On Delegating Accountability: I

It's often said that although you can delegate a responsibility of your own, you cannot delegate your own accountability. This warning about delegation raises several reasonable questions about delegation. If I'm accountable for Task X, and I delegate Task X to my Subordinate A, am I still accountable for Task X even though I have delegated it to Subordinate A? Can I hold Subordinate A accountable for Task X? If I'm still accountable for Task X after delegating it to Subordinate A, are we both therefore accountable for Task X? How can two people be accountable for the same task?

In this Part I of an exploration of delegation, I'll consider the sources of confusions about what can be delegated, and what cannot. In Part II, I offer guidelines for delegating in ways that are clear about what happens to accountability.

Sources of confusion: context, culture, and delegation

Three concepts It's often said that although you can delegate
a responsibility of your own, you cannot
delegate your own accountabilitythat together define the ethics, limits, and obligations of our roles at work are responsibility, authority, and accountability. Although they are critically important, the precise meanings of these three terms — responsibility, authority, and accountability — depend on the context in which we use them. For example, Responsibility has one set of meanings in the context of criminal law, and another set in the context of organizational governance. Because this dependence on context makes for difficulties for any discussion of their applicability, I'll consider only private (corporate) organizations.

Even with that limitation, asking people to define these three terms exposes some confusion among their definitions. That isn't surprising, because many dictionaries define these concepts in terms of each other. For example, Dictionary.com offers accountable as one of the definitions of responsible, and responsible as one of the definitions of accountable. The problem is widespread enough to have drawn the attention of researchers. [McGrath 2018.1]

Adding complexity are two other factors: cultural idiosyncrasies and the complications that arise when we delegate responsibilities. Cultural idiosyncrasies create difficulties arising from small but important differences in the way people understand responsibility, for example. And delegating creates problems because the act of delegating can lead to changes in the distribution of responsibility, authority, and accountability across the people of the organization.

Three definitions

To illustrate these difficulties, consider formulating definitions of responsibility, authority, and accountability.

Responsibility

According to Dictionary.com, to be responsible is to be "answerable or accountable, as for something within one's power, control, or management." Thus, one's responsibilities include all items for which one is accountable; everything that is "within one's power, control, or management."

Authority

According to Dictionary.com, "Authority is the power to determine, adjudicate, or otherwise settle issues or disputes." Authority is usually conferred within a defined domain, such as a business unit or a field of specialty. Authority thus has a jurisdiction within which it confers the right to control, command, or determine a resolution of issues. The jurisdiction can be limited geographically or in some other way. But in organizations, jurisdiction also has limits in the nature of the issues it can address.

Accountability

According to Dictionary.com, accountability is "the state of being accountable, liable, or answerable." And to be accountable is to be "…subject to the obligation to report, explain, or justify something; responsible; answerable."

Next steps

With these definitions in hand, the next step is to overhaul the approach to delegation. Instead of just designating some individual as henceforth "responsible" for Task X, take explicit steps to redistribute authority, responsibility, and accountability for Task X. And those steps are the topic for next time.   Next issue in this series   Top    Next Issue

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Footnotes

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