abstract

Delegation of authority and responsibility is considered one of the fundamental problems in management control. If there is no delegation from one echelon of management to a lower echelon, then the latter is constrained; it cannot exercise any discretion, it cannot meaningfully develop initiative or skill in handling situations which call for managerial intervention, and it cannot, therefore, share in any responsibility for the success or failure of such intervention. The lower echelon may still be useful for monitoring events or as a convenient means of transmitting messages through the system, but it has no active participatory role in the decision process. At the other end of the scale, if complete delegation is practised, the higher management level becomes insipid; full authority and responsibility for decisions are then vested with the lower echelon, and the function and the very existence of the higher level may be put into question.