Chapter 6: Critical Approaches Questions of Power Russell, in Daniels & Spiker Perspectives On Organizational Communications 2 nd ed.: Power is the fundamental concept in the social sciences, analogous to the place of energy in physics. In hierarchically structured organizations, differences in members status and power are a simple fact of life: where you are on the chart is what power you have. Traditionally, power has been regarded as any means or resource that one person may employ to gain compliance and cooperation from others. It involves the ability to control the agenda or plan of action in a situation, to suppress issues in discussions and decision making that would pose a challenge or create controversy. Status, however, refers to the rank or importance of one s position in a group. It is more appropriate to think of status and power as conditions that other members of the group accord to a person in a given position. I. Critical Theory A. Background 1. Concerned mainly with exercise and abuse of power in an organization. 2. Emerged in response to abuses of capitalist system (Victorian period and later) a. Low wages b. Dangerous, squalid working conditions c. Child labor d. Particularism e. No protections from whims of wealthy owners f. Lower pay for women and minorities (gender & race) (Their views and opinions ignored) 3. Karl Marx a. Division between owners and workers unfair and misguided. b. Believed would lead to violent overthrow of owners. 4. Frankfurt School a. Marxist theory had become focused on a purely materialistic philosophy 1
b. Frankfurt school aimed at creating a form of neo- Marxism that addressed dominance and oppression in terms of values and morals. c. While force and coercion are present in organizations, the maintenance of power in capitalist organizations depends in large part on its legitmation (i.e., the manner in which its use is justified and accepted). b. Developed ideas now known as critical theory. B. United States 1. Change in capitalism at start of 20 th Century a. Progressive Capitalism: Connection between wages paid to employees and their ability to be active consumers. b. Continued into the early 1970 s c. Strong economic growth for workers as well as for employers and companies. d. More people worked for someone else than for themselves. (A significant shift from the earlier economy.) 2. With globalization, employers now had the option of hiring lower-wage workers overseas. 3. Worldwide movement to make public aware of earth s limited resources. 4. Shift in view of major western countries (most notably the US and GB) away from progressive capitalism and to an economic philosophy favoring big business. a. (Trickle-down theory: tax exemptions, reduced regulatory fines and controls, etc. Increased profits would trickle down to workers. b. Instead of sharing wealth, most companies increased their profits. c. Wages, benefits, and standard of living declined for many years. d. The gap between those who have and those who have not has continued to increase. [What are the figures on people working two or more low-payi8ng jobs to make ends meet? What is the level of poverty in this country? How many people live below it?] 5. New Information Technologies a. Instant world-wide communication has led to a rethinking of the organization b. The flat, flexible organization: the hierarchies of previous thinking have been replaced by a teambased design that can respond more quickly to 2
economic conditions and local crises. (Doesn t have to run everything by top management half a world and eleven time zones away.) c. European studies in critical theory imported to US discussions of organizations. II. The Centrality of Power A. French & Raven 1. Person X has power over person Y when X has control over some outcome Y desires. a. Reward Power: When X can give a bonus, award, public praise, time off, a trip, or some other formal or informal reward in exchange for Y s compliance. b. Coercive Power: X has coercive power over Y when Y believes that certain behaviors on his or her part will lead to punishments from X. These punishments can range from being reassigned to lesser projects, less desirable locations, relocation, or demotion to being fired. Reward and Coercive power are closely related. Both control and apply either rewards or punishments. One s reward or coercive power depends on at least two factors: First, those things that can be controlled or mediated (salary increases, promotions, work assignments, demotions, suspensions, terminations, etc.) must be perceived as rewards and punishments by others. Second, a person has these forms of power only to the extent that he or she is perceived as being willing and able to apply or at least mediate rewards and punishments. (If a supervisor has seldom rewarded or punished an employee, either directly or indirectly, his or her reward and coercive power is likely to be weak.) c. Referent Power: Person Y is willing to do what person X wants in order to be like X. This may take the form of dress, behaviors, or attitudes and values. Mentors and charismatic leaders are often said to have referent power. Referent power depends on identification. Identification involves a desirable, satisfying, and self-defining relationship with another person or group. Consequently, a given individual or group has referent power with a person to the extent that this person engages in certain behaviors because these behaviors maintain the relationship or the definition of self that is anchored in the relationship. 3
d. Expert Power: Person Y will do what person X says because they respect X s expert knowledge. (We would do what the EMT at the scene of an accident told us to do, for example.) Expert power is based on the perception that a person possesses some special knowledge that is required to solve a problem, perform a task, or decide a course of action. A person wields expert power when others follow his or her course of action in the belief that the individual knows more that they do about what should be done in the situation. e. Legitimate Power: Person Y complies with X s instructions or orders because of their higher-level position on the hierarchy. 1. I am bothered by this term, Legitimate, in that it implies a genuine, endorsed recognition of power to the exclusion of any other. 2. A better term would be Hierarchical Power as this reflects the power given by company structure. [ Because I m the Director of this division and I said so! ] Legitimate power is based on the acceptance of internal norms and values regarding authority and the right to exercise authority. People accept influence from someone in a certain position because they believe that this person has the right to exercise the authority accorded to that position. (Think about a Dean, a Provost, and President... or CFO or CEO.) In work teams, the team leader exercises legitimate power only to the extent that the team members accept the leader s authority to exercise controls over the members behavior. (In Viet Nam, 2 nd Lieutenants quickly lost this and soldiers would turn against them. And sometimes frag or kill them to prevent what the troops saw as dangerous or reckless actions.) f. Information Power. Daniels and Spiker add this category to the list. The fact that a superior has information that may be of use to a subordinate can provide power over the subordinate through the supervisor s choice to share or withhold the information. Might also work the other way as well: Remember the Saturday Night Live Skit: Dave, Your Company s Computer Repair Guy 4
B. Conrad 1. This view of power is incomplete it only looks at overt power issues. 2. Covert Power a. Overt power can be seen and possibly resisted. b. Covert power, or hidden power, is more insidious. 1) A loose coalition of interests 2) Societal views or expectations on education 3) Classes in society 3. The role of critical theory research is to unveil the political stakes that anchor cultural practices. III. Power and Ideology A. Background 1. Ideology refers to our basic, often unexamined, assumptions about how things are or how they should be. For example: a. Men cannot raise children. b. Democracy is the best system of government. 2. Ideology touches every aspect of everyday life and can be seen in our use of words, in our actions, and in our practices. For example: a. The things we choose to throw away or our recycling practices. b. Our behavior towards non-native English speaking people. 3. Often unaware of its presence in our lives. 4. Is never neutral. a. The dominant group s interests are controlling. b. Often exercised unconsciously. c. Jurgen Habermas: Our view is I view things as they really are, you squint at them through a tunnel vision imposed by some extraneous system of doctrine. or you don t have an accent but they do. B. Assumptions 1. Varner & Beamer cite three reactions we typically have to people who do not share our native culture: a. Assumptions of superiority: Our values and practices are superior to those of others in the world. We are normal or civilized while they are primitive or backwards. b. Ethnocentrism. We tend to view our own culture as the right one. This creates frustration when dealing 5
with others who do not share our culture or assumptions. 1) This can be in another country or 2) When dealing with someone who does not have the same technical or other work-related background. (Accounting, engineering, etc.) 3) Adapting to another s culture requires an openness to different ways of doing things, but our ideology often makes this difficult. [Story of filmmaker from National Geographic] d. Assumptions of universality. We err when we think that beyond physical, observable differences all people are alike. [Remember Korzybski?] 1) Leads to misunderstanding and conflicts among people from different cultures who see and interpret the world from different perspectives. 2) Can prevent us from seeing the differences in individuals. 2. Power, Competition, and Cooperation a. Historical assumption: the existence of power differences in organizational relationships generally inhibits cooperation and effective communication. b. Research by Tjosvold in the mid-80 s found that this assumption is not necessarily true. 1) He found that the social context influences how supervisors use their power to interact with subordinates. 2) Both high- and low-power superiors interacted more constructively and supportively with subordinates in a cooperative context rather than in either an individualistic or competitive context. (How the task was defined had more to do with the interaction than the power differences.) 3) High-power superiors in a cooperative context actually used their power to aid subordinates. 3. Social Exchange of Power a. Social scientists have claimed for many years that every exercise of power involves some form of exchange. 1) We give up something in return for compliance. We owe someone a favor. 2) Often the cost incurred in the exercise of power is a reduction in its effectiveness. 6
a) You can reward just so many times before the recipient is satisfied and no longer desires the reward. b) Referent power can be exhausted by asking for one favor too many. c) The receiver of information or expert knowledge may become less dependent on the provider. b. The ability to exercise power over another is also dependent on choices that the other person makes. 1) Power depends on a person s perceptions of the alternatives available in a given situation. 2) As alternatives increase, members are less likely to comply. a) You do not especially like plan A, but the alternative is plan B which is very poor. You agree to support plan A. But: b) If there are attractive alternates, such as plans C, D, and E... you may not be as willing to support plan A. c) Now suppose you ve been asked to reject plan A. If your only choice is plan B, you may still support A. But if C, D, and E are available, it is much easier to reject A. C. Manufactured Consent 1. Habermas a. The manufacture of consent occurs when employees at all levels willingly adopt and enforce the legitimate (hierarchical, departmentalized) of the organization, society, or system of capitalism. b. That this power is hard to see only increases its strength. c. The magic of consent is that people themselves buy into the vocabulary and have difficulty imagining an alternative reality. 1) I m just doing my job. 2) It s nothing personal. 3) It s the way things are here. d. The system, not individual managers or workers, can then be blamed, but not held accountable, for actions taken in its name. e. Not all consent has purely negative consequences. 1) Shared responsibility can be a part of the group s structure. 7
D. Myths, Metaphors, and Stories 1. Often reveal the beliefs and values of a culture as they tell the stories of legendary heroes, of good and evil, and of origins and exits. 2. In myths we find evidence of basic metaphors that structure our view of things. a. Star Wars story is deeply rooted in our value system b. Stories of sacrifice of one for the good of the many 3. Organizational stories help to explain and justify company actions that might otherwise be resisted by employees. 4. Over time, the stories, myths, metaphors come to define appropriate behavior... and lead employees to suspend critical thinking about company (and their own) actions. a. The Nazi Final Solution b. Do whatever it takes to make the client happy. c. Do not challenge the Dean. E. Politics 1. Mumby a. Organizations are not neutral sites of sense making. b. Rather, they are created in the context of struggles between competing interest groups and systems of representation. 1) Curriculum review within the School of Com. 2. Improving organizational communication research a. Connect the political to the poetic. 1) Rather than just observing employees and managers and reporting and analyzing it, researchers should also attempt to reveal their own cultural bias or lens to their readers so that they can judge the merit of the analysis. b. Conduct more participatory research 1) Whenever possible, physically engage in the experience of work they are studying. c. Conduct more critically oriented research. 1) Most research attempts to be objective and neutral. 2) Critical theory research seeks to reveal sources of domination, with emphasis on communicative practices and structures of power and control. While not neutral, this is of importance to the health of the organization and its employees. 8
F. Hegemony 1. Gramsci and Hegemony (heh-jeh -moh-nee) a. The power of rules, standard operating procedures, and routines. b. Describes the hidden power of society. 2. Managers work hard to achieve routine, predictable environments. a. Employees come to believe their behavior is controlled not by other people, but by the rules of the organization or company. b. A subtle shift from This is how we ve decided to do things to This is how things are done. 1) Rarely are members given opportunity to redefine the situation. c. 3. Once you start trying to understand the interests behind the taken-for-granted assumptions, many new possibilities appear. 4. In a world where everything revolves around human beings, order, rationality, and hierarchy are the order of the day and any challenge to these core beliefs is summarily dismissed as meaningless. IV. Power in the View of Critical Theory A. Frost, a professor of industrial relations at the University of British Columbia, has advanced four propositions about power that are not explicit in traditional treatments of the concept. 1. Organizational life is significantly influenced by the quest for and exercise of power by organizational actors, which constitute the political activity of the organization. 2. Power exists both on the surface level of organizational activity and deep within the very structure of organizations. 3. Communication plays a vital role in the development of power relations and the exercise of power. 4. The manipulation and exercise of power is expressed, in the sense both of actions and relations, as organizational games. B. Communication provides the means for the development and exercise of power. In turn, power creates and shapes communication structure and rules. C. Critical theory is the perspective that focuses explicitly on a communicative and symbolic approach to power. 1. Carpet in the offices of VPs, but area carpets in lower level executives. 9
D. For the critical theorist, power is confounded with domination and oppression conditions in the structure of society and in organizations that scholars should reveal and criticize. 10