You might be interested in Stephen Crane's excellent story "When a man falls, a crowd gathers" (1894) about the responsibility of citizens when emergency response has been professionalized (all that was a mid-19th c phenomenon in NYC). Crane, like you, sees how easily the presence of many people becomes an excuse for each person to do very little. I think about this story all the time.
I think the concept is a useful one and describes a real area of concern but, in practice, I think it's not at all easy to draw the lines for what counts as over-delegation.
Yes, someone calling the police in response to a sexist joke is pretty clearly a bad idea.
But is it wrong to make a report to HR if a supervisor tells a sexist joke? If they repeatedly tell sexist jokes?
Is it wrong to call the police if someone in a pub looks like they are repeatedly trying to provoke a fight?
Part of the issue is that, I believe, given a case in which there is socially widespread behavior that has negative impacts but is such that any individual case is fairly minor changing that is likely to require both changing norms and some element of punishment (which is disproportionate in the individual case).
I say that thinking of the example of littering. If we didn't have a law against littering it would seem absurd to call the police just because someone threw trash on the side of the road but changing behaviors around littering involved both social persuasion and establishing fines for littering.
as i say at the end, working out this stuff is part of the really hard work of trying to act morally -- but there are some clear cases of over-delegation (as a specific issue, as opposed to other problems that arise around adjudicating these things) that can help us :)
Thanks for the reply. I do think I was trying to pull on too many different threads.
I was thinking about it overnight and I might summarize my position as, "if you think that someone is making a mistake, the concept of 'over-delegation' is helpful in explaining the reason. But if you're unsure whether someone is doing the right thing or not asking the question, 'is this over-delegation' is unlikely to help clarify. For challenging cases it will take the same amount of effort to consider the specific circumstances of the decision regardless of whether you invoke the idea of over-delegation or not."
So, I don't think it's a simplifying concept, but I do think it's descriptive.
I will say that the reason I started thinking about the various different threads was your final line, "As soon as you start thinking about the over-delegation problem, you’ll see it everywhere."
That encouraged me to ask the questions of, "do I see this everywhere?"
One other example that occurred to me. The well-known SF author John Scalzi has a policy that he will only attend conventions that have a sexual harassment policy which is publicized and which they make a commitment to pay attention to:
Does this push towards or away from an over-delegation problem? On one hand he's directly taking an action himself. As he says in his follow-up (in response to an imagined question asking if he really thinks that he should be able to control what conventions do): https://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/07/05/convention-harassment-policy-follow-up/
"Conventions are entirely free to do what they want. What I am doing is setting conditions for my participation in their convention. If they want me, this is what I require. Other guests might have other requirements: For example, some guests might require business class air travel rather than economy. They might require that they only have to do two events a day. They might require a room with handicapped access and an aide to help them navigate the convention. And so on. This is something I now require. And for me it’s a non-negotiable."
That seems like an entirely admirable position to take.
On the other hand sexual harassment policies are not self-enforcing. Attendees at a Con with a sexual harassment policy may well find themselves in the position of calling Con security if they think someone is behaving inappropriately. Is that a problem? The answer depends on how clear the policy and enforcement steps are -- which still leaves me with the feeling that it's useful to have the concept of over-delegation, but it doesn't necessarily resolve or simplify the questions of, "what is best way to handle this?"
You might be interested in Stephen Crane's excellent story "When a man falls, a crowd gathers" (1894) about the responsibility of citizens when emergency response has been professionalized (all that was a mid-19th c phenomenon in NYC). Crane, like you, sees how easily the presence of many people becomes an excuse for each person to do very little. I think about this story all the time.
Link: https://loa-shared.s3.amazonaws.com/static/pdf/Crane_When_Man_Falls.pdf
sounds excellent -- i will read it! thank you, Hollis!
I think the concept is a useful one and describes a real area of concern but, in practice, I think it's not at all easy to draw the lines for what counts as over-delegation.
Yes, someone calling the police in response to a sexist joke is pretty clearly a bad idea.
But is it wrong to make a report to HR if a supervisor tells a sexist joke? If they repeatedly tell sexist jokes?
Is it wrong to call the police if someone in a pub looks like they are repeatedly trying to provoke a fight?
Part of the issue is that, I believe, given a case in which there is socially widespread behavior that has negative impacts but is such that any individual case is fairly minor changing that is likely to require both changing norms and some element of punishment (which is disproportionate in the individual case).
I say that thinking of the example of littering. If we didn't have a law against littering it would seem absurd to call the police just because someone threw trash on the side of the road but changing behaviors around littering involved both social persuasion and establishing fines for littering.
as i say at the end, working out this stuff is part of the really hard work of trying to act morally -- but there are some clear cases of over-delegation (as a specific issue, as opposed to other problems that arise around adjudicating these things) that can help us :)
Thanks for the reply. I do think I was trying to pull on too many different threads.
I was thinking about it overnight and I might summarize my position as, "if you think that someone is making a mistake, the concept of 'over-delegation' is helpful in explaining the reason. But if you're unsure whether someone is doing the right thing or not asking the question, 'is this over-delegation' is unlikely to help clarify. For challenging cases it will take the same amount of effort to consider the specific circumstances of the decision regardless of whether you invoke the idea of over-delegation or not."
So, I don't think it's a simplifying concept, but I do think it's descriptive.
I will say that the reason I started thinking about the various different threads was your final line, "As soon as you start thinking about the over-delegation problem, you’ll see it everywhere."
That encouraged me to ask the questions of, "do I see this everywhere?"
One other example that occurred to me. The well-known SF author John Scalzi has a policy that he will only attend conventions that have a sexual harassment policy which is publicized and which they make a commitment to pay attention to:
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/07/02/my-new-convention-harassment-policy/
Does this push towards or away from an over-delegation problem? On one hand he's directly taking an action himself. As he says in his follow-up (in response to an imagined question asking if he really thinks that he should be able to control what conventions do): https://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/07/05/convention-harassment-policy-follow-up/
"Conventions are entirely free to do what they want. What I am doing is setting conditions for my participation in their convention. If they want me, this is what I require. Other guests might have other requirements: For example, some guests might require business class air travel rather than economy. They might require that they only have to do two events a day. They might require a room with handicapped access and an aide to help them navigate the convention. And so on. This is something I now require. And for me it’s a non-negotiable."
That seems like an entirely admirable position to take.
On the other hand sexual harassment policies are not self-enforcing. Attendees at a Con with a sexual harassment policy may well find themselves in the position of calling Con security if they think someone is behaving inappropriately. Is that a problem? The answer depends on how clear the policy and enforcement steps are -- which still leaves me with the feeling that it's useful to have the concept of over-delegation, but it doesn't necessarily resolve or simplify the questions of, "what is best way to handle this?"