Empowerment and the Dark Side of Delegation

The existing delegation literature has focused on different preferences of principal and agent concerning project selection, which makes delegating authority costly for the principal. This paper shows that delegation has a cost even when the preferences of principal and agent are exogenously aligned. As application, the commitment effect of empowerment is considered, which has been addressed by the management and social psychology literature. In addition, it is shown that even in a setting without task commitment and other behavioral effects the principal might forgo delegation though being efficient.