TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Sliwka, Dirk
        TI  - On the Notion of Responsibility in Organizations
        PY  - 2004/Dec/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 1423
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp1423
        AB  - 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.
        KW  - reputation
KW  - career concern
KW  - responsibility
KW  - delegation
KW  - incentives
        ER  -