chapter 14 Power chapter outline chapter objectives

Transcription

1 chapter 14 Power There is no reason to accept the doctrines crafted to sustain power and privilege. These are institutions that are subject to human will and that must face the test of legitimacy. And if they do not meet the test, they can be replaced by other institutions that are more free and more just, as has happened often in the past. 1 chapter outline Introduction Power: matter of definitions Power: evidence from the workplace Chapter summary Key concepts Chapter review questions Further reading Chapter case study: Las Vegas general strike Notes chapter objectives After completing this chapter, you should be able to: recognize and explain key debates concerning the concept of power in the context of the organizational behaviour (OB) field understand and explain the following key concepts: systems of power, authority, influence, hegemony compare and contrast major macrotheoretical approaches to the concept of power in the writings of Mann, Foucault, Lukes, Weber and Gramsci discuss possible implications of theories and research for workplace practice.

2 Power chapter Introduction In the field of physics, power is defined as a quantity expressing the rate at which energy is transformed into work. In fact, thermodynamic laws see energy as flowing in one direction only. In addition, power is active. The concept that slows it down, resistance, is passive. We begin with these points for a reason. Simply put, some of these basic principles appear remarkably persistent in many common-sense views about the notion of power in its more general forms, what it is and how it works. S T O P Before proceeding with your reading of the chapter, take a moment to think about your definition of the term power. Do you hold any of the common-sense views on power discussed above? As you make your way through the reading be sure to keep in mind that a good definition of power should offer you the capacity to see the areas through which it might be questioned, challenged or altered where warranted. A N D R E F L E C T This chapter takes up the issue of power and behaviour in work organizations. It provides an introduction to a range of thinking and research. Throughout, it explicitly rejects the common-sense view of power expressed above. We argue that power is not simply something the powerful have and the powerless lack. Power, to borrow from Michel Foucault, is not possessed it is exercised. In addition, power does not simply limit what people do (that is, it does not simply say no ), but rather is productive too (it also says yes to certain behaviour). Across the work of the many intellectuals we discuss in this chapter, some looking at macro phenomena, some looking at micro phenomena and others focusing on the many elements in between, the most astute understandings of learning see power as being, at its heart, relational or interactive in nature. Although it is most often a charge levelled at the work of others, it has been fairly common in recent OB writing to note that power, as a concept, is underdeveloped in this literature. In fact, it has been noted in the editorial introduction to a special journal issue devoted to the concept of power that very little has been written by behavioural analysts on the topic. 2 It runs like a thread throughout the chapter that building on what has just been established, power is not an individual phenomenon. Despite the fact that there appears in all our lives the figure of the powerful person, in fact there is no individual who creates, constitutes or sustains power as such. Imagine, for example, the power of a police officer, a judge, a professor or a chief executive officer (CEO). What are all the things the history, the traditions, the institutions, the distribution of resources, the socially granted authority and so on that are necessarily in place to create this seemingly individual embodiment of power? Take away the vastly networked, social, material, historical, cultural and ideological dimensions of the phenomenon, and what we find is that the person s power virtually disappears. While individuals may embody a variety of traits that seem to constitute and legitimize their power, we must not confuse individual traits with power as such, because where changes occur across the many dimensions of power, the meaning of these traits can be radically transformed.

3 Source: 372 part 4 GROUPS AND SOCIAL INTERACTION plate 38 City of Toronto employees picked an ideal moment to leverage their power by going on strike in summer 2002 In this sense we begin, as we usually must, with the matter of definitions and related but distinct terms. Indeed, a sizeable proportion of this chapter must grapple directly with these matters of definition. Power: matters of definition power: a term defined in multiple ways, involving cultural values, authority, influence and coercion as well as control over the distribution of symbolic and material resources. At its broadest power is defined as a social system which imparts patterned meaning. authority: the power granted by some form of either active or passive consent which bestows legitimacy A reasonable starting point for many discussions of power is some version of the sociologist Robert Dahl s much-quoted phrase, A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do. 3 Closely related is a definition by French and Raven which likewise focuses on the potential ability of one individual to influence another within a certain social system. 4 In fact, French and Raven went on to develop five bases of power, the most important of which, first suggested by Warren, 5 are those related to systemic reward and coercion. Our goal in this chapter is to incorporate such statements into a more comprehensive understanding of power, then test the current analyses of power in work organizations in relation to this new understanding. In doing this we might add to Dahl s basic definition to relate it directly to the paid workplace: power is the ability to say no to certain behaviours, yes to others, and to shape how something should be done. This, of course, is inseparable from many of the other issues addressed in the text including equity and diversity, the organization of labour processes, the selection of technologies, the technical and social divisions of labour, and the accountability and reporting structures and pacing that shape, or rather influence, power in organizations. It is vital that we recognize that to further complicate matters, the concept of power is often confused with the relatively distinct questions of influence and authority. We see this in the definitions of both Dahl and French and Raven, in fact. The goal of our definition here is to recognize that authority is closely related to, but analytically distinct from, the concept of power. Authority as it is defined in social science literature also tends to have a complex relational dimension, but can be said to involve power granted by some form of active or passive consent whether the consent is linked to specific individuals, groups or institutions which bestows on it some level of legitimacy. 6 Some theorists use these words in ways that overlap a good deal. For example, the German sociologist Max Weber s work deals with issues of power but mostly elaborates on types of authority.

4 Power chapter legitimacy: a term describing agreement with the rights and responsibilities associated with a position, social values, system and so on Surveillance (Control of information and social supervision; for example, the use of CCTV) figure 14.1 Giddens model of power structuration: a concept focusing on balancing the dichotomies of agency, or human freedom, and social organization, or structures where individual choices are seen as partially constrained, but they remain choices nonetheless The issue of legitimacy opens up a range of important questions, which we discuss more directly below. Legitimacy depends on one s perspective in communities, organizations, institutions and the world (as a world-view). What is legitimate for some may not be legitimate for others, and this can and does change over time. Even here, in these conceptually humble beginnings, we see that our rejection of individual models of power in favour of relational ones holds firm. In order to move further beyond conventional discussions of power, we can look beyond organizational-based literatures to some of the most general, macro approaches. Traditionally sociology has understood the concept of power in broad Industrialism (Transformation of nature: development of the created environment ; in other words, all aspects of natural places have been refashioned in some way; there is not true wilderness any more) Military power (Control of the means of violence in the context of the industrialization of war, the use of advance industry in the help to fight wars) Capitalism (Capital accumulation, the accumulation of profits, in the context of competitive labour and productive markets) macro terms. Indeed, there is a noticeable preoccupation with how the state, the church, the military, and sometimes corporations and economic systems, may or may not be involved in systems of power. One of the key writers of this type is Michael Mann. His Sources of Social Power is considered a key text in these theoretical discussions, and builds from detailed study of ancient Rome and world religions. 7 The sources of social power are determined to be ideological, military, political and economic. Indeed, he goes on to say that the object of this type of social power approach should be the development of an analysis of multiple overlapping and intersecting socio-spatial networks of power. 8 Power, under this approach, is diffuse and what we might call infra-structural. It can be understood, according to Mann, by taking into account a specific set of universal relations or dynamics: universalism particularism, equality hierarchy, cosmopolitanism uniformity, decentralization centralization and civilization militarism. Each is concerned with the dynamic between control and diffuse freedoms, and when applied to his four sources of social power, produces a way of thinking about power that has been influential in social theory as well as history. Mann s type of approach more or less rejects the explanation of power as simply a form of institutionalization (which we discuss in relation to Weber below), but another key example that is influential in the mainstream sociological tradition is the work of Anthony Giddens. 9 His work on the central problems of social theory seeks to provide an overarching theory while avoiding what he sees as the pitfalls of many broad social theories of power (from schools of social theory such as Marxism, phenomenology and structural-functionalism). His theory of structuration is intended to demonstrate the complex interrelations of human freedom (or agency) and determination (or structure), and emphasizes that in the modern world there has been a fundamental shift based on the enormous growth in the resources (what he refers to as containers ) of power. Central to Giddens thesis are societal surveillance, capitalist enterprise, industrial production and centralized control over the means of violence by the state (see Figure 14.1). 10 It is important to the theory of structuration that these sources of power are not out there but rather the result of specific forms of human interaction mixed with authority and a distribution of resources, which together shape and control time and space. This is important, in part, because of its lack of what we would

5 374 part 4 GROUPS AND SOCIAL INTERACTION ideology: multiple uses but in particular refers to perceptions of reality distorted by class interests and the ideas, legal arrangements and culture that arise from class relations call closure. That is, power is always an open, historical question; things can and do change. Although we do not review it here, it is worth noting the meta-theory of German social theorist Jürgen Habermas. He describes ideology as structure of communication (in his theory of communicative action) that has been systematically distorted by power in such a way as to mostly exclude the realm of daily human activity (what Habermas calls the lifeworld ) when its activity does not align with dominant institutions and their unique interests and needs. Such domination comes to penetrate individuals life-world, personal identity and inner mental experience on the same level of analysis as Giddens approach to human interaction deals with leading to their further domination by social systems. Finally, we should note that for Giddens, all individuals have power, but this power is influenced and constrained by the distribution of different types of resources. In this model, there are allocative resources, which refers to control over physical things such as money or property, and there are also authoritative resources, which involve control over people s practices. For example, a business owner has the authoritative resources granted by our legal institutions to set her workplace up in the way she feels most appropriate. This can lead us to a deeper discussion of the relations between power and authority. Max Weber s work on the basic types of authority is closely linked to, though not the same as, the theories of power we have outlined. That is, Weber s theory of authority can be much more closely related to individuals, despite the fact that ultimately his approach too is a relational one. Authority necessarily involves others who grant this authority or legitimacy through complex systems of power. Weber outlines three types of authority: Charismatic authority refers to leaders who are able to exercise power based on their personal traits. Traditional authority is dependent on a historical trajectory of past authority. Rational authority. Weber is most widely known for his analysis of this in his writing on bureaucracy. Here authority rests on a specific system of laws or rules which establish a hierarchy in, for example, a public or private-sector work organization. Weber s perspective on authority is echoed in the work of Wrong, who lays out a basic model of the relations between influence and power (see Figure 14.2). 11 Influence Unintended Intended = Power Force Manipulation Persuasion Authority Physical Psychic Violent Nonviolent Coercive Induced Legitimate Competent Personal figure 14.2 Wrong on influence and power Source: Wrong (1979)

6 Power chapter plate 39 There are many deep social roots or sources of power, including the influence of wealth and politics Source: Getty Images Another key body of writing on the concept of power is Steven Lukes Power: A radical view. 12 Lukes theory is partially is summarized in Figure Lukes understands power and authority with the notion of bringing about consequences, not unlike, for instance, the way a teacher might seek to encourage students to Conflict of interests No conflict of interests Observable (overt or covert) Latent Coercion Power Force Manipulation Inducement Encouragement Persuasion etc. Influence A u t h o r i t y figure 14.3 Steven Lukes vision of power

7 376 part 4 GROUPS AND SOCIAL INTERACTION conflict of interest: a condition in which the needs of one party (such as an individual or group) run counter to the needs of another S T O P Take a moment to think back to your own employment experiences (or those of friends or family members, if you have none as yet). How can you distinguish between the Weber s concept of authority and broader systems of power as discussed in Lukes or Giddens? How has the social infrastructure A N D of power systems supported the authority of those in charge? R E F L E C T hegemony: a conception of power that includes both conflict as well as consent and leadership by generating a particular worldview or common sense on relevant and appropriate action. complete their reading assignments prior to lectures. Part of this type of analysis is the recognition that obtaining compliance can require a multi-faceted effort. It can be secured by the use of force or by people choosing to surrender to others. In fact, usually both are involved, as we shall see in our discussion of Gramsci later on. When people choose to accept the will of others as legitimate, according to Lukes we can describe the relationship as one of authority. Some of the studies of behaviour in organizations that we discuss in the following section of this chapter appear to draw on this type of approach. Equally important to Lukes s explanation are the conditions of a conflict of interest. The identification of structural and idiosyncratic conflicts of interest is a key challenge for OB literature. Where, for example, is conflict just a matter of finetuning existing organizational structures, and where might conflict be so deeply rooted in a structure that to challenge it is to simultaneously challenge the very nature of the organization itself? As Figure 14.3 shows, where such structural conflicts of interest do not exist Lukes uses the word influence. Where such conditions do exist he uses the word power. Both planned decision making (overt or covert varieties) and latent (or unintended) uses of power play a role in Lukes model, while issues of authority, not unlike those outlined by Weber, operate in both nonconflict and conflict of interest contexts. Michel Foucault is another key thinker in this field. His work in, among many other texts, Discipline and Punish and Power/Knowledge, 13 though oriented by a stated interest in the micro-politics of power and preoccupied with individual identity or subjectivity, is in the end a very broad macro theory as well. In this way Foucault, like Giddens, is interested in breaking down the distinction between individuals and society, or agency and structure. Unlike Lukes, however, Foucault s definitions of power make it particularly clear that there is a double edge to power. It prevents some behaviours while at the same time positively encouraging others, both at the broadest political and historical levels and at the deepest level of individual identity: [I]t seems to me now that the notion of repression is quite inadequate for capturing what is precisely the productive aspect of power. In defining the effects of power as repression, one adopts a purely juridical conception of such power, one identifies power with a law which says no, power is taken above all as carrying the force of a prohibition. Now I believe that this is a wholly negative, narrow, skeletal conception of power, one which has been curiously widespread. If power were never anything but repressive, if it never did anything but to say no, do you really think one would be brought to obey it? What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn t only weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network which runs through the whole social body, much more than a negative instance whose function is repression. 14 For Foucault, power is all-pervasive. Indeed power constitutes what we know as a society, including, of course, how we think about work organizations. Power is everywhere: there are no margins for those who break with the system. 15 Thus, in his analysis power is discussed in terms of the many ways through which it is exercised economies of power, regimes of power, networks of power, technologies of power as well as using a concept that perhaps requires some further discussion, hegemonies. Hegemony is an important term in critical social theory which involves the complexity and mixture of consensus and conflict, and hence power relations in

8 Power chapter a broad sense. It derives from the Greek, where it originally referred to a leader or ruler (egemon), but was taken up in the English language in the nineteenth century, and has come to describe a very nuanced form of sociopolitical predominance. It describes control that is both direct and indirect, and rests on the notion of a whole way of seeing the world, a normal reality or common sense. Specifically, the term hegemony can express two types of power relations. The first describes a group s domination over other groups, and the second describes a group s leadership. The concept represents a whole body of practices as well as expectations, assignment of energies, and ordinary understandings of the world in terms of meanings and values. In essence, the concept expresses the relationships of leadership and domination that produce a general sense of coordinated reality for most people. However, it is a concept that lends itself to wider discussion than Foucault s thesis encourages. Power is seen as all-pervasive in the sense that there can also be something called counter-hegemony. Counter-hegemony is composed of and expresses competing ways of seeing the world and behaving, although this behaviour can at times be clandestine and underdeveloped. The term hegemony is now most closely associated with the writings of a early twentieth-century Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci used a historical analysis of specific periods of French and Italian society in order to refer to a system of alliances within a hegemonic bloc of interests. This may contain significant differences but it is unified on some core principles. This bloc was dependent on what Gramsci referred to as the powerful system of fortresses and earthworks of civil society, including the multitude of social, economic, cultural organizational, group and corresponding ideologies amongst which there is significant room for compromise (although only on non-hegemonic terrain). 16 As the English cultural studies theorist Raymond Williams notes, however, much influential work on counterhegemonic practices has ignored contemporary scenes of consensus and conflict, including work organization. This is not without problems. 17 C R I TICAL I N S I G HT Based on your own current or past employment experiences, try to apply Gramsci s notion of a hegemonic bloc by tracing the key groups that hold sway in an organization. Look at how they differ and what principles they share a commitment to. Finally, consider any counter-hegemonic groups in the organization. How unified are they? How is their degree of unity related to how they challenge the hegemonic bloc? An important contribution to our general understanding of power, and in turn of power as it relates to work organizations and behaviour, comes from the notion of emergent forms of practice that lie in some form of opposition to a dominant or hegemonic bloc in the sense that Gramsci and Williams described. First, the notion provides a basic framework for understanding the character of alternative (resistant) practices in opposition to a complex of dominant presumptions. An entire subschool of industrial sociology/organizational studies literature has specifically addressed the issue of resistance. 18 Building from this notion, we can see that OB emerging from non-dominant (that is, workers rather than managers ) standpoints need not strictly reproduce a particular hegemonic order. It can at times run tangentially to it, and possibly even in direct opposition to it. In both cases it represents an active, living process in which alternatives struggle against incorporation.

9 378 part 4 GROUPS AND SOCIAL INTERACTION will to power: the notion that people are inherently driven to develop and expand power and control in their environments game theory: a social theory premised on the notion that people do what is best for themselves given their resources and circumstances, as in some form of a competitive game The example of going to the movies can readily be extended to a work context. How might you go about a micro-analysis of the following exchange? Woman: Tell me how to fix this Xerox machine. Male: Oh, don t you worry about this, honey. Leave it to me. Now take a next step and continue the exchange, taking account of the distinct backdrops of power and/or gender relations. S T O P A N D R E F L E C T In less abstract terms, we are talking about people s behaviour that is rooted in processes that align with the basic assumptions and structures of the organization, have little to do with these dominant assumptions, or in some cases actively resist the major premises upon which the organization is based. To put this in the language of social class, we are talking about OB that can be easily incorporated into capitalism, is somehow outside this logic, or opposes capitalism in some way (and everything in between). These macro theories of power in studies of society set the context. We can now turn to a consideration of theories of power in local, everyday interaction or behaviour. Analyses of micro-interaction form another distinct set of theories on power. For example, we can ask what Nietzsche s will to power (a term that defines social interaction as an ongoing contest between people striving to exercise power over others) might mean in terms of behaviour in organizations. Is the will to power a generalized (overt or covert) phenomenon, as Nietzche s work suggests, or are there other central motivations in people s lives? The work of another famous micro-sociologist, Erving Goffman, is also relevant in this context. His analysis of contests as a major frame of social interaction offers a fascinating exploration of how people think and negotiate order in their daily interactions. Another concept that has similarities, although it is not the same as Goffman s notion of contests, comes from the school of sociology called game theory. This is a subset of the rational choice tradition, 19 and is popular among economists and economic sociologists for its apparent pragmatism. This school of thought invites us to understand individual actors as acting in a way that they believe will provide the best outcome for them, given their objectives, resources, and circumstances as they see them. Its focus is on voluntary actions and inter-actor exchange, and it encompasses both conflictual and cooperative games. It begins from the rather traditional economic assumption that individuals act to maximize their utility (that is, to do as well as is possible in the circumstances). We can also consider micro-interactions through the work of discourse analyst Robin Tolmach Lakoff, which is discussed by Krippendorf. 20 How might power be evident in this simple, everyday exchange? Man: Wanna go to the movies? Woman: Oh, I don t know. Do you? Krippendorf correctly points out that this is one example of a very common, gendered language game that allows us to explore a host of possibilities. The male makes a proposal. The female has several options in response, including ignoring, accepting, counter-proposing and clarifying (and in fact a vast array of others). Her different options (including the response she gives above) allow us to consider the system of power in operation at the micro-level. For example, a counter-proposal might signal some sort of equal power relation; a stern rejection might signal an unequal power relation; a deferral (as in her response above) might signal another form of unequal power relation; and of course any and all of the possibilities might be part of a clever, expanded set of negotiations which defy simplistic categorization. In this exchange, of course, the word power is never used. The point here is that we can quite easily, even in this smallest of examples, draw into our analysis the concept of power. We can also see how it can include a whole infrastructure of, for example, gender relations. Finally, returning to the work of Erving Goffman for a moment, micro-power can also be understood as part of people s presentation of self in everyday life. 21 It is echoed in the work of range of others such as Finkelstein, 22 who writes extensively on how people s physical appearance or self-presentation

10 Power chapter Can the management of appearances hold the balance between success and failure in organizations? What instances of this have you seen in your own experiences? How are appearances given meanings in relation to broader systems of power within and beyond a specific work organization? Explore company dress codes as best you can over the web. While some dress-code demands are related to health and safety, others are not. How does power in organizations work in terms of a dress code? What ideological values are represented in such codes? A recent book by Ruth Rubenstein discusses Dress Codes: Meaning and messages in American culture. 24 What further details does it give S T O P A N D you about the relationship between appearance and power? R E F L E C T involves a whole range of broader macro-forces or systems of power. In a particularly striking section of her 1995 book, she gives an example of a Jewish prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. His memoirs show him taking incredible pains to keep himself respectable in appearance. As the prisoner notes, his captors general beliefs about his respectability could in fact hold the balance between life and death: He needed no more than his spruce suit and his emaciated and shaven face in the midst of the flock of his sordid and slovenly colleagues to stand out and thereby receive benefits from his captors. 23 This is an extreme example, but the point is that the micro-management of appearances has been understood for some time to be a vital component of how power operates. It provides a mechanism of sorting, in Finkelstein s terms of social passport and credential, for how people can participate in the systems of power they are presented with. Power: evidence from the workplace Through the 1990s and into the new millennium, the number of strikes by employees in industrialized countries around the world has tended to decline. 25 What are we to make of this? Should we conclude that the power struggles in organizations have been reduced, giving way to greater consensus? Not according to some researchers. 26 Collinson s work is worth looking at in detail for its discussion of power in organizations. It represents an important type of research that has linked past discussions from industrial sociology and labour process theory (a stream in the field of sociology of work) to more contemporary concerns about individuals, identity and meaning under what are sometimes referred to as postmodern conditions of globalization and the (apparently) new knowledge or information economy. Collinson argues that despite the decline of formal workplace disputes, the power struggle continues to rage on in diffuse and pervasive forms. Power is exemplified not simply by either domination or resistance in organizations, but rather domination and resistance. In this context, power is to be found in situations of apparent consent and domination as well where there is resistance. Collinson maintains that labour process theory has made a distinctive contribution to the analysis of work by highlighting the irreducible interrelationship between employee resistance and managerial control [e]mphasizing the extensive power asymmetries in contemporary organizations. 27 He goes on to claim that the founding preoccupations of traditional labour process theory with scientific management and Taylorism are still relevant, and so is the classic critique offered in the work of Harry Braverman. 28 Collinson s specific contribution, however, emerges from his assessment that knowledge and information are key aspects of power. He draws on the work of Foucault, on writers who make use of Mann s work on power 29 and the game metaphor, 30 but he goes on to say that despite the seemingly uneven distribution of access to organizational knowledge and information, other forms of knowledge are available to workers (that is, technical and production-based knowledge). These alternative resources can be mobilized through a wide variety of strategies, and this variety in turn accounts for the very uneven and variegated results of power struggles in organizations. The first of the two main strategies he outlines is resistance by distance, in which workers restrict information from management. This is referred to as a type of escape attempt and a denial of involvement or interest in work processes. The second

11 380 part 4 GROUPS AND SOCIAL INTERACTION strategy, resistance through persistence, involves efforts to extract information from management. In a sense, this involves voluntarily increasing involvement and interest in work processes. Of course, management in this framework tries to use the opposite strategies of extracting and restricting information respectively, and this results in a complex spiral of control resistance, greater efforts at control and so on, or rather a series of strategies and counter-strategies. Finally, Collinson emphasizes the role played by both management and workers personal identities, or we might say social background, which significantly shapes which strategy is used. He qualifies his conclusions, which depend heavily on the exact context, but in general concludes that resistance through persistence turns out to be a more effective strategy. However, as he notes, neither strategy constitutes a deep challenge to the structure of power (that is, management rights) in organizations. The key point for this chapter is that although power is often revealed in overt forms of conflict and resistance (such as strikes or sabotage), both subtle and alternative forms of resistance can also be identified. You should be able to understand that better in the light of the various conceptual frameworks we explored earlier in the chapter. Even the existence of consensus can be used to support the claim that work organizations are in many ways constituted by power relations. Drawing on Collinson as well as Kondo, 31 we can note that effective resistance requires elements of conformity to a rival power source. Collinson sees this as discursive and knowledge-based, but we would suggest that this concept can easily be extended to include well-functioning communities of workers: bargaining units, neighbourhoods, social movements or occupational groupings. This brings us back in a sense to Giddens claim that everyone has power but it is expressed in different ways depending on their (allocative and authoritative) resources. There is the power of enforcing democracies, forcing people to learn, and ultimately there is the power to remake existing power relations into something better. Although there is not exactly a flood of interest in power issues in most of the recent empirical research outlined in the main OB journals, they nevertheless reveal significant consideration of issues of power. Studies in this area deal with a variety of topics, such as practical governance and managerial practices in work organizations. Often, though not exclusively, there is a particular interest in organizational change initiatives. Below we explore some key findings of the most recent studies that touch on important issues in the field. The aim is to balance our earlier conceptual discussion with some more concrete findings. In a provocative study of relations between supervisors and their subordinates, Elangovan and Xie 32 explore the results and perceptions of supervisory power. Even this brief introductory line reveals that they conceive power in a way that is partially, though not absolutely, at odds with the relational perspective we have developed here. The focus is on employees and supervisors, which is obviously a relational issue, but Elangovan and Xie tend to see power largely as something a supervisor has, rather than as a dimension of the social system (on the macro or micro level) which is put into effect by all individuals subjected to the system. Nevertheless they offer some important findings on how power is experienced by the individuals subject to it. Among the important issues in workplaces today are motivation, on the one hand, and stress and people s individual and collective responses to it, on the other. These authors find that people s backgrounds play an important role in their behaviour. For example, they focus on the issue of self-esteem. This is seen as a product of nurture as opposed to nature: that is, it is inextricably linked to people s lives inside the workplace, but also to their lives outside work, and indeed developmentally before

12 Power chapter exit and voice: exit and voice : a concept referring to the basic choice that defines an important part of employees experience at work: they can either exit (leave) or exercise voice (have a say) in how the workplace is run they ever began to work. Broader theories of power also see these expansive connections as important. Elangovan and Xie conclude that those with low self-esteem show signs of higher motivation and lower stress as their perceptions of supervisory power increase. Importantly, those with high self-esteem actually show lower motivation and increased stress when they give a higher score to the perceived power of their supervisor. This has important implications for the types of worker that the typical work organization appears to favour. Elangovan and Xie go on to explore the concept of locus of control which we discussed earlier, looking at workers with internal or external orientations. Those with an internal orientation were seen to respond to different types of power, authority and influence (the authors tend to see these as equivalent). Their motivation levels drop in relation to the perceived rewards and the levels of coercive power that they associate with supervisors. Those with a predominantly external locus of control had lower stress levels when they gave higher assessments of expert power to their supervisors. Broadly similar dynamics to those analysed by Elangovan and Xie are seen in two other important recent studies. Overbeck and Park, and Rahubir and Valenzuela, explore the relationship between positional power and the strategic use of social in/ attention in different work team contexts. 33 Like Elangovan and Xie, these researchers make some important observations, particularly about how managerial decision making takes place, but the way in which they frame power in organizational behaviour as involving individual/positional use of resources tends to downplay the broader systemic nature of power as something that is exercised. Collinson s approach to resistance can be applied to these findings. For example, the changing levels of motivation and stress can be interpreted as representing a form of resistance. This might be turned inwards in the form of stress or loss of psychological commitment to the organization, but it is still apparent. Both motivation and stress are, of course, also the roots of more outward resistance, which could lead to expression in the form of political action (say, becoming more active in an employee association or union), industrial action or at its most individualist level sabotage, or simply resigning from the organization. Self-esteem is seen to be such an important variable, but how does it come to be established? Mann s goal of identifying overlapping socio-spatial networks of power might offer us some help in this context. The work of Richard Sennett provides an accessible exploration of how deep wounds to self-esteem are inflicted in the form of hidden injuries 34 and a corrosion of character. 35 These writers help to show how visible symptoms have ideological roots. To what degree could Giddens interest in exploring the power of surveillance be brought to play in looking at how stress develops in relation to perceived power issues? Might increased surveillance in the workplace actually force conflict inward to produce these effects? The issue of exit and voice, has long been a subject of debate in industrial sociology. We touch on it above, and it is dealt with in the OB tradition by the researchers Mayes and Ganster. 36 In a rich and detailed look at the responses of public service workers to questions posed in questionnaires and interviews, they detail the relationship between voice (or political action ) and exit behaviours on the one hand, and job stress on the other. Importantly, this analysis builds from observations which can be roughly aligned with Collinson s model of alternative, countervailing sources of power. In Mayes and Ganster s terms, the countervailing source lies outside the bounds of the employee s formal, legitimate role in the organization. For these authors, what is at the heart of the matter is the fit between the employee and the environment. They note that when employees sense ambiguity in their role in the organization, this is a immobilizing factor: it prevents their achieving voice via political action

13 382 part 4 GROUPS AND SOCIAL INTERACTION plate 40 Michel Foucault conceived power as an universal, inescapable feature of all human relationships, because it constitutes the very way we talk and think about ourselves. Source: Bruce Jackson in the workplace. This sense of ambiguity is found, they add, despite high levels of organizational commitment. How can we understand variables such as worker organizational fit and commitment in relation to our opening set of theoretical discussions? Certainly Foucault s and Gramsci s discussion of domination and consent as two sides of the same power coin is useful here. Commitment, for example, is the side of power that Foucault speaks of when he describes induce[ing] pleasure, form[ing] knowledge, produce[ing] discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network. 37 That is, commitment is what comes out when power works in a positive and productive way. We could also tentatively link this to Lukes s distinction between power in the context of conflicts of interest which may or may not be apparent. When conflicts of interest are evident, power is reflected as coercion, force and manipulation, while when they are not, it is expressed as inducement and encouragement. It is not hard to see that stress, resistance, exit and voice flow from the former a good deal more often than from the latter. One of the most fascinating and recent sets of exchanges on the matter of power in the organizational behaviour tradition is to be found in a special issue of the Journal of Organizational Behavior Management. 38 At the centre of the debate is the work of Sonia Goltz and Amy Hietapelto, and the question of resistance to organizational change. 39 Goltz and Hietapelto s operant and strategic contingency models of power are based on the behavioural approach, as the concept of operant might suggest. They are linked to the founder of this psychological tradition (B. F. Skinner), to the management of stimulus response, and in some sense to punishment and reward. Despite its classical behaviourialist stance, this model includes some form of relational analysis. To extend this, we might say it focuses on the relations of the distribution of authority over the application of consequences. Built on well-established operant principles their model states that the power an individual has is based on: how many reinforcing and aversive stimuli the power holder controls which important dimensions of these stimuli, such as magnitude, delay and frequency, the power holder controls which particular combinations and dimensions of the reinforcing and aversive stimuli the power holder controls for how many people the power holder controls these stimuli. If we set aside the obvious major shortcoming of this model (the suggestion that people have power: see our discussion of Foucault above), we can see that it marshals a range of valuable evidence, including that power is subject to both intentional and unintentional results. We might compare this with, for example, Wrong s model outlined above. One very interesting component of the model, which fits into the broad perspective on power introduced here, is that both those who lead and those who follow are subject to this leadership experience, and behave in ways consistent with notions of resistance in organizations. The authors also insist that a central unit of analysis for power and resistance is the change to pre-existing relationships of action and consequence. The special issue of the journal also includes a range of articles that provide critiques of Goltz and Hietapelto, and constructively extend or challenge their thinking. Quite separate from each author s critique of Goltz and Hietapelto, we can also apply many of the basic conceptual observations we have developed over the course of this chapter. In Boyce s contribution, for example, we might note that there is a need for conceptual clarity. 40 Boyce s work raises some questions when seen in the light of Collinson s observations, for example. How is resistance related to power, and from whose perspective is power and resistance defined?

14 Power chapter W E B L I N K Another contributor, Malott, takes Goltz and Hietapelto to task for their presumptuous leaps from laboratory findings to real-world applications, 41 while Geller extends the discussions further. 42 Control over the consequences someone controls and/or is subject to in any organizational structure is shown to be an expression of organizational power. In support of the Goltz and Heitapelto model, Geller goes on to show that power can, in fact, be measured in terms of quality and quantity of control over consequences. To conclude this section we can briefly look back at the work of Mann and others in posing the question, How on earth can students of OB see the linkages between practice in workplaces and such broad ideological, military and political-economic sources? To accomplish this intellectual jump, you first need, as we have seen, to move from individual to relational perspectives on power. It is not difficult to understanding how broader national ideologies or local ideological cultures surrounding particular workplaces are implicated in power. Of course, it should be obvious that political economic factors, such as market dynamics, industrial relations and employment law, and trade policy, all deeply affect the phenomenon of power. However, even in highly developed capitalist countries, the Visit the following websites: military (including the police) provide an important foundation to the industrial relations legal regime. In many cases in history in htm for Foucault on power/knowledge; North America and Europe, the police and even the army have been called out to intervene in workplace-based conflicts. They sociology_2/power2.htm do this whenever worker managerial conflict reaches levels, or ac.nz/depts/sml/journal/vol3/kate.htm for a review of power models in organizational analysis is concerned with issues, that those in power judge to be unacceptable to the principles of the economic system. These principles include challenges to private ownership of economic resources (such as factories or even forests). Chapter summary # In this chapter we began with broad theory, to provide a basis for a better appreciation of grounded research at the work organization level. Common-sense views of power were outlined to explore the half-truths in them. Power appears to us to be embodied in individuals, as something they possess and exert. However, macro theories of power show that there are many deep social roots or sources of power systems, including the influences of ideology, military, politics and economics Gramsci and Foucault outlined perhaps the most extensive theories of power, noting that it is anywhere and everywhere, because it constitutes the very way we talk and think about ourselves, let alone our organizational surroundings. Importantly, these two authors argue that power is a coin with two sides: on the one, consent, accommodation and domination; on the other, lack of commitment, stress, resistance, political action and voice. # This knowledge was then applied to a critical look at key examples of work organization research. Collinson is a representative example of the new social analysis of organization, which links old industrial sociology with labour process theory and contemporary analysis of meaning and identity in the workplace. We then explored some key examples of OB research that deal directly with the concept of power. The OB field has hardly seen a flood of research into power, and when it does consider this, it usually adds the prefix perceived, further limiting the strength of its analysis. Nevertheless, some fascinating and provocative findings and debates were detailed.

15 384 part 4 GROUPS AND SOCIAL INTERACTION # Clearly not all power, authority and influence is bad. Good parenting, teaching, policing, political advocacy, and in a certain sense management, can be understood as positive influences. The question of legitimacy, which in turn evokes questions of larger political and economic systems, comes into play as we recognize that there are two main justifications for disobedience to authority. One is when a subject is commanded to do something outside the legitimate range of the commanding authority, and the other is when the history of acquiring the commanding authority is no longer considered legitimate or acceptable (which includes being an unjust burden). # These types of challenge to authority, building from the Gramscian and possibly the Foucauldian models above, start with recognizing people s complicity in the takenfor-granted nature of systems of power, or rather hegemonic blocs of assumptions. Challengers dare to articulate these taken-for-granted assumptions in order to engage in rational analysis of legitimacy. What some refer to as a crisis in organizational commitment or loyalty may be the thin edge of this kind of wedge. That is, it represents the removal of blind obedience, an erosion of the other side of the power coin, consent and complicity. Managers as well as workers (and students of OB!) have a right to think through and question the sources of their legitimacy. Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and others operated on the principle of removal of consent, which for our purposes relates directly to a broad, social perspective on power. Key concepts authority hegemony influence micropolitics of power power/motivation/stress relations relational perspective on power sources of countervailing power sources of social power Chapter review questions 1. What is the substance of the different social theoretic models of Mann, Giddens, Foucault, Weber, Lukes and Gramsci? 2. What is the difference between power and authority? 3. What is the relationship between power and resistance? 4. What is meant by the phrases power is relational and power is not possessed, it is exercised? 5. What are the strengths and weaknesses in current conceptualizations of power in OB research? Further reading Clegg, S. (1989) Frameworks of Power, London: Sage. Foucault, M. (1980) Power/Knowledge, ed. C. Gordon, New York: Pantheon. Lukes, S. (1974) Power: A radical view, Basingstoke: Macmillan. French, J. R. P. and Raven, B. H. (1959). The bases of social power, pp in D. Cartwright (ed.), Studies of Social Power, AnnArbor, Mich.: Institute for Social Research. Sennett, R. (1980) Authority, London: Faber and Faber.