How is legitimate authority constituted in everyday interactions involving hierarchical leadership? This paper deals with this question using an interactionist revision of Weber’s theory of authority and of neo-institutional organization theory. The dilemma of control and negotiation in hierarchical relationships in bureaucratic organizations involves the communicative problem of clarifying vested rights of control without impairing the requirements of negotiation. Various categories from Goffman’s theory of interaction are used to identify a ritualized interaction scheme that symbolizes rights of control by means of nonverbal communication. The “alternation scheme” between task delegation and task completion represents the hierarchical relationship in the form of an institutionalized interaction structure by means of which superiors and subordinates mutually signal the legitimacy of bureaucratic authority. Exemplary descriptions of leadership interaction illustrate how complementary gestures of dominance and submission realize this latent interaction structure.
Contents
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Publicly AvailableLegitimitätsgeltung und Interaktionsstruktur / Interaction Structure and the Legitimacy of AuthorityMay 19, 2016
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Publicly AvailableProgrammierte (Un-)Gleichheit? / Programmed (In-)Equality?May 19, 2016
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Publicly AvailableDarwin und die Soziologie / Darwin and SociologyMay 19, 2016
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May 19, 2016