Organising — Business Studies STD 12 Commerce — Question
CBSE BoardEnglish MediumSTD 12 CommerceBusiness StudiesOrganising6 Marks
Question
Explain the meaning and process of delegation of authority.
✓
Answer
Meaning: Delegation of authority is the process of entrusting responsibility and authority, and creating accountability of the person to whom work or responsibility has been handed over. Process: The three elements, i.e., responsibility, authority and accountability of delegation process are completed in the following serial order:
Assigning Responsibility - Granting Authority - Fixing Accountability
Assigning Responsibility: The first step in the delegation process is assigning responsibility. Often, no officer is capable to the extent that he can perform all activities on his own. For his successful work performance he divides the whole job. In this way, he keeps critical/ crucial/ significant jobs for himself and delegates the rest to his subordinates. While assigning job/ responsibility to the subordinates, their capability and skill are kept in mind. For example, a finance manager keeps the job of financing for himself and delegates rest of the jobs like Accounting, Data Collection, etc. to his subordinates.
Granting Authority: The second step in the delegation process is granting authority for successful work performance. Assigning responsibility sans authority to the subordinates is meaningless. Thus, all needed authorities should be delegated for the fulfilment of a responsibility. For example, when a chief manager delegates responsibility of Purchase Department to the Purchase Manager, then he gives authority to the purchase manager like purchasing raw-material, stocking inventory, division of work among his subordinates, etc.
Fixing Accountability: The last step in the delegation process is to hold subordinates accountable for their work performance. Every subordinate is just accountable to that officer who delegates authority for the fulfilment of job/ responsibility. Accountability means, justification demanded by the superior for the work performance.
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