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Authority
is the capacity of an individual or institution to secure compliance from others based on
the possession of a recognized right to legitimately claim obedience.
Authority is obeyed because the individual or institution
issuing commands is believed to have the right to do so.
Max Weber (1864-1920) defined three ideal types of authority:
Traditional Authority, which rests on history, myth and
ritual;
Charismatic Authority, founded on a belief in a leader's
exceptional qualities and inspirational mission; and
Rational-legal Authority, founded on democratic principles and
a framework of law to which all individuals and institutions are subject.
Legally authority is based on a belief in the
‘legality’ of patterns of normative rules and the right of those elevated to
authority infer such rules to issue commands. Under the control of legal authority,
obedience is attributed to the legally established impersonal order. It extends to the
persons exercising the authority of office under it only by virtue of the formal legality
of their commands and only within the scope of authority of the office.
Max Weber's Authority Models and the Theory of
X-Inefficiency: The Economic Sociologist's Analysis Adds More Structure to Leibenstein's
Critique of Rationality
By Stanley Vanagunas
American Journal of Economics and Sociology - Volume 48 Issue 4 Page 393 - October 1989
doi:10.1111/j.1536-7150.1989.tb02125.x Volume 48 Issue 4
Abstract: Harvey leibenstein's theory of X-efficiency holds that behavioral
considerations, such as motivation of workers or the quality of managerial decisions, are
the major restraints on the productivity of modern organizations. It envisions economic
behaviors which are not fully rational; that is, behaviors which fall far short of the
maximization postulate so central to neo-classical microeconomics. The theory is
significant for it, contrary to the prevailing view, seeks to explain suboptimality
primarily as a function of factors internal to the Jirm rather than those that are
objectively external, such as the market structure in which the firm finds itself. The
X-efficiency framework is enhanced by the application of several salient concepts in the
economic thought of Max Weber. He, in contrast to most of his contemporaries, engaged in
economic analysis, but he never accepted the maximization postulate. He considered such
formal economic rationality to be a very rare, almost an exceptional case of economic
behavior the norm was something substantially less rational. Weber therefore categorized
economic activity by its degree of rationality and linked such activity to types of
authority exercised in its pursuit. - blackwell-synergy.com
BETWIXT AND BETWEEN: ‘TRADITIONAL AUTHORITY’ AND DEMOCRATIC DECENTRALIZATION
IN POST-WAR MOZAMBIQUE
HARRY G WEST and SCOTT KLOECK-JENSON
The end of civil war in Mozambique has been accompanied by democratization of political
processes, as exemplified by the 1994 multi-party presidential and parliamentary
elections. Under the rubric of democratization, the issue of state decentralization has
also been raised. Current political debates focus on what role ‘traditional
authority’ might play in local governance. Advocates argue that ‘traditional
authority’ constitutes a genuinely African form of local governance, while detractors
suggest that these institutions were irrevocably corrupted by their involvement with the
colonial administration. This article challenges not only the black-and-white framework in
which the present-day ‘legitimacy’ of ‘traditional authority’ has been
debated, but also questions the value of the term ‘traditional authority’
itself. The article explores the diverse histories of kin-based political institutions in
Mozambique, arguing that the meaning and function of ‘traditional authority’ has
been transformed many times over with changes in the larger political contexts in which
local institutions have existed. As a result of historical events, the issue of
‘traditional authority’ is, today, intimately bound up with the divide between
the ruling FRELIMO party and the opposition, RENAMO. Only by approaching the issue of
‘traditional authority’ through an understanding of its variegated and
contentious history will policy-makers and Mozambican residents alike be able to transcend
existing political divides on issues of local governance. -
afraf.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/98/393/455
Challenging traditional authority
The role of the state, the divine and the RSS
Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol. 39, No. 1, 39-73 (2005) DOI:
10.1177/006996670503900102 © 2005 SAGE Publications
Peggy Froerer. Peggy Froerer is at Department of Anthropology, School of Social Sciences
and Law, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK. Email: peggy.froerer@brunel.ac.uk
This article is an examination of the relationship between traditional authority and the
state, using a leadership dispute in a rural adivasi village as the ethnographic backdrop.
The primary objective of the article is to examine how traditional authority continues to
be reproduced in the context of local notions of political and cosmological legitimacy. It
shows how the state can simultaneously buttress and transform traditional authority. By
looking at the processes by which the state is experienced by local people, the article
also illuminates the relationship that people have with lower–level state officials.
Finally, the article sheds light on one way in which Hindu nationalism is making inroads
into this particular adivasi community, and addresses the implications of how the RSS,
acting as an extra–state power, is used to enforce accountability at a lower level. -
cis.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/39/1/39
Charismatic Authority in the Rational Organization
Lowell K. Scott, Office of Educational Development, School of Medicine, University of
Alabama in Birmingham
Educational Administration Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 2, 43-62 (1978) DOI:
10.1177/0013131X7801400204 © 1978 University Council for Educational Administration
A rationale for the antithesis of Weber's theory of the routinization of charisma is
presented. The hypothesis that charismatic authority is a function of the superintendent's
tenure in office was tested using a random sample of Kentucky school superintendents,
stratified by tenure in office. Superintendents' charismatic authority was evaluated by
their administrative staffs using the Charismatic Authority Scale. Superintendents in the
high tenure group were perceived as possessing greater charismatic authority than
superintendents in the low and medium tenure groups. District size and superintendent's
age were not significantly related to charismatic authority. -
eaq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/14/2/43
Social Studies of Science, Vol. 30, No. 4, 545-590 (2000) DOI: 10.1177/030631200030004003
© 2000 SAGE Publications
Who Was J. Robert Oppenheimer? - Charisma and Complex Organization
Charles Thorpe, Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego, La
Jolla, California 92093-0533, USA; fax: +1 858 534 4753; cthorpe@weber.ucsd.edu
Steven Shapin, Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla,
California 92093-0533, USA; fax: +1 858 534 4753; sshapin@ucsd.edu
Charismatic authority flourishes in places where some social scientists evidently do not
expect to find it - in late modernity and in highly complex and instrumentally orientated
technoscientific organizations. This paper documents and interprets participants'
testimony about the workings of wartime Los Alamos in relation to the charisma of its
Scientific Director, J. Robert Oppenheimer. We treat charisma as an interactional
accomplishment, and examine its röle in technoscientific organizations. Los Alamos was a
hybrid place, positioned at the intersection of military, industrial and academic forms.
Everyday life there was marked by a high degree of normative uncertainty. Structures of
authority, communication and the division of labour were contested and unclear. The
interactional constitution of Oppenheimer as charismatic enabled him to articulate, vouch
for and, finally, come to embody a conception of legitimate organizational order as
collegial, egalitarian and communicatively open. We offer concluding speculations about
the continuing importance of charismatic authority in contemporary technoscientific
organizations. Just as normative uncertainty is endemic in late modernity, so too, we
argue, is charisma. - sss.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/30/4/545
Weber, M. (1958). "The three types of legitimate rule". Berkeley Publications in
Society and Institutions, 4 (1): 1-11. Translated by Hans Gerth. |
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