Personal and Organizational Authority: Bringing the Self into a System of Work Relationships

IN CONTEMPORARY organizations, there is an immediate need for managers and executives to function in increasingly complex and fluid environments—both internally and externally. Mergers, acquisitions, precipitous bankruptcies, massive layoffs, shifting alliances, and turbulence in the marketplace all are conspiring to make the experience of organizational stability and continuity fragile. Organizations, to be sure, were never closed systems, but in more stable times with much slower rates of change, they were experienced as self-contained and self-perpetuating. By contrast, contemporary post-industrial organizations often have quite the opposite character and consequently are now experienced as unstable, chaotic, and often unmanageable. There are