Addressing Authority in Contemporary Organizations

Have you identified the main sources of authority within your organization?...

Authority raises the question of power and its legitimacy, and it is omnipresent within organizations. Authority is closely linked to the personal history of leaders, their aspirations, and their ambitions, but also to the culture of their organization, which informs and influences through its norms and regulations how to behave appropriately, by valuing certain attitudes and sanctioning others.

Facing Authority

Given the challenges and issues that businesses face, it sometimes seems relevant to explore authority:

- What are the main sources of authority within the organization?
- How are they expressed in practice?
- How do they impact relationships and the functioning of the organization?

By recognizing and naming authority, by uncovering it, we can better understand it and possibly question it, in order to consider new ways of acting. It becomes possible to let go of certain forms of implicit authority, which may have been useful in the past at certain points in the company’s history but are now obsolete or even counterproductive.

The Influence of Society

The forms that authority takes evolve with the individuals who make up organizations, with the relationships they have with each other, and also in connection with the contexts in which authority is exercised. Authority is always based on beliefs, which sometimes have never been questioned, despite the evidence of "real-world" circumstances.

Since companies do not operate in a vacuum, they are also affected by societal changes. No company, no matter how hierarchical, no matter how "strong" or "rooted" its culture is, can remain impervious to the "spirit of the times" and the outside world; this is crucial for its survival.

Authority in Networks

In our time, networks are no longer an abstract concept but an omnipresent reality, facilitated by the spread of the Internet. As a result, hierarchical power structures are increasingly challenged by networked power. While power has long been understood as something held by hierarchies, it is now increasingly seen and approached as a relationship between individuals.

In networks, traditional power based on coercion gives way to an authority based on influence, which is expressed through participation, complementarity, and collaboration. This authority derives its legitimacy from the sharing of knowledge and experience, as well as the ability to engage and connect with individual aspirations. Some current forms of leadership seem to respond to this evolution of contemporary reality by emphasizing inspiration and sharing, even co-creation of meaning, rather than domination.

A Strategic and Emotional Challenge

However, the evolution of authority forms poses a real challenge for businesses, both strategic and emotional. It affects the very structure of the organization, disrupts deeply ingrained habits, and destabilizes power relationships. It is not enough to rationally acknowledge that a new distribution of power could benefit the organization.

When constraints and orders lose their effectiveness, some organizations may tend to maintain control by shifting towards an authority based on seduction, which could verge on emotional manipulation and the desire to persuade. This would involve capitalizing on fears and desires such as the will to power, the need for recognition, and the need to belong to the group. While this approach may be effective in the short term, it risks compromising trust and the integrity of relationships within the organization.

The Pitfalls of Authority

An emblematic scene* from the movie The Wolf of Wall Street, directed by Martin Scorsese (2013), illustrates an abuse of authority when it takes the form of a blend of statements presented as experience-based and extraordinary charisma, which seduces with an extravagance rooted in certainties. Here, at the table of an exclusive restaurant atop a tower in Manhattan, the character Mark Hanna, a senior trader at the historic firm "LF Rothschild," explains to young Jordan Belfort his tricks for succeeding as a stockbroker, inviting him to pound his chest. Seduction anesthetizes critical thinking, and the use of onomatopoeia instead of sentences ends up canceling out any rational discourse in favor of an intense and enchanting sensory and emotional experience. The space has turned into an adolescent playground, the meaning of words is overwhelmed by raw emotion and infantile drives. There is no longer any question of thinking. The creation of meaning is abolished in favor of emotional entertainment. Gestures, glances, and voice inflections become the preferred channels of communication, demonstrating the power of emotional influence in human interactions.

* https://youtu.be/XYVXOky-j5g?si=4RE2Mu-kJXRxE_8l

In Conclusion

Authority always manifests within relationships in a specific context, where individuals' expectations, imaginations, desires, and fears intersect, confront, influence, and transform. In every stage of life, in every moment of an organization's life, and in every era of society, authority is expressed in particular forms.

Today's challenge for organizations could be to choose not to be drawn towards an authority based primarily on the will to persuade and the ambition to seduce, but rather to value an authority that is both inspiring and reflective, based on the sharing of knowledge and experience, favoring education and the co-creation of meaning - in other words, an authority that dares to capitalize on individual and interrelated intelligences, not only within structured hierarchies, but also within multiple networks.

Each organization must choose its own risks and consequences. Each organization must find its own balance between the various forms authority can assume.

Taking the time to reflect on the authority at work within the organizations to which we belong can be the first step toward consciously choosing the path that seems most just.


Inspirations
 
Capra, F. (2004). The Hidden Connections – A Science for Sustainable Living. New York : Anchor Books.

De Rosnay, J. (2012). Surfer la vie – Comment sur-vivre dans la société fluide. Paris : Babel.

Enriquez, E. (1997). Les Jeux du Pouvoir et du Désir dans l’Entreprise. Paris: Descléé de Brouwert.