Influence Without Visible Authorship

Influence Without Visible Authorship: Information, Decision Autonomy, and Responsibility in Leader–Deputy Relationships This paper examines how a leader may retain formal decision-making authority while another person influences the information, interpretations, and alternatives that shape the decision. Using a conceptual and theoretical approach, the study explores the relationship between trust, informational dependence, informal power, decision autonomy, and responsibility in leader–deputy relationships. It draws on existing research in organizational decision-making, power, advice-taking, and personal autonomy. The paper proposes the Visible Ownership–Influence Divergence Model to distinguish informational advantage, dependence, control over decision options, intentional manipulation, and causal influence on final decisions. It also introduces the Option Integrity Principle, which argues that advisers should not deliberately conceal important information or reasonable alternatives to secure their preferred outcome. Through three hypothetical scenarios leading to the same final decision, the study demonstrates how formal decision ownership can remain unchanged while the autonomy and ethical quality of the decision-making process differ. The central argument is that a decision can remain formally attributable to its leader even when the conditions under which it was formed have been intentionally influenced or restricted by another actor. This work is a conceptual research paper. It does not present original empirical data, and its proposed model has not yet been empirically tested. Publication status: Preprint; not peer-reviewed. Keywords: Decision autonomy, informal power, leadership, leader–deputy relationships, informational dependence, decision-making, manipulation, organizational behavior.