Understanding authority essay

Traditional authority tends to be more common in organisations which stress upon continuity with the past and the upholding of widely shared values and beliefs. Example: Established churches, the higher reaches of government, and the courts and familial organisations based on kinship ties.

Weber de­scribed such authority with reference to its most common organisational context, namely, bureau­cracy, Weber writes-“Legal authority rests on enactment, its pure type is best represented by bureaucracy. The basic idea is that laws can be enacted and changed at pleasure by formally correct procedure.

Rational-legal Authority: In this kind of authority power is legitimated by explicit rules and procedures that define the rights’ and obligations of the rulers. Such rules and procedures are commonly found in a written constitution, and set of laws.

Charismatic Authority: “In a system based on charismatic authority, power is legitimated by the unusual, exceptional, or even supernatural qualities that people attribute to particular political, religious, or military lead­ers”. Weber called this extraordinary quality ‘Charisma’.