Joseph Ellin's Commentary on "Question of Delegating Responsibilities"
Author(s):
Joseph Ellin
I
Poor Dan Dorset! After weeks of looking forward to his ski
trip, both it and his deposit are about to go down the
drain--and unnecessarily at that, because Jerry Taft is
qualified to supervise installation of the tardy equipment.
It's too bad Dan is going to lose his vacation, but he has no
choice, as his responsibility is to supervise installation of
the units. What can he do about it? It's not that he's without
recourse. What he can do is to try to get his company, Rancott,
to reimburse him for his lost condo payment, and perhaps give
him a free vacation to compensate for the one he lost. If he's
a valuable employee, this seems like a good investment on
Rancott's part. However if Dan doesn't think this option will
work out, there's no harm done in phoning home and seeing if
Rancott will let him leave early; perhaps there's another
engineer available who can fill in. Although Rancott has good
reasons for their policy of having one of their own engineers
supervise installations, it doesn't necessarily have to be Dan,
and in any case it is Rancott's company policy, not required by
law or contract. So they can make exceptions if they choose
(and Taft is said to be fully capable). But if Rancott turns
him down, he's got to sacrifice his vacation. You can't just
walk away from a job responsibility, even if you think nothing
will go wrong.
II
Later, Dan asks his chief, Ed, what Ed would have done if
Dan had taken the vacation. Ed replies that he probably would
have done nothing, at least not if nothing had gone wrong, but
nevertheless 'officially' he wouldn't have approved of Dan's
leaving, because to do so would be to risk his own neck. Is
this a defensible position for a chief to take? No: Ed's
position is mealy-mouthed and unconscionable. If he doesn't
think Dan is needed, he should give him permission to leave.
Since he won't authorize him to leave, and is afraid of "his
neck," this is an implicit admission that Dan is needed;
something might go wrong in Dan's absence. Ed is trying to be a
nice guy and 'reasonable' by not telling Dan straight away that
he isn't allowed to leave; he's afraid to authorize Dan to
leave and doesn't have the courage to order him to stay and do
the job. He wants to avoid making any definite decision so as
to appear blameless no matter what happens. Ed needs to learn
to accept the responsibilities of his position.
On the other hand, Dan's way of going about this is not
above reproach either. He has no right to push Ed into making
hypothetical commitments Ed is reluctant to make. His approach
to his lost vacation should be to request compensation from
Rancott; he ought to simply assume that he would have be
subject to disciplinary action if he absents himself from the
work site without authorization. In fact, this assumption is
part of his claim to compensation. Clearly, were it the case
that he would not have been disciplined, then his claim for
compensation is weaker, since in fact he would not have lost
anything had he taken the vacation.
III
In this scenario, Dan asks Ed for permission to leave, and
doesn't get it. Ed's avoidance of responsibility is at least
consistent: he won't authorize Dan's departure, but he won't
threaten punishment if Dan departs without authorization. On
the other hand, Ed isn't obligated to tell Dan what he would or
would not do if Dan takes unauthorized leave. Given that
nothing goes wrong, Ed might regard it as within his discretion
to overlook the infraction; there is no rule saying that every
infraction must be punished, nor is there any rule that he must
decide in advance and notify Dan whether he'll be disciplined
or not. Actual outcomes ought to be taken into account in
determining punishments (as they are in the law: the drunken
driver who kills someone is punished more severely than the
drunken driver who manages to get home safely). Dan knows the
rules and can assume violations will be punished. When Ed says
he's given Dan his assignment and the rest is up to him, this
is strictly speaking correct, (and in fact a tautology), but
Ed's problem is that he's saying this as a way of evading his
own responsibility to tell Dan in unmistakable terms that he's
supposed to be on the assignment. Ed is not giving orders, he's
covering his own neck.
Ed's position is that Dan takes the risk by leaving without
authorization; if something should go wrong, Ed will have no
choice but to come down on Dan. This is a fair position to
take, but not a fair proposition to put before Dan, who is
thereby not given any clear directives.
Given Ed's mealy-mouthed direction, and given that Dan
really thinks his own presence at the site is unnecessary,
would it be all right for Dan to leave? No, since he's not
authorized to do so; the fact that Jerry can do the job and
Rancott isn't legally obligated to have anyone present means
that Dan could very well have been allowed to leave; but he
wasn't. From his conversation with Ed, he's discovered that he
works for a boss who doesn't like to accept responsibility.
This makes it more difficult for Dan to make decisions, but
doesn't change the picture about this one. Even assuming that
he's correct in thinking that he isn't needed because nothing
will go wrong if he's not there (an assumption which may not be
justified), the fact remains that he's been told to be there
and so has no choice.
IV
Therefore Dan's decision to leave is wrong, and now he shows
that he's also dishonest and untrustworthy by being willing to
falsify documents and expecting Jerry to do so as well on his
behalf. Jerry would be a fool to sign, since obviously he's got
a lot to lose if something should go wrong. Since Dan knows
that Jerry will have to lie on his behalf, his willingness to
take the vacation involves more than (arguably, minor)
dereliction of duty on his own part, but subornation of
dishonesty as well. Now Jerry is forced to choose between
falsifying the documents, or in effect revealing that Dan took
unauthorized absence. Maybe Dan didn't foresee the dilemma this
creates for Jerry, or maybe he didn't think it would be a
dilemma because he thinks Jerry is just as dishonest as he is;
but the inevitability of putting his colleague on the spot in
this way is another argument against taking the leave.
V
In this scenario, Ed wants to leave early, not to take his
vacation, but to begin another assignment. It's not stated how
Dan got into this conflict. If he works under assignment from
Rancott company, the fact that he'll be late for the next job
is their problem which they can handle as they wish; since they
can't have their engineers in two places at once they'll have
to decide which is more important. Presumably Dan would point
out to Ed that he's needed elsewhere, and let Ed decide where
to send him. Whether Rancott sends someone else to look after
the other job, or seeks a delay from the client, or decides to
let Jerry finish the installation at Boulding, is not a problem
for Dan.
On the other hand perhaps the next assignment is one Dan is
doing on his own. In that case, given the constraints of the
question, Dan has a real problem that's not easily resolved,
since he's apparently got inconsistent ethical obligations, to
do work for two different employers at the same time. In the
first place, one wants to know how he got himself into this
situation. Presumably he relied on completing the Boulding job
on time, which turns out to have been unrealistic, so his
contract with the new client should have made allowance for
this. Second, one should look for a solution: maybe he can
overcome the late start and meet the deadline anyway, or
persuade the second client to waive the on-time completion
requirement, or persuade his boss Ed to let him leave the
Boulding site. But third, if no solution presents itself, Dan
will have to make some precise calculations. Since he can't
fulfill both obligations, he ought to fulfill the one that's
the most important. One consideration would be risk. Just how
risky is it to let Jerry finish the first job? Is it correct
that serious injuries may be possible from improperly installed
equipment on the Boulding job? Against this possibility, how
important is it to get the second job started on time? The
risks of late installation at the second site are not given: do
they involve safety, or just time and money for everybody? If
there are equal risks involved, or if the risks to safety at
the Boulding job are really insignificant, then if the second
job is very important for Dan in terms of compensation and
career advancement, he might be justified in opting for his
self-interest and letting Jerry finish at Boulding. But if he
does so, he'll take the risk that many other people won't agree
with this decision, and he'll be blamed if something goes on
the first job.
VI
The question of whether evaluations should be based on
actual outcomes or on foreseeable outcomes is important in law
and ethics, but the answers are not the same. In law, crime is
generally measured by the harm actually done rather than
foreseen or attempted; if you shoot at me and kill me you've
committed murder, but if you miss you've committed only
attempted murder. In ethics however the situation is different,
since ethics, which evaluates character as well as behavior,
depends much more heavily on intention than does law, which
regulates in the first instance behavior, not thinking. If you
do shoot at me, I might be thankful that you missed, but I'll
evaluate you by your murderous intention and not by your
inaccurate aim. Therefore ethical evaluation should be based on
what is intended or foreseeable rather than on what actually
happens. Putting aside all other considerations such as his
responsibility to his company, whether Dan's decision to leave
would be justifiable or not should depend on the risk he is
running rather than on what actually happens. equal unwarranted
risk deserves equal condemnation, regardless of actual outcomes
in the two cases. Since a bad outcome is said to be unlikely,
Dan's decision to leave, though wrong, is less to be condemned
than were the odds of an accident greater, whether or not the
bad outcome actually happens. However punishment is another
question, since to punish is a law-like activity rather than a
strictly ethical activity. Since punishment imposes harm on the
person punished, in part in order to compensate for the harm
he/she has done to some victim, there is always an argument
that punishment should be reduced where no actual harm has
occurred. Hence, two risks being equal, the one with no bad
outcome should be punished less than the one where the bad
outcome occurs; and it is at least open to question that
someone ought to be punished at all for taking a small, though
unwarranted, risk which does not in fact eventuate. It could be
said then that whether or not a person is subject to
punishment, should be determined by the risk he runs; but
whether the punishment be administered, and how much, by
outcomes. In actual fact, this seems to be Ed's position in II
and III. Since ethically however we judge Ed by his intention,
which is to save his own neck, and not by the actually outcome
of his reflection, which is to arrive at a philosophically
valid position, he gets little moral credit for it.