Nowadays, almost everyone belongs fully or partially to a certain organization. It could be a school, a business, a factory or a military troop. Even people who do not live or belong to these small organizations still live in the society, which is also a large organization, a political entity. That is, each people is simply a member of a certain organization. As a member of the organization, people can feel the consequences of power at all levels. The power of organizations is therefore a very targeted subject. According to some organizational theories, “the concept of power is almost completely absent from the discourse on organizational behavior. The preferred concept is that of authority. (Jackson and Carter 2000: 79) This essay attempts to give a brief overview of theories of power versus authority and to analyze the strength and weakness of these theories. When it comes to the theory of power and authority, the German sociologist Max Weber should be the first to be mentioned. "Weber's main contribution to the study of organizations was his theory of authority structures which led him to characterize organizations in terms of his authority relationship with them... In a system of authority, those who occupy a subordinate role sees the issuance of directives by those in a superior position. legitimate role” (Pugh and Hickson 1989: 5). On this basis, Weber developed three types of legitimate authority: "1. Rational basis resting on a belief in the 'legality' of models of normative rules and in the right of those who are elevated to the rank of authority by virtue of these rules to issue orders” (legal authority).2. Traditional foundations - based on an established belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions and the legitimacy of the status of...... middle of paper ...... when Jackson and Carter discovered that these models could only be used in in a certain environment, for example in an internalizing environment, and conclude that they are not particularly useful, this conclusion may be too accidental. Overall, Weber's theory of authority (legal authority, traditional authority, and charismatic authority) can explain most of organizational behavior and his work still plays a key role in this area. However, his theory still has some problems, as mentioned earlier. The method of using the concept of authority rather than power may ignore the possibility of abuse of power. And when using his model to analyze the real world, people may find that his three types are too simple to explain all phenomena. This means that people still need to improve these models or develop new models in the future study of organizations..