Photo taken by Anne Nygård on Unsplash.
Authority is dependent. It does not, and usually can not, extend outside of its designated realm. (Unless, of course, you manage to strategically connect it to another field.) The very field a person is in can determine whether they even perceive another’s authority as worthy of listening to. To illustrate, while doctors are held with high regard across the board, the weight of their opinion—or authority—depends on whether they specialize in the area of care a patient needs; a patient with a broken foot is more likely to listen to a podiatrist than a cardiologist.
This is likely why Alan, a tech support, was not perceived as authoritative as he wanted by the humanities department he worked for in Elizabeth Wardle’s article “Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces.” Alan’s position was certainly “God”-like, being that he was left to his own devices early on despite being new, was the most knowledgeable with technology, and was most depended on to do his job. However, his Godliness went unnoticed because he worked in the humanities department: Being knowledgeable with tech is not what builds authority among this department’s faculty. Perhaps, he would have been held with higher regard if he worked for a department where being technologically adept is seen as more important.
Regardless, he incorrectly expected his authority to apply to a field mostly unrelated to his expertise; he misplaced his authority. A person who excels at teaching math is not expected to be good at teaching art, too. To make matters worse, Alan saw the faculty as inferior, as is evident by Alan’s choice of words to describe the faculty—“users,” and “nobodies”—and that played a part in crushing any chance of the two parties, at the very least, getting along superficially. That’s not to say Alan was completely at fault for this—the faculty was equally as disrespectful as Alan and misplaced their authority.
Overall, the only course of action I can think of that would have mitigated this issue of misplaced authority is involving someone who is acknowledged as an authority by both Alan and the faculty from the very beginning. This way, better communication and respect, if not authority, would have hopefully been established.
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