Determinants of Delegation: Evidence from British Establishment Data

Abstract

This paper provides an empirical analysis of firms’ delegation decisions by using a matched employer-employee dataset from Britain. In our analysis, we first investigate if firm-provided training is positively related to delegating authority, as predicted by the existing theories. We then consider variables that can potentially increase the value of delegation. In particular, we conjecture that firms become more likely to delegate authority as they face higher uncertainty or as the employees acquire more precise information. To test these hypotheses, we use market conditions to measure uncertainty and correlates of worker productivity to measure the precision of the employee’s information