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On the Notion of Responsibility in Organizations

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  • Sliwka, Dirk

    (University of Cologne)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Sliwka, Dirk, 2004. "On the Notion of Responsibility in Organizations," IZA Discussion Papers 1423, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1423
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Lazear, Edward P & Rosen, Sherwin, 1981. "Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 841-864, October.
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    Cited by:

    1. Björn Bartling & Urs Fischbacher, 2012. "Shifting the Blame: On Delegation and Responsibility," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(1), pages 67-87.
    2. Florian Engl, 2022. "A Theory of Causal Responsibility Attribution," CESifo Working Paper Series 9898, CESifo.
    3. Feltus, Christophe & Petit, Michaël & Dubois, Eric, 2014. "Improving Responsibility modelling in Enterprise Architecture, Case Study in the Healthcare Sector," MPRA Paper 77313, University Library of Munich, Germany.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    reputation; career concern; responsibility; delegation; incentives;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
    • M12 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Personnel Management; Executives; Executive Compensation

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