Weber's Pendulum: Does Change Perception of Authority at Work?

Weber suggests that the authority is attached to position power in modern organizations. Accordingly, employees must obey to authority of position instead of one's charisma or societal position. This perspective seems to stem from an utopic and universalist assumption that organizations are stable and unchangeable. Whereas, organizations operate in dynamic and influx environments and hence must respond adaptively to the conditions. The nature of the organizations have changed and correspondingly authority mode have shifted from the Weberian core to more non-positional, participative and personal base. The purpose of this paper is to interrogate the validity of this discourse in a developing country, Turkey, which is far from the centers where management knowledge produced. To this end, a survey and semi structured interview was conducted to collect the data in eight different organizations. Empirical evidence enable to develop an insight that rational/legal authority is still pervasive and it is, along with expert authority, perceived more intensively among other modes of authorities.