Delegation as a communicative act: a logical analysis

Delegation is one of the main determinants of coordination, joint activity and collaboration within the context of organizations. In particular, delegation is the fundamental aspect for the redistribution and for the transfer of tasks within the context of an organization, and it is responsible for making organizations dynamic. We present in this paper a conceptual and formal analysis of delegation. In our approach, delegation is intrinsically a communicative act of directive type, that is a communicative act whose essential condition is to induce the hearer to perform a certain action. The concept of delegation and its essential condition will then be formalized by a logic which combines the expressiveness of dynamic logic and Standard Deontic Logic (SDL) with that of a logic of belief and choice.