organization
Role-based authority
Authority flows from roles, not from hierarchy — anyone in a role has the authority that role requires. In traditional organizations, authority is personal — it belongs to the individual who holds a position in the hierarchy. A manager has authority because they are a manager, and they carry that authority across all the domains their position encompasses. In role-based authority, authority is functional — it belongs to the role, not the person. A person exercises authority when they are acting within a role they hold, and they hold no authority outside that role. This separation of person from role enables distributed authority: one person can hold multiple roles (and exercise different authorities in each), and authority can be reassigned by reassigning the role rather than reorganizing the hierarchy.