Accountability
Accountability is a duty to answer for the success or failure of a decision. For example, the CEO of a company is accountable for every decision the firm makes.Responsibility
Responsibility is the duty to make a decision. A person may be both accountable and responsible for a decision or these roles may be separated. For example, a manager may be accountable for a technical decision and a software architect responsible for making the decision. This means the manager doesn't make the decision but has the power to step in and overrule the decision. Both the manager and architect have a duty to answer for the decision.Delegation
Delegation is the process of granting your decision making authority to another person. You can delegate responsibility but accountability can't be delegated. This means that you still have to answer for the success or failure of a decision that you have delegated. For example, a manager may delegate a business analyst to develop requirements for a project. The manager may step in and overrule the business analyst on any decision made. If the project fails due to poor requirements both the manager and business analyst are to blame. However, the manager holds greater duty and may choose to accept all responsibility for failure.Approval Processes
Decisions may require approvals from multiple individuals and/or groups according to a predefined approval process. This may be done to validate a decision from different points of view or to gain broad support for a decision. Approval processes are also a common type of internal control that implement segregation of duties. For example, a manager may approve an employee's business expenses and then the expense report is forwarded to an accounting team for approval.Consensus
Decisions that require the consensus of a group. This may follow a predefined process such as a vote or may be left up to the group to decide. In some cases, groups make poor decisions that reflect compromises as opposed to a coherent decision. A common alternative to consensus is to allow groups to discuss a decision but have a leader make the final call.Automated Decisions
Decision authority always lies with a person and can't be delegated to a machine. Decisions made by machines are based on the authority of the managers who operate the systems making the decision. As such, managers remain accountable and responsible for the decisions made by systems under their control.| Overview: Decision Authority | ||
Type | ||
Definition | The right, power or obligation to make a decision and the duty to answer for its success or failure. | |
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