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Management & Leadership vocabulary · Delegation and Accountability

Authority

Meaning in management & leadership, with examples

/əˈθɔːrəti/nounCommon term

In management & leadership, authority means: The official power or right to make decisions, give instructions and use resources, usually linked to a person's role in an organisation.

In Turkish: yetki, otorite

How it is used

Used in delegation and governance: delegate authority, have the authority to approve, levels of authority. Many companies have an approval matrix that sets each manager's spending authority. A classic management principle says authority and responsibility should go together.

Example sentences

  1. Team leaders have the authority to approve expenses up to 5,000 lira.

  2. You can't hold people accountable if you don't give them any authority.

Common collocations

  • delegate authority
  • have the authority to
  • decision-making authority
  • spending authority
  • lines of authority
  • delegateTo give part of your work, responsibility or decision-making power to someone else, usually a person in your team, while still checking that the result is achieved.
  • empowerTo give people the authority, confidence and resources to make decisions and act on their own, instead of waiting for approval at every step.
  • accountabilityThe duty to answer for the result of a task or decision, which includes explaining what happened and accepting the consequences, even if others did the work.
  • chain of commandThe official line of authority in an organisation, showing who gives instructions to whom and the order in which decisions and problems move up and down.
  • sign offTo give final formal approval to something, such as a budget, design or document, so that work can go ahead; the noun is sign-off.

More terms: Delegation and Accountability

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