Subsidiarity and Hierarchies

The idea of "subsidiarity" came up today at a church meeting. The idea is that affairs ought to be handled at the lowest, most decentralized level. An individual congregation, for example, and not the denomination ought to discipline church members. The term is a Roman Catholic one.

The discussion made me think of the following problem. Suppose we have a worker who is misbehaving. It makes sense for his immediate boss to discipline him, since the boss knows the situation best. His immediate boss, however, likes his employees and is reluctant to bear the emotional cost of intervening. Thus, it may actually work out better to have the top boss-- or some central committee-- begin the discipline process. Perhaps the immediate boss can then handle details, having been positioned as the friend of the worker rather than as the "tough guy".

This reminds me of the style of hierarchy models in economics. I'm not sure whether modelling is useful here or not.