Notesale: Turn your study into money

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Is anyone in an organisation ever powerless?
To understand the nature and distribution of power in an organisation, we must
investigate the fundamental sources from which power is derived
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The myriad of sources of power demonstrates that noone in an organisation is
powerless
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”1 However, the apparently powerless can exercise a
type of power that is not enshrined in rules, regulations, or hierarchy of organisation
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In this way, they possess power in their inherent potential
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The need for efficiency and the sheer
scale of operations necessitate specialisation and division of labour which inevitably leads to
the divergence of power of each individual because “as soon as various actors do different
parts of the whole task, the possibility arises that the various functions and activities may not
be equally critical to task accomplishment and organisational survival
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By the nature of their job, managers are central
to the survival of the firm even though they may not be core to what the firm does
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J
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Barber writes that “insofar as knowledge is power,
communication systems are power systems
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Knowledge of surroundings is most definitely power, especially in environments
where people and groups can be opaque to ‘outsiders’ of the subunit
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However, the workers lower in the hierarchy also have an informal centrality to operations
because they are deep in the ‘rank and file’ of the organisation
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Connections within an
organisation or even outside an organisation (perhaps a useful friendship with a regulator or a
worker at a rival firm) can often shift the balance of power
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This knowledge empowers the
worker as awareness of surroundings is ever so important in order to exercise control and
Page 269 Images of Organisation by Gareth Morgan
Page 98 Power in Organisations by Jeffrey Pfeffer
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Power in Committees: An Experiment in the Governmental Process by James D
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A good example of the importance of interconnectedness can be seen in the complex
web of relationships sketched by A
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Sorkin in Too Big To Fail, for all the Wall Street
executives were in close contact with each other and executive staff of the U
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Federal Reserve
and Treasury, which allowed a freer flow of information and increased transparency of the
environment
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Decisions are most commonly made by the management and these usually concern the
acquisition or allocation of resources
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”4 Possessors of resources within the organisation are empowered by
their ownership and control
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Hierarchical structure may dictate that they are on the
powerless end of the bargain, but without them the organisation would just be an empty shell
as it “requires personnel, money, social legitimacy, customers, and a variety of technological
and material inputs in order to continue to function
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Workers can take advantage of this as “ “the expert” often carries an aura of authority and
power that can add considerable weight to a decision that rests in the balance, or that needs
further support of justification”
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Parallels can be drawn with monopolistic markets in
economies, where monopoly power is exercised in the form of higher prices and lower market
output
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If a person or a resource is easily replaceable, the power vested in them or it is
vastly reduced- just like a monopolist’s power is reduced by the entry of a competitor
producing the same or a similar good or service
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Organisations do not exist in isolation; they are surrounded by other
organisations and an environment which contains ever-changing elements
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Since the future cannot be known with certainty, the organisation must
accumulate assets which will allow it to deal with things that may happen, whether they be
internal or external
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Uncertainty can occur in many forms: they can be environmental, where
contacts outside of the organisation and certain inter-personal skills may help; they could also
be operational, where maintenance and troubleshooting skills would come in useful
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The uncertainty was located in the engineers’ ability to
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Page 106 Power in Organisations by Jeffrey Pfeffer
Page 101 Power in Organisations by Jeffrey Pfeffer
Page 167 Images of Organisation by Gareth Morgan

repair breakdowns in the mechanised plant
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Again, an
influencing factor is the substitutability for “if the coping with uncertainty could be readily done
by other subunits, power was reduced
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”8 Therefore, not only is power
vested in the possession of resources- knowledge, skill, ability- but it is also vested in
irreplaceability
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In consumer markets, firms allocate
expenditure to advertising, the very purpose of which is to create the impression that there
are no substitutes for the firm’s product or service
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Power is a constructed reality
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J
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9 Definition of an organisation is important as we
identify what its core competence is
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“Once a large expenditure of
time and money has been accomplished, then those who have developed the system are in the
almost unique position of knowing how to operate it
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This
works in tandem with the sunk-cost hypothesis, which illustrates that individuals or entities
may stick with what they are doing, even if it is not entirely appropriate, and justify it by citing
all the time and effort that has already invested in the activity
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Personal characteristics can contribute significantly to
the perception of power or lack thereof
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As individuals, all workers differ from each other on an
interactional level
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Personal qualities like judgment, political skill and the ability to negotiate and
persuade can be sources of power
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11 As Pfeffer points out,
“power derives from the ability of the participants to convince others within the organisation
that their specific tasks and their abilities are substantial and important
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This type of raw aggressive power can lead to those at the bottom feeling powerless, but it
must be recognised that they have power in their potential
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Power can be found in numbers and this can easily be proved by simple
observations of what strike action initiated by labour unions has achieved
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No
matter how machinised and technology-orientated its operations are, people are needed, which
is why “coalition development offers a strategy for advancing interests, power, and influence in
an organisation
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coalition and interest groups often provide important means of securing
desired ends
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All in all, everyone in an organisation is powerful and powerless at the same time
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The size and bureaucracy of an organisation can lead to one being lost in the complexity
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”14 Noone, not even
managers, is exempt from this
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Morgan writes of work becoming “an addiction and a crutch, resulting in unbalanced personal
development and creating many problems for family life
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”15 This sociological view highlights the powerlessness of everyone against
social norms and the urge to conform to them Despite this, even the seemingly powerless
possess power because they have potential
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No matter how little power
anyone has in an organisation, they always have the power to walk out

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