Authority at Work: Internal Models and Their Organizational Consequences

This article focuses on how organization members authorize and deauthorize both others and themselves in the course of doing their work. We argue that these authorizing processes are shaped, in part, by enduring, often unacknowledged stances toward authority itself. In turn, we suggest that these stances are enacted in similar ways across hierarchical and collaborative work arrangements and across various roles and positions. These stances are--as Hirschhom (1990) suggested--internalized models. Working from a theoretical framework that combines concepts from developmental and clinical psychology, group dynamics, and organizational behavior, we define and illustrate three types of internal models of authority: dependence, counterdependence, and interdependence. We offer propositions about how these internal models influence organization members' behaviors during task performances generally, and more specifically, as members of hierarchical dyads and work teams. We also suggest propositions about how these...