Confident authority in assessments can relieve decision-makers of accountability

Evidence

In a way, she finds it a relief that Mr. Fischer, the company’s longtime personnel manager, is involved in the selection process. With his patriarchal demeanor, rumbling voice and always somewhat intrusive sense of humor, Mr. Fischer seems a bit of a dinosaur in the company’s young management ranks. Among colleagues, it is said that he is still in his position primarily because he “keeps the labor union folks under control”. His unshakable confidence in his own judgment fills Sophie with a kind of comforting resignation: as long as he agrees with the new hire, she may not have found the most suitable employee, but in any case she will never have to justify her decision. — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 54

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes social-psychology work on authority, accountability diffusion, and the appeal of decisive experts. — connects to: Accountability is responsive behavior, not merely answering to superiors — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1156