On the Notion of Responsibility in Organizations

Dirk Sliwka

No 1423, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We derive a natural definition of responsibility in a formal model where employees care for their career prospects: A superior holds a subordinate responsible for a task, when she announces her beliefs that this subordinate contributes most to this task. We show, that those announced beliefs lead to a self fulfilling prophecy as the reputation of the responsible subordinate then is affected by the outcome of the task and he therefore has strong incentives to contribute to its success. There are equilibria where either a single agent or no agent is responsible for a task but joint responsibility never arises. Several extensions are discussed.

Keywords: reputation; career concern; responsibility; delegation; incentives (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D23 M12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2004-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
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Published - published in: Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 2006, 22(2), 523-547

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Journal Article: On the Notion of Responsibility in Organizations (2006)
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