Directorate of distance education master of business administration

Theoretical Foundations of Delegation
 
The classical principle of delegation states that decisions should 
be made at the lowest organization level.. Management By Exception 
(MBE) involves delegation. It hints at Frederick W Taylor’s exception 
principle, which stated that managers should control by giving major 
attention mainly to the exceptional cases and situations. Larry Greiner’s 
model of life cycle of an organization includes a period in which 
the growth happens through delegation after a highly directive top 
management evokes resentment and cry for autonomy among the rank 
and file employees in the organization. 
The life cycle theory of leadership developed by Paul Hersey 
and Kenneth Blanchard focuses on the maturity of the followers as a 
contingency variable affecting the style of leadership and the possibility 
of delegation by a leader. According to this viewpoint, the extent to 
which a leader adopts a delegating style, which involves low degrees of 
consideration for task as well as for people, depends on both the job 
maturity and psychological maturity of the members of any work group. 
The maturity is gauged by the extent to which they are both able and 
willing to be accountable for their responsibility towards task performance 
and require little guidance and direction. Degree of delegation could be 
gradually increased to suit the progress of an employee. 
A manager who delegates authority does not permanently dispose 
of it, but continues to share the responsibility for completion of the task. 

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Delegated authority therefore can always be regained. Delegation could 
be general or specific, in oral or written form. Delegation is essential for 
proper performances, as no person can perform all the work by himself. 
Besides reducing the burden of higher-level managers and thereby 
enabling them to concentrate on more important matters, delegation 
improves quality of decisions, by moving the decision-making closest to 
the scene of activity. 
Delegation improves motivation, initiative and creativity and 
also helps out in the development of managers in the junior echelons of 
organizations by exposing them adequately towards complex decision-
making.  Whatever might be the beneficial outcomes of delegating, there 
are common barriers to delegation. Reluctance to part with power and 
over-confidence of the supervisors and a belief that no one else can do 
the task better than them, are a few of the barriers at the level of the 
delegating administrator. It takes courage to delegate because delegation 
does not absolve one from the ultimate responsibility.  Often it is seen 
that responsibility is feared as much as authority is sought after. 
At the recipient’s level, the barriers could be due to inequitable 
distribution of work and the resultant overburden, or fear of failure, 
fear of premature display of inadequacies of oneself, lack or trust 
in the motives behind delegation, or merely a lack of motivation or 
perceived incompetence on the part of the person who has to fulfill the 
requirements in terms of the delegated tasks. According to Mishra, M.N. 
(2001), “delegation would be successful where a wide range of people are 
involved, where the work provides intrinsic job satisfaction, the work 
group members accept the management’s objectives, the employee-
employer relations are harmonious, consistency and coordination are 
prevalent, and where technology permits individual autonomy and 
subordinates welcome responsibility.” 
Delegation would be possible only if the higher authority possesses 
willingness to trust the subordinates and to allow them to make mistakes 
and learn from the process. If a manager clearly delegates authority 
to undertake a well-defined task, a properly trained subordinate can 
get it done with a minimum of the supervisor’s time, attention and 
involvement.  In the context of delegation, managers need to accept 
that there are several ways to complete a job and that their own ways 

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of solving them are not necessarily those that their subordinates would 
choose. Superiors could be induced to delegate more by making them