Decision Rights
The formally defined authority of specific roles or individuals to make particular types of decisions — specifying who can decide what.
Decision rights are the formal allocation of decision-making authority. They answer the question: "Who has the authority to decide this?"
Clear decision rights eliminate one of the most common governance failures: nobody knows who can make the decision, so either nobody makes it (paralysis) or someone makes it without authority (risk).
Decision rights can be defined at multiple levels: - Strategic decisions (board level) - Operational decisions (management level) - Technical decisions (team/individual level) - Financial decisions (based on amount thresholds) - AI agent decisions (based on trust level and domain)
Well-defined decision rights accelerate organisations by removing ambiguity. When people know they have the authority to decide, they decide faster and with less anxiety.
How Constellation handles this
Constellation defines decision rights in the Charter layer and enforces them through the governance gate. Decision rights are explicit, versioned, and enforceable — not implicit and ambiguous.