Review

Author(s): Marshall W. Meyer

Review by: Marshall W. Meyer
Source: Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Jun., 1983), pp. 301-303
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. on behalf of the Johnson Graduate School of Management,
Cornell University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2392626
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Book Reviews Power in Organizations.
Jeffrey Pfeffer. Marshfield, MA: Pitman, 1982. 391 pp. $19.95,
cloth; $10.95, paper.
Igenuinely liked this book. Powerin Organizations is a pioneer-
ing effort to meld the language of politics and power with the
language of organizational analysis. The latter until recently has
been preoccupied with rationalistic accounts of how organiza-
tions ought to function. The measure of the book's success is
that it was done at all, not that the argument has been perfected
in its details. Heretofore, power has been a dirty word, partly
because it complicates neat if not precious theories, partly
because researchers simply haven't known enough about
power. Much to Pfeffer's credit, he has brought together a set
of ideas that may be amenable to research. Certainly,this book
makes many of the issues surrounding power in organizational
settings accessible to students.
Let me first reproduce the key elements of Pfeffer's argument.
Power is defined, following Dahl, as the ability of actor A to get
actor B to do that which he would not otherwise have done.
Power is treated essentially as a function of resources, whether
cognitive or monetary resources or brute force. Power is
therefore illegitimate or, possibly, alegitimate. (Pfefferdoes not
consider Talcott Parson's theory of power, which is somewhat
different.) Because it is illegitimate, power operates in an arena
that is conflictual and often unpredictable. This arena is called
politics. Legitimation transforms power into authority. Legiti-
macy arises out of what Pfeffer calls "institutionalization." (The
reader must jump from page 5 to page 289 to discover
conditions favoring "institutionalization"; Pfeffer might have
done better to adopt some of Blau's ideas on legitimation of
power from his work on exchange and power.) Unlike power,
authority does not incur resistance. Authority thus operates in
the arena of administration where conflict is suppressed and
behavior follows predictably from command. Administration,
therefore, becomes possible where the power game is held in
abeyance. Pfeffer thereby differs from turn-of-the-century
reformers who believed politics and administration to be wholly
separable.
The notion that legitimacy or consensus distinguishes power
and politics on the one hand from administration and authority
on the other is then extended to different models of organiza-
tional decision making. Rational models assume consensus on
goals and maximization of them. Bureaucratic models assume
consensus on procedure if not goals. "Garbage can" models
assume inconsistent preferences but a desire for consensual
decision making. Power models, by contrast, attribute to indi-
viduals constant preferences but inconstant coalitions and
affiliations, with no premium placed on consensus. A helpful
table on page 31 summarizes the different models of organiza-
tional decision making.
Having defined powerand described its consequences, Pfeffer
then develops a model predicting power and politics (as op-
posed, presumably, to authority and administration) in organiza-
tions. The concomitants of power are familiar: heterogeneity
and scarcity in the environment, differentiation and interdepen-
dence within organizations. These lead directly or indirectly to
conflict, hence power and politics. Who ultimately wins the
301/ASQ,June 1983

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 contest for power once it has begun is a function of a number of
things, including control of tangible resources, control of intan-
gibles (e.g., information, agenda, and decision premises), and
individualpolitical skills. Presumably, settings not conducive to
power games reward technical competence more than manipu-
lation of tangible and personal resources.
Chapters on political strategies and tactics and on political
language and symbols follow. They are extremely readable,
somewhat anecdotal, and substantially apart from the first four
chapters in which the theory of power is constructed. A chapter
on "Power in Use" combines quantitative results from organi-
zational research, many of them Pfeffer's, with some case
studies, one of a firm pseudonymously labeled "'Federal Fi-
nance." Moststriking istheveryweak connection between the
indicators used in quantitative research and the subjectat hand,
power. The case analyses have greater fidelity. The chapter on
"Perpetuating Power" fares somewhat better in this respect.
Its title, however, is a contradiction since, following the
framework laid out earlier, power perpetuated and legitimated
becomes authority. Based on research evidence, Pfeffer ar-
gues that for individuals, mechanisms of commitment tend
toward stability of behavior, whereas for organizations, legiti-
mation of organization as such also tends toward stability.
Pfeffer, of course, did not have access to very recent research
identifying some tangible concomitants of organizational per-
sistence. Forthe benefit of readers who imagine that organiza-
tions are fixed, Pfeffer then discusses processes leading to
change. But rather than treating perpetuation and change as
black and white categories, it might have been easier to
introduce the idea that rates of change are variable, both across
organizations and over time.
A final chapter argues that politics is an inevitable and, in many
settings, a desirable component of management, provided it is
not labeled as such. Despite overwhelming evidence of anach-
ronism, the ideology of most U.S. managers remains Frederick
W. Taylor's. Their legitimacy rests on the belief that technical
compentence, not political acumen, accounts fortheir position,
responsibilities, and rewards.
Iwantto repeat that I liked this bookvery much and recommend
it highly to students of organizations. This recommendation
holds especially for those concerned with bedrock methodolog-
ical issues of what kinds of phenomena we can study success-
fully and what we cannot. Although Pfeffer does not address
these questions directly, they rather jump off the page at the
reader, at least the reader who has had hands-on research
experience. Pfeffer states early in the book, for example, that
power has been ignored or treated superficially because we
want to believe organizations rational. Serious consideration of
powerthreatens legitimacy and "makes it possible to introduce
political concerns into the issues of corporate governance"
(p. 12). I cannot help but ask whether this is not too glib an
explanation for inattention to power in organizations. Let us
accept Pfeffer's premise that power and politics arise in
situations of uncertainty, ambiguity, and change. Where uncer-
tainty, or equivalently, complexity that overwhelms cognitive
limits, truly exists, social scientists' understanding of events will
be no better than participants'. Inall likelihood, it will be worse.
This means, among other things, that the capacityof ordinary
302/ASQ,June 1983

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 Book Reviews

observational methods to explain power will be low. Power,

then, must be understood by its consequences. But the defini-
tion of power renders its consequences difficult to assess,
since power is the difference between what actor B did and
what he would have done had actor A not exercised power.
Guessing what B would have done but for A's intervention is
difficult enough. Distinguishing effects of A's power from his
authority is even more difficult. The last problem is particularly
acute when looking at vertical relationships in organizations
where superordinates can be presumed to have some author-
ity. Inotherwords, Iam notas certain as Pfefferthat power has
been avoided because it is a dirtyword. The problem, instead, is
that current concepts and research methodologies do not
render power easily grasped and explained. Certainly, social
scientists have not been reluctant to conduct research in other
areas that have not pleased corporate interests.
There is a further difficulty. Few social scientists have had
access to power, at least outside of universities. The map of the
Berkeley campus and numerous anecdotes describing
academia could mislead readers into believing the university to
be representative of large organizations generally. It is not.
Universities are far more democratic and proceduralized than
business firms and political organizations that are centrally
controlled and acutely concerned with survival. The experiential
base needed even to theorize about power, then, is very weak
in the social sciences. This is unlikely to change, given the
reluctance of society to support the social sciences, much less
to place social scientists close to positions of power.
My comments should serve mainly to underscore the impor-
tance of the subject addressed by Pfeffer. Power is central to
organizations and society, yet the social sciences know little
about power, not even rudimentary facts such as the impor-
tance of power compared to rational economic calculation in
corporate life. The knowledge base of the social sciences is
weak partly because positivistic methods do not deal well with
the subtleties of power, but partly because the social sciences
are removed from the exercise of power, at least in the U.S.
Powerin Organizations, then, should be read and thought
about carefully. While offering few definitive answers, it raises
vexing questions about the capacity of social science to address
truly important issues. I wish the book had been shorter and
focused more explicitly on method and less on anecdote. But
Pfeffer is to be forgiven his eclectic style, because he has
produced a book that will stimulate not only new research but,
more importantly, new ways of thinking about and studying
power in organizations.

Marshall W. Meyer
Department of Sociology
University of California
Riverside, CA 92502

Corporations, Classes, and Capitalism

John Scott. New York: St. Martin's, 1980. 219 pp. $19.95.

John Scott's Corporations, Classes, and Capitalism is an am-

bitious review of the issues and evidence relating to the
structure of corporate interaction in Western capitalism. De-
303/ASQ, June 1983

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