The first course on management used to teach students that authority must match responsibility. However, modern management favours specialization: some specializes in accumulating authority without responsibility, while others are left with responsibility without authority.
Management courses used to teach students that if you give someone the responsibility to do a task, you must give him/her matching authority to perform his duty. Similarly, if you give someone the authority to do a task, that person must take responsibility if the task fails. When I was a student, I found that reasonable.
Those who allocates responsibility, the managers, determines who has how much authority and responsibilities. Without checks and balances, it is tempting for a manager to accumulate authority and avoid responsibility. By keeping the authority to them, they can take advantage of it. They can use existing authority to accumulate more authority. On the other hand, it is in their advantage to put all the responsibilities on their subordinates. If anything goes wrong, they can blame those who the manager assigns the responsibility. The management can take the credit for any success.
Those who love power will seek power. Once they gain power, they will not hesitate to exploit it. Natural selection will lead to the following evolution: Since the management determines who has authority and who takes what responsibility, managers will specialize in accumulating authority without authority. Their subordinates will be left with all responsibilities, but without any authority to do their jobs. That would be the path of natural evolution, observable from all aging organizations. It normally takes external authority to change the equilibrium.
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