Delegation
Delegation – the assignment of tasks to another person, team or a function – requires decision-making patterns in a whole row of guiding processes.
In the first instance, decision-making rights are transferred in the social dimension and communication paths are decided (guiding process decision-maker); at the same time these must be coupled with trust and/or control (guiding process social complexity). The person or persons – guiding process personnel – must be observed to see if they are suited for this.
In the factual dimension internal positions are coupled to one another by means of delegation (guiding process networking), in the guiding processes decision orientation (“Consider this during…!”) and quality focus (“I would like a report about this by Monday!”), an orientation, explicit or implicit, is delegated with it.
Along with the delegation it is assumed that the agreement is maintained (guiding process handling the past), and it is decided which adaptation scope is connected with the delegation (empowerment for rule setting and permissions for exceptions = guiding process handling the present). Those who delegate, expose themselves to new risks (“Quality could suffer if I don’t do it myself!”), those to whom a task has been delegated face new dangers (“Whatever else could now happen!“), as well as new risks (“Will management be satisfied with me?”)
. One can see that such an everyday organisational dynamic process such as delegation requires all the existing decision-making premises and patterns in the organisation and, therefore, it is not very sensible to hand out recipes about how ‘correct’ delegation should be done.