3.5 Power and Authority

LO 3.5: Explain power and authority.

Bureaucratic design is one way that power and authority are dispersed within a formal organization. The government, however, is the social institution that decides who has power and the rules around what they can do with that power within a geographic region. Moreover, some groups have more power than other groups due to stratification. Those groups with less power depend on groups with more power to gain access to resources (Molm, 1997). Power may be obtained through actual or threatened force or coercion. However, power is also gained from the norms and institutions that govern social interaction. There are at least four types of power: ideological or cultural, economic, political, and military (Spear, 2023).

Photo 3.15

Governments Determine Who Has Power