Power in Organizations

Lecture 7

Key concept 

Power can be productive and repressive, not bad or good. It can be political. 
Power in organizations is within its boundaries; it is created by authority. 
Power and politics shape/structure organizations, also influence careers, status, identity. 

 Issues of power arise as consequence of organizations

Power can be productive

- But also negative (repressive)

Four sites of power

- Power in organizations - focus
- Power over organizations
- Power through organizations
- Power against organizations

Episodic vs systemic power

- Episodic  relies upon identifiable acts that shape the behavior of others
o Coercion: direct exercise of power
o Manipulation: attempts to ensure action and discussion occurs within accepted
boundaries
- Systemic  mobilized institutional, ideological and discursive resources to influence
organizational activity
o Domination: attempts to make relation of power appear inevitable and natural
 Domination: Actors establish influence through the construction of
ideological values that become hegemonic (or dominant) 
o Subjectification: attempts to shape sense of self, experiences, and emotions
 Subjectification: Seeks to determine an actor’s very sense of self, including
their emotions and identity 

Power through Domination

 
Actors establish influence through the construction of ideological values that become hegemonic (or
dominant)
Power works through
 Making constructed values seem inevitable and natural
 Prevent questioning of values
Goal of power
 Shape corporate culture
 Maintain stability / non-questioned culture
Power comes from
 Grand theories, e.g. Capitalism, globalization
 Fads and fashions, e.g. Flexibility, excellence
Power through Subjectification
 
Seeks to determine an actor's very sense of self, including their emotions and identity
Power works through
- Normalizing ideology (making the subject feel it's normal)
- Shaping of identity - lived sense of selfhood
- Constructing expectations (ideals) to live up to
- Self-management / self-monitoring
Goal of power
- Produce ideal employees
- Make subjects responsible / individual responsibility
Power comes from
- Creating an ideology, which appeals to people's sense of self
- Everyday invisible micro-processes and practices
Examples
- Long working weeks  
- Panopticon (you act right because you are being observed) 
- Health regimes: your workplace cares about you (but only so you can perform well and
perhaps even exceed expectations) and wants to collect data on your sleep cycle, hires a
‘breathing coach’  

Comparison: 
- Culture: culture can be used to decide who has power 
- Structure: hierarchy within an organizations determines the power  
- Resistance – a way for employee to 'escape' power 
- Identity – can be shaped by power 
- Flexibility (Flexibility can be related to power in organizations because it can be seen as  a
control mechanism over workers to think that they are "free and flexible", but they are not,
or they are, but only to a certain extent) 
- Hypocrisy (power dynamics between organizations or organizations and society) 
- Stupidity (if the power is exercised wrongly, then no one questions it leading to functional
stupidity)