How institutional authority and routine exertions of power can be mobilized, negotiated and challenged

This chapter is concerned with the different ways the emergence, enactment, and demise of authority and power routines can be understood. It advocates that authority and power routines reside in observable and multimodally accomplished social processes. Following these basic conceptions, the chapter presents five approaches to the analysis of authority and power routines. It starts out with a ventriloquist analysis. By accounting for anything that makes a difference in human interaction, this analytical approach makes it possible to understand authority and power as emerging from multiple authorships. The second analysis takes its point of departure in the social accountability of authority and how it is mobilized, negotiated, and challenged. In uncovering the discursive practices of doing authority, social accountability becomes central to establishing or questioning authorities in social organizations, thereby reinforcing or modifying organizational and institutional structures. The third analysis takes a critical and constructive perspective. It considers accountability as the ability and willingness to account for one’s assertions and as a discursive practice that enables confirming or challenging claimed authorities. The fourth analysis proposes that a multimodal conversation analytical approach can shed light on how organizational routines on a micro-level contribute to the accomplishment of larger organizational routines.