A mainstream narrative in the academy casts hidebound authority as the enemy of evidence and, in many cases, the truth. In this review, I argue for an ethnographic and linguistic approach to evidence and authority as communicative practices that are not inherently opposed but rather inseparably intertwined. For ethnographers, authority can usefully be viewed as authorizing acts (recognizing tha...

This article reviews theories of organizational communication with a special emphasis on theories that have been used to explain computer-mediated communication phenomena. Among the theories reviewed, two—social presence and media richness—are identified as problematic and as posing obstacles to future theoretical development. While shortcomings of these theories have been identified in the pas...

Through the concept of Cognitive Authority, information relevance and quality have been related to the expertise/skill of those who publish and share information on the Web. This chapter discusses how the concept of cognitive authority can be used in order to improve the information retrieval on folksonomybased systems. The hypothesis is that a ranking scheme that takes into account the cogniti...

What are good inflation targets and by what instrument rules can they be reached? We examine the selection of targets and instruments, in competitive exchange economies with lifecycle consumers facing uninsurable idiosyncratic income risks, by a benevolent monetary authority that seeks to eliminate indeterminacy, thicken asset markets, and influence the choices of an impatient fiscal authority....

This article highlights political science’s interest in the distribution of authority between federal and state governments. The authority boundaries are studied (1) as mechanism design problems, where authority is allocated optimally to achieve social goals; (2) as problems in positive political theory, because the authority distribution creates competitive interests; (3) as an institutional d...

Abstract: This essay analyzes the capacity and constraints of authority in the contexts of constituted vs. non-constituted leadership. Building on Ronald Heifetz’s distinction between informal and formal authority as the basis for exercising leadership and broadcasting power, this paper evaluates the role of Lech Walesa as the leader of the Solidarity social movement and as president of Poland....

As its title reveals, Joe’s early book, The Authoritative and the Authoritarian,1 drew an original distinction that is important to all thought about law, and about more than law: to all thought about any form of social organization, from the family to the church—for all human organization requires authority. As for the meaning of the word “authoritative”: in this book, and in his later thinkin...