Superiors informally delegate consequential decisions to frontline subordinates they depend on

Evidence

Lower-level participants may also refuse to make decisions that their superiors are formally obliged to make, at some costs to superiors. Doctors who informally delegate dosage decisions to ward attendants, or judges who informally allocate sentencing decisions to probation officers, are dependent on their hierarchical subordinates for the smooth functioning of their jobs. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 226

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: Judges quietly allocating sentencing to probation officers, and doctors to ward attendants, is a ready-made scene of power-inversion for fiction about who really decides a life outcome.
• XREF: connects to: Managers depend on street-level subordinates because sanctioned discretion precludes intervention — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 223; Subordinates act cruelly when authorities take responsibility for the consequences — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 401; Under-resourced discretion lets tentative shortcut judgments harden into authoritative decisions — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 968

Broader Connections

• Subordinates act cruelly when authorities take responsibility for the consequences #qualifies (0.85) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 401
• Under-resourced discretion lets tentative shortcut judgments harden into authoritative decisions #expands (0.80) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 968