Modern Management: concepts and skills, 14/e

Authority

Individuals are assigned job activities to channel their behavior within the organization appropriately. Once they have been given specific assignments, they must be given a commensurate amount of authority to perform those assignments satisfactorily.

Authority is the right to perform or command. It allows its holder to act in certain designated ways and to directly influence the actions of others through orders. It also allows its holder to allocate the organization’s resources to achieve organizational objectives.¹²

Authority on the Job

The following example illustrates the relationship between job activities and authority: Two primary tasks for which a particular service station manager is responsible are pumping gasoline and repairing ...