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organization. As such, power is not a dirty secret, but the secret of success.
And that’s the path power follows, until it becomes institutionalized-
which makes administration the most precarious of occupations.
Gerald R. Salancik
Jeffrey Pfeff er
D
fewer is held by many people to be a dirty
word or, as Warren Bennis has said, “It is the
obscure the demands of its environment.
Most great states and institutions declined,
organization’s last dirty secret.” not because they played politics, but because
This article will argue that tradi- they failed to accommodate to the po-
tional “political” power, far from being a litical realities they faced. Political processes,
dirty business, is, in its most naked form, rather than being mechanisms for unfair and
one of the few mechanisms available for unjust allocations and appointments, tend to-
aligning an organization with its own reality. ward the realistic resolution of conflicts
However, institutionalized forms of power- among interests. And power, while it eludes
what we prefer to call the cleaner forms of definition, is easy enough to recognize by its
power: authority, legitimization, centralized consequences-the ability of those who pos-
control, regulations, and the more modem sesspower to bring about the outcomes they
“management information systems”-tend desire.
to buffer the organization from reality and The model of power we advance is
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
The literature on power is at once both volumi- ten about power theoretically, there have been
nous and frequently empty of content. Some is few empirical examinations of power and its use.
philosophical musing about the concept of Most of the work has taken the form of case
power, while other writing contains popular- studies. Michel Oozier’s The Bureaucratic Phe-
ized palliatives for acquiring and exercising in- nomenon (University of Chicago Press, 1964)
fluence. Machiavelli’s The Prince, if read care- is important because it describes a group’s source
fully, remains the single best prescriptive treat- of power as control over critical activities and
ment of power and its use. Most social scientists illustrates how power is not strictly derived
have approached power descriptively, attempt- from hierarchical position. J. Victor Baldridge’s
ing to understand how it is acquired, how it is Power and Conflict in the University (John
used, and what its effects are. Mayer Zald’s edi- Wiley & Sons, 1971) and Andrew Pettigrew’s
ted collection Power in Organizations (Vander- study of computer purchase decisions in one
bilt University Press, 1970) is one of the more English firm (Politics of Organizational Deci-
useful sets of thoughts about power from a so- sion-Making, Tavistock, 1973) both present in-
ciological perspective, while James Tedeschi’s sights into the acquisition and use of power in
edited book, The Social Influence Processes specific instances. Our work has been more em-
(Aldine-Atherton, 1972) represents the social pirical and comparative, testing more explicitly
psychological approach to understanding power the ideas presented in this article. The study of
and influence. The strategic contingencies’s ap- university decision making is reported in articles
proach, with its emphasis on the importance of in the June 1974, pp. 135-151, and December
uncertainty for understanding power in organi- 1974, pp. 453-473, issues of the Administrative
zations, is described by David Hickson and his Science Quarterly, the insurance firm study in
colleagues in “A Strategic Contingencies The- J. G. Hunt and L. L. Larson’s collection,
ory of Intraorganizational Power” (Administra- Leadership Frontiers (Kent State University
tive Science Quurtmly, December 1971, pp. Press, 1975), and the study of hospital adminis-
216-229). trator succession will appear in 1977 in the
Unfortunately, while many have writ- Academy of Management Journul. 21