Management: hierarchical function or power?

(Scientific resources: Robert Dahl, Max Weber,  Alvyn Gouldner, Stanley Milgram, Claude Dubar, Renaud Sainsaulieu)

My previous posts on mobbing question the relationship between authority and power.

There are two types of authority:

-    it can be based on a hierarchical function and involve a relationship of subordination; in this case, authority is not a personal capacity;

-    personal authority, such as that of a teacher over their students, belongs to the individual and demonstrates their ability to command respect and get others to act in accordance with their will, even if others resist. It is more a power that is exercised through influence.

Power is therefore the ability of someone to get others to act in a way they would not have done without the intervention of the former. Thus, a person can be legitimized in their actions and appreciated thanks to their charisma and personal and professional qualities.

While authority encourages submission, conformism can be overcome when subjects begin to question the rationality of their superiors' decisions and denounce, according to Weber, “instrumental rationality” in the name of “rationality of ends,” in other words, they ask themselves the question: is this manipulation presented as an enviable goal to be achieved, but which aims to achieve hidden goals?

Sainsaulieu referred to the voluntary withdrawal of those who do not subscribe to normative submission. This withdrawal is not always experienced in isolation. Today, people who withdraw—and who may also be “forced” into withdrawal by someone else exercising their authority—use two levers:

-    they partially comply with authority, particularly to avoid sanctions or obtain a title;

-    they forge links in informal networks in which they choose their form of engagement in an activity. This is a reversal of roles: the “subordinates” unite outside the network of subordination and thus extend their power, based on personal authority. These informal networks, which are highly dynamic and multifaceted, play a fundamental role in current societal transformations.

This strategy of circumvention which ends in an empty shell transfers the vital “sap” to a different structure, which has the effect of devitalizing the functional authority whose scope of action is now limited. The adherence of subordinates is then only superficial, transforming authority into superficial authority. This movement brings us back to the etymology of the word “revolution” in the scientific sense (Dictionary of the French Academy): the movement of something around a central point or axis, following a closed curve. It is a return to one's axis, that is, to one's own identity, which does not depend on the identity of others at work in relationships with functional authority.