Höpfl, H. M. (1999) Power, authority and legitimacy. Human Resource Development International, 2 (3). pp. 217-234. ISSN 1367-8868
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Management, human resources, organization, control, leadership, etc., all seem to be just so many euphemisms for power, and this suggests a discourse of management and organization that calls things by their proper name. This paper on the contrary stresses the need to resolve the concept of 'power' itself into more differentiated notions, and proposes that clarification may be derived from distinctions once explicit in the vocabulary of Classical antiquity, but lost in modern European languages. It argues that nothing but confusion in thinking about organizations, management and legitimation can result from the failure to recognize that the phenomena this vocabulary identifies and distinguishes are irreducibly different.