CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.0         BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Management is an important process that ensure the existence of an organization and the achievement of its goals and objective. According to  Nwachukwu (1988) management is the “guidance or direction of people toward organizational goal or objectives”.   Follet (1987) defined management as “the art of getting things done through people”.

The basic managerial functions of planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting and budgeting all involved the display of organizational skills, administrative fact, personal initiative, executive talent and dynamism on the part of the manager.  This therefore calls for delegation of authority to his or her inferior officers.

Delegation according to Nwachukwu (1988) is “the organizational process that permit the transfer of authority from a superior to a subordinate”. Delegation of authority empowers a subordinate to make commitments use resources and take action in relation to duties assigned to him.  It also enables the superior to share responsibility with his subordinate. Nwachukwu (1988) points out that when one delegates three major factors are implicit, thus:

i.        There is assignment of responsibility

ii.       There is delegation of authority

iii.       There is creation of accountability.

          According to Bartol and Martin (1987) “Delegation is a mean of vertical coordination related to issue of decentralization and centralization.  It is the assignment of part of managers work to others along with both the responsibility from one level of the organization to the next lower level”.