Management

Giving practical and relevant examples, discuss why managers are sceptical to delegate

The main purpose of delegation is to get the job done by someone else so that you, the manager, have more time for other, more difficult, tasks. To effectively delegate, you must give the entire authority of the task to the staff member you have selected to get the job done. This means not only reading instructions and filling out paperwork, but also the “decision making and changes which rely upon new information”. The staff member should be able to make decisions, whether good or bad, without referring back to the manager. By leaving the decisions to the delegated staff member, they use their own knowledge and initiative.

But in this day and time they are still managers who are not willing to delegate to their staff and the reasons are as follows

Unwillingness to Take Risks

Delegation of authority engenders apprehension that someone may take a wrong step somewhere or may make a wrong decision. What the leaders usually forget that to err is human. For instance, if a baby is not allowed [by his over-protective mother] to learn how to walk for fear of injury, he would never make a start. Similarly, if subordinates are not permitted to work on some matters where they could make mistakes, they would never develop the requisite confidence. How could the subordinates be developed and groomed for managerial positions if they are not provided chance for that? And, how would an organization meet its future needs for managers and leaders?

Dilemma of Delegation

Henry Mintzberg views delegation as the most significant managerial problem. He argues that while managers tend to delegate tasks involving only one specialist function, they feel cold-footed on the prospects of delegating tasks that cut across specialties or that involve the managers’ special information. Since a senior manager is usually in possession of relevant factual and valuable information, he is best suited to handle such tasks himself. But he cannot do everything alone. Some of these tasks have to be delegated. On consequences of retaining and monopolizing the privileged information by the managers

Fear of Being Exposed

As mentioned earlier, delegation of authority to lower levels is feared to result in goof-ups here and there. Therefore, many managers prefer to do things personally instead of leaving them to their untrustworthy subordinates. But, if a subordinate, given knowledge and authority, performs better than his manager; the incumbent manager might construe that his seniors or colleagues might view the better performance of his subordinate as manager’s inadequacy or incompetence. The end result being that centralization remains the best choice of such managers.