Practical Connection and reflection
Hemants4692
Bratton_PPT031.pptxOrganizational Leadership
John Bratton
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Part 1
Contextualising leadership
Power and leadership
Chapter 3
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Learning outcomes
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
Recognise and explain the types of power within leadership processes
Understand and explain the different perspectives on power
Describe the evolution of studies of power and leadership as a field of learning
Understand and explain the concept of organisational politics, its relationship to power and leadership
Identify contemporary challenges around power and leadership
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Introduction
What is power? Power is generally defined as the capacity or the potential to influence others in relation to their beliefs, attitudes or activities.
Critical leadership scholars contend that orthodox leadership theories (trait, behavioural, contingency, charismatic) adhere to traditional hierarchical and bureaucratic control systems and take the asymmetrical power relationship within the leader-follower dyadic as natural and unproblematic (Collinson, 2011; Gordon, 2011; Hardy and Clegg, 1996).
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Introduction
The literature on non-traditional follower-centric and team theories of leadership espouses the sharing of power between leaders and followers.
Critical organization scholars, however, contend that non-traditional approaches ‘blur’ power relations and generally continue to adopt an apolitical perspective to power.
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Conceptualizing power
Karl Marx
The making of history is made not just in relation to the physical world but also through the struggles that some social groups engage against others in circumstances of domination.
He argued that “class interests” – capitalist versus workers – follow from the social relations concerning the ownership and control of the means of production, and there conflict and power is structured into organization design.
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Conceptualizing power
Max Weber
The probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests.
Theory of legitimate domination through legally enacted policies and regulations, found in modern bureaucracies, with two central elements:
the legitimacy of the organizational leader’s power, and the perception by followers that the leader’s authority was legitimate for those who were subject to it.
the creation of an “administrative apparatus” in which followers carry out the commands of the leader.
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Conceptualizing power
Max Weber
The treatment of ‘power’ as ‘authority’ to mean institutionalized ‘authority’ (from the mistranslated ‘Herrschaft’) became the basis for orthodox studies of power, in which power relates to authority, as a phenomenon informally rather than formally developed in the organization.
The ‘formal-informal’ distinction thus becomes the focus where “authority is the potentiality to influence based on a position, whereas power is the actual ability to influence based on a number of factors including, organizational position” in the hierarchy.
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Conceptualizing power
Orthodox studies of ‘power’ in work organizations have located the bases of power in some relationship with, such that they enable ‘power’ to be ‘exercised’ or in specific socially authorized ‘resources’ that a worker may control.
E.g. , ‘A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do’ (Dahl, 1957, pp. 202–3). Power ‘over’, whether individually or collectively, refers to the control of one agent over others, and power ‘to’ is the capacity to realize ends.
Tendency to focus on ‘power over’ by critical scholars due to the concentration of its oppressiveness and injustice. However, Hearn (2012) argues that ‘power over’ and ‘power to’ are “inextricably bound together … it is the increase in power over, in ever more extensive and complex forms of hierarchic social organization, which has yielded massive increases in our power to”.
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Conceptualizing power
French and Raven
Focuses on the potential ability of one individual to influence another within a certain social situation.
This theory assumes that the particular ‘resource’ possessed by the individual that will have a utility in one situation, will have that usefulness in all situations.
It also assumes perfect knowledge on the part of all concerned being able to judge correctly the utility of the all resources in all situations (Clegg and Dunkerley, 1980).
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Conceptualizing power
Five bases of power – referent, expert, legitimate, reward and coercive
Giddens (1985) notes that all individuals may “have power”, but in an organizational context, power is influenced and constrained by the distribution of different types of resource.
E.g. “allocative resources” – control over physical things such as monetary reward, and “authoritative resources” – involve control over management practices.
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Conceptualizing power
Stephen Luke
Power is a “three-dimensional” phenomenon.
The one-dimensional view of power focuses on the individual’s ability to enact commands in observable conflicts.
A two-dimensional view of power extends the analyses by examining the ability of the social actors to control the agenda, which is a source of power overlooked in the pluralist model, one-dimensional perspective.
The three-dimensional view is the social processes in which those with power induce the powerless to behave or believe as the former wish, without coercion. This is achieved by a complex infrastructure of persuasion or justification.
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Different perspectives on power
Foucault
Power operates at all social institutions, at all levels of social interaction and through all individuals.
Power does not intrude from powerful individuals; it exudes from within.
Followers are not the victims of others’ power; rather, they are both the perpetrators and the victims of the very power that constrains their behaviour.
Power is associated with the web of policies, practices and procedures found within organizations.
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Different perspectives on power
Conceptualizing power as a relational activity, rather than as a possession, widens the focus of attention from the ‘who’ and the ‘why’ to ‘how’ of power, HR policies and practices, for instance, by which it operates.
Power also prevents some behaviours while at the same time positively encouraging others, both at the broadest political and historical levels and at the deepest level of individual identity.
Power constitutes what we know as a society, including, of course, how we think about work organizations – emphasizing that power and knowledge are closely interconnected, serving to reinforce each other.
Power is all-pervasive.
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Different perspectives on power
Gramsci
‘Hegemony’ that acknowledges the complexity and mixture of consensus and conflict, and hence power relations in a broad sense. This term expresses two types of power relations:
A group’s domination over other groups.
A group’s leadership.
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Different perspectives on power
It expresses the relationships of leadership and domination that produce a general sense of coordinated reality for most people. Besides that, it also represents an active, social process in which alternatives resistance against incorporation.
No leader can guarantee that followers will follow and any discussion of power and leadership has to acknowledge that leader-follower relations are inevitably characterized by structured power, cooperation and conflict.
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Different perspectives on power
| Weber’s & Lukes’s concepts of power | Foucault’s and Gramsci’s concepts of power |
| Power is possessed by the individual | Power is relational & pervasive |
| Power resides in social elites | Power is found in everyday social practice |
| Powerful dominates powerless, resistance is futile | People build their own web of power, resistance challenges elites |
| Power is negative and repressive | Power is creative & contributes to social order |
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Different perspectives on power
Table 3.1 Traditional and Non-traditional Conceptualizations of Power
Source: Source: Adapted from Buchanan, D.A. and Badham, R.A. (2008) Power, Politics and Organizational Change: Winning the Turf Game, London: Sage.
| Weber’s & Lukes’s concepts of power | Foucault’s and Gramsci’s concepts of power |
| Power is visible, exercised when needed | Power is imperceptible through everyday routines |
| Knowledge of power sources is empowering | Knowledge buttresses the web of power |
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Power and management
Obedience is central to an analysis of the construction of power in leader-follower relations (Clegg, 1998).
In organization situations, French and Raven’s coercive power commonly implies the ability of a leader to inflict on subordinates feared penalties for disobedient behaviour or control over subordinates. Crucially, it is the subordinate’s dependency for coercion to be effective. However, uses of power imbalance to coerce may involve bullying behaviours that undermine a subordinate’s dignity and self-esteem (Bolton, 2005).
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Power and management
Bassman (1992, p. 2) observes, “one common thread in all abusive relationships is the element of dependency. The abuser controls some important resources in the [target’s] life; the [target] is dependent on the abuser”. There are also research evidences that suggest that leader-coercive behaviour and bullying behaviours occur in workplaces because of the inability of the victim to defend her or himself due to a power imbalance (Branch et al., 2013). It is the analysis of dependency, the processes of social interaction, the minutiae of everyday work experience and the often misogynistic norms that informs its conduct that provide a more cognizant understanding of leader-coercive and bully behaviours in organizations.
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Power and management
This also serves as a reminder that not all of leader-follower social interactions rest upon charismatic appeal or the ritual of deference or adulation. They also remind us that leaders perpetrate coercive-bully acts and too often this is interpreted as representing a “few bad apples”, as though socio-cultural influences are of no importance. But they are embedded within organizational cultures and processes, which in turn form part of wider societal processes (Bolton, 2005). Bolton also highlighted that the vagueness of the employment contract gets intensified within the cauldron of coercion and abuse.
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Power and management
The effect of leader-coercive behaviour and bullying on recipients:
can range from psychological stress-related symptoms to physical harm (Hogh et al., 2011).
can also affect employees’ loyalty, commitment, and performance (Rayner, 1997).
affect organizational performance through an increase in absenteeism, high turnover and the cost of recruitment and training interventions, as well as loss of productivity (Salin and Hoel, 2011).
E.g. Tesco executives Chris Bush and John Scouler
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Power and management
Gordon (2002; 2011) found that power in leadership is generally debated in two perspectives:
Traditionally, power is seen as a phenomenon within hierarchical structures and control systems of organization.
Second focus is on the role of dispersed leadership theories and their emphasis on the promotion of empowerment through the transfer of leadership responsibilities to lower levels with post-bureaucratic organizations (Bryman, 1996).
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Power and management
Orthodox Theories
Presents leaders with dualistic position of privilege within organisations – considered to be superior to other followers either through natural ability or particular attributes.
The historical nature of power is deemed to be ‘natural’ and ‘unproblematic’ – leading to limitations to reflections of surface-level issues and occurrences. Gordon (2011, p. 200) added on that the theme describes of what is occurring or what ‘ought’ to occur and lacks of abundant insight into the problematic interplay between leadership and power.
Power is assumed to be legitimate for leadership figures but illegitimate for organizational followers or for trade unions challenging managerial prerogative.
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Power and management
Dispersed Leadership Theories
Focus primarily on self-leadership and team-based leadership approaches:
Self-leadership – employees take responsibility for their own work processes and direction.
Team-leadership – centres around autonomous work teams, each of which has their own leader.
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Power and management
The sharing of leadership responsibilities ensures that the emphasis is put on the process of leadership rather than the attributes or behaviours of the ‘leader’.
However, this also assumes that power must also be shared and that the process of sharing power will be unproblematic.
Power is something that is embedded historically and socially in the structures around organisational actors; it is closely related to the concept of dependency and therefore pervades activity and impacts on attempts to disperse leadership.
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Power and management
Flemming and Spicer (2014) illustrated that there is a clear distinction in the literature between episodic theories of power (where power is directly exercised) and systematic forms of influence (where power is concealed within often enduring institutional structures), through identification of four sites of organizational power:
Power ‘in’ organisations
Power ‘through’ organisations
Power ‘over’ organisations
Power ‘against’ organisations
They also recognized that there are roles of other types of authority within organizational leadership, how they interlink and overlap or contrast within.
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Power and management
Weberian social theory,
the bureaucratic organization is viewed as a ‘social tool’ and an expression of rational thought and action. Any follower in a large organization will encounter a complex flow of power down, up and across organization hierarchies (Clegg, 1998). Power is part of the ‘rules of the game’ that both enable and constrain social action in the workplace (Clegg, 1975).
McKinlay and Starkey (1998),
found that Foucault’s conception of power is that it is most potent and efficient when it operates through bureaucratic rules rather than coercion or ‘force majeure’. Power is associated with practices and procedures – control of human capability rather than coordination of resources.
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Power and management
Townley (1994),
discovered that following Foucault, for individuals to be manageable, they must be known and to be known, they must be rendered visible – thus conceptualizes human resources management (HRM) is designed to close the gap between the expectation of performance and what is realized.
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