Showing Weakness to Siphon off Power from Your Boss : Decode the Power Centralization - Delegation in Authoritarian Hierarchical Organizations

In any authoritarian hierarchical organization, there is an eternal conflict between the leader and his subordinates: the leader must ensure that he control the power to avoid losing his throne due to the challenge from those capable subordinates, while the latter try their utmost to seize as much power as possible from the former, even to an extent to replace the leader. We analyze how the interactions between a leader and a subordinate affect the former’s decision of centralizing and decentralizing power to the latter: the leader tries to avoid to decentralize power to a competent subordinate, while in the meantime he is willing to decentralize power to a mediocre subordinate so that the latter can accomplish necessary tasks with least cost. A competent subordinate thus has an incentive of hiding his true capacity and pretending to be a mediocre in front of his boss to siphon off power from the latter. The competent subordinate can do this by intentionally leaving the tasks assigned by his boss partially finished, therefore sending a phony signal to the leader that he is a mediocre. The leader must make the final decision on decentralization or centralization based on the signal sent by the subordinate. In this dynamic setting the leader can be deceived to decentralize power to a subordinate who is ready to unseat him. This study sheds light on the change of power balance in authoritarian hierarchical system, including authoritarian countries and modern companies