Both are responsible to ultimate decision-makers (shareholders and legislators), but there is a degree of ambiguity about objectives which allows latitude to those managing the firm/agency.

As a result, many young acts regard the A&R staff as the ultimate decision-makers: career makers or breakers, heroes or villains.

"He is the ultimate decision-maker," the manager said.

"It wasn't the ultimate decision-maker" in his choice to put the new company's first European operation in Northern Ireland.

Beginning now, he'd present policy decisions directly to the ultimate decision-makers.

The President is the ultimate decision-maker in national security.

We aren't the ultimate decision-makers - the board is.

For Pegram, those were the words he had been waiting to hear all spring from his friend, trainer and ultimate decision-maker.

"The culpability ran to the ultimate decision-maker, which was the former president," Thomas Yeager, chairman of the committee, said in a telephone conference call yesterday.

If you choose too many carbs and not enough vegetables, a pop up warning alerts you, but the system allows the client to be the ultimate decision-maker.