Why is responsibility greater at the top of a bureaucratic hierarchy?

In a bureaucratic hierarchy, responsibility is greater at the top because authority is organized to facilitate coordination and control across the entire organization. While a bureaucracy is divided into specialized units with specific jurisdictional competencies, these responsibilities broaden as one moves upward through the hierarchy.12

This structure functions by delegating tasks with decreasing discretion to lower levels, while the top of the hierarchy retains the ultimate capacity to coordinate disparate elements and prevent organizational parochialism. Consequently, the principle of ministerial responsibility often suggests that the onus of accountability moves upward, as higher-level officials possess the necessary knowledge and authority to intervene in decision-making processes. By concentrating authority at the top, the organization ensures that someone is ultimately answerable for the collective actions and outcomes of the various units beneath them.13