‘Ella says it’s the secret to the universe’: How eponymic claims ventriloquially constitute relational authority

Contributing to the ‘relational turn’ within organization and management studies, we deepen authority studies’ handling of relationality by utilizing a communication as constitutive of organization lens to advance a novel understanding of authority’s simultaneously enduring and fleeting nature. We introduce the concept of eponymic claims to shift relational readings of authority from questions of presence or absence to those of ventriloquial weight. Our theorizing derives from an ethnography of an eponymous cosmetics firm. Blending multiple field materials, we show how arrangements of human and other-than-human figures ventriloquially lend weight to makeup artists’ situated authority moves, and carry an organizational weight of expectation, at times resembling a deadweight for them. Developing ventriloquial conceptions of weight helps to show relational authority to be both a momentary and a deeply organizational accomplishment, with the traces of eponymic claims’ authoritative and disorienting effects traversing into organizational, client, and social spheres. Finally, the concept of eponymic claims helps to elevate eponymy from something that is largely hidden in plain sight to a powerful organizing force.