Accountability and Authority - by Arnold Kling

A few years ago, I discussed bureaucracy with Russ Roberts. These issues keep coming up, and I think it is a podcast worth revisiting. One excerpt of what I said:

a major characteristic of bureaucracy. One of its functions, it's certainly not--maybe it's even intended, but often unintended--is to diffuse blame to the point where you don't have anyone you can blame. And so, businesses discovered, especially in 1980s and 1990s, that you wanted to have people accountable. You wanted the CEO [Chief Executive Officer] to be able to point a finger and say who was responsible for something, because CEOs were actually encountering their own bureaucracy and not being able to figure out who had made a decision, and so on.

Most individuals want more authority with less accountability. Bureaucracy will naturally evolve in the direction of diffusing accountability, if you let it. In business, the top executives constantly have to fight this tendency. In government, there is no one to fight this tendency, so it proceeds unchecked.

Job descriptions are rarely this precise. A job description that includes verbs such as “prepares,” “monitors,” or “handles” is particularly likely to be for a position that lacks accountability.

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