13.0 The Basics of Power
Learning Objectives
- Define power.
- Explain how power can have both positive and negative consequences.
- List different sources of power.
- Discuss the relationship between dependency and power.
What Is Power?
We’ll look at the aspects and nuances of power in more detail in this chapter, but simply put, power is the ability to influence the behaviour of others to get what you want. Gerald Salancik and Jeffrey Pfeffer concur, noting, “Power is simply the ability to get things done the way one wants them to be done” (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1989). If you want a larger budget to open a new store in a large city and you get the budget increase, you have used your power to influence the decision.
Power distribution is usually visible within organizations. For example, Salancik and Pfeffer gathered information from a company with 21 department managers and asked 10 of those department heads to rank all the managers according to the influence each person had in the organization. Although ranking 21 managers might seem like a difficult task, all the managers were immediately able to create that list. When Salancik and Pfeffer compared the rankings, they found virtually no disagreement in how the top 5 and bottom 5 managers were ranked. The only slight differences came from individuals ranking themselves higher than their colleagues ranked them. The same findings held true for factories, banks, and universities.
Positive and Negative Consequences of Power
- Positive Power is the ability to align and motivate members of the organization towards goals and to make a positive difference in other people’s lives
- Negative Power can be intoxicating to those who hold it, leading to corruption. This may be abused due to conformity
Conformity
Conformity refers to people’s tendencies to behave consistently with social norms. Conformity can refer to small things, such as how people tend to face forward in an elevator. There’s no rule listed in the elevator saying which way to face, yet it is expected that everyone will face forward. To test this, the next time you’re in an elevator with strangers, simply stand facing the back of the elevator without saying anything. You may notice that those around you become uncomfortable. Conformity can result in engaging in unethical behaviours because you are led by someone you admire and respect who has power over you. People conform because they want to fit in with and please those around them. There is also a tendency to look to others in ambiguous situations, which can lead to conformity. The response to “Why did you do that?” being “Because everyone else was doing it” sums up this tendency.
So, does conformity occur only in rare or extreme circumstances? Actually, this is not the case. Three classic sets of studies illustrate how important it is to create checks and balances to help individuals resist the tendency to conform or to abuse authority. To illustrate this, we will examine findings from the Milgram (1974), Asch(1952), and Zimbardo (n.d.) studies.
The Relationship Between Dependency and Power
Dependency
Dependency is directly related to power. The more that a person or unit is dependent on you, the more power you have. The strategic contingencies model provides a good description of how dependency works. According to the model, dependency is power that a person or unit gains from their ability to handle actual or potential problems facing the organization (Saunders, 1990). You know how dependent you are on someone when you answer three key questions that are addressed in the following sections.
Scarcity
In the context of dependency, scarcity refers to the uniqueness of a resource. The more difficult something is to obtain, the more valuable it tends to be. Effective persuaders exploit this reality by making an opportunity or offer seem more attractive because it is limited or exclusive. They might convince you to take on a project because “it’s rare to get a chance to work on a new project like this,” or “You have to sign on today because if you don’t, I have to offer it to someone else.”
Importance
Importance refers to the value of the resource. The key question here is “How important is this?” If the resources or skills you control are vital to the organization, you will gain some power. The more vital the resources that you control are, the more power you will have. For example, if Maggie works in the admin office of the golf course and is the only person who knows how to fill out reimbursement forms, it is important that you are able to work with her, because getting paid back for business expenses is important to most of us.
Substitutability
Substitutability refers to one’s ability to find another option that works as well as the one offered. The question around whether something is substitutable is “How difficult would it be for me to find another way to do this?” The harder it is to find a substitute, the more dependent the person becomes and the more power someone else has over them. If you are the only person who knows how to make a piece of equipment work, you will be very powerful in the organization. This is true unless another piece of equipment is brought in to serve the same function. At that point, your power would diminish.
“13.2: The Basics of Power” from Organizational Behavior by LibreTexts is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
