Power as an experiential concept

Stand. J. Mgmt, Vol. 4, No. l/2, pp. 31-44. 1988 Printed in Great Britain

0281-7527/88 $3.00 + 0.00 @ 1988 Pergamon Press plc

POWER AS AN EXPERIENTIAL CONCEPT

BARBARA CZARNIAWSKA-JOERGES

Stockholm School of Economics

Abstract - Power is not a single social phenomenon. It is a socially constructed concept of certain social phenomena. This article presents some different concepts of power derived from empirical studies of organizational behaviour in various political, organizational and cultural contexts. Reference is made to a study of top managers in Poland and the United States, research on women in organizations, and a study of a reform in Swedish local governments. A comparison of these cases leads to an analytical model which can help us to understand the process of social construction of power in a variety of contexts.

Key words: Power, social construction of, shortage economy, horizontal power, vertical power, normative concept of power, descriptive concept of power.

1. THE CONCEPT OF POWER IN LITERATURE

What is “power”? Most people have an intuitive notion of what it means. But scientists have not yet formulated a statement of the concept of power that is rigorous enough to be of use in the systematic study of this important social phenomenon.

This reproach was formulated in 1957 by Robert A. Dahl (Dahl, 1957, p. 201), and social scientists took it very seriously. Definitions proliferated. Among the most important was the definition proposed by Dahl himself:

A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do (Dahl, 1957, p. 203).

This definition, however, is only one among many. Following different orientations and differing traditions, authors have claimed that:

power is a universal experience (. . .) Power invariably fills one vacuum in human biganization. As between chaos and power, the latter always prevails (Berle, 1967, p. 37).

. . power (i.e. effective influence on . . . decisions and actions) is an elusive blend of at least three elements: bargaining advantages, skill and will in using bargaining advantages and other players’ perceptions of the first two ingredients (Allison, 1977, p. 168).

power may be tricky to define, but it is not that difficult to recognize “the ability of those who possess power to bring about the outcomes they desire” (Pfeffer, 1981, p. 3).

Power is a domination-submission aspect of a relationship between social actors, which can be introduced by any of the actors but which can be removed only by mutual consent (Czarniawska-Joerges, 1987).

Today, 20 years after Dahl’s seminal article, the goal has still not been achieved,

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32 B. CZARNIAWSKA-JOERGES

although the of seeking have changed: of producing definitions researchers concentrated on through earlier in the of arriving a better by a of strict reasoning. Many attempts have

- and are being made. I myself contributed (Czarniawska, 1983). any attempt reconcile Clegg Dunkerley (1980) Tannenbaum

(1962), Lukes (1974) Berle (1967) leads to conclusion, aptly in a from the of Power Democracy in that:

We do not know any method that could serve to solve the semantic puzzle concerning the concept of power, without implying that all definitions are equally correct or that various approaches cannot be improved (Lane and Stenlund, 1986, p. 145).

A possible solution could then be to change our perspective or approach to the problem. One such approach is to consider the concept of power in semantic contexts (Hanna Pitkin does this most interestingly in a Wittgensteinian tradition; Pitkin, 1972). Another is to look at the way the concept is used as a means of structuring experience, on the assumption that people in different organizations and in different countries will have their own definitions of power, shaped by their own experiences and the contexts in which they live and work. This holds true also for researchers and theoreticians. In fact, the most obvious conclusions to be drawn from the various definitions of power in the literature pertain to the authors’ political, disciplinary and methodological stances. However, I do not simply mean, as Pfeffer puts it, that “power is relationship or context- specific” (Pfeffer, 1981, p. 3).

Obviously this is so: the power of parents over their children expresses itself differently from the power of employers over their employees, and so on. Nevertheless, even within the same type of relationship (for example, managers and managed), power is understood differently in different organizational, social, political and cultural contexts. To quote Dahl again:

. . a Thing to which people attach many labels with subtly or grossly different meanings in many different cultures and times is probably not a Thing at all but many Things (Dahl, 1957, p. 201).

A search for the concept of power could prove more fruitful if conducted in a speculative, philosophical mode (see, for example, a juxtaposition of Habermas’ universalist view and Foucault’s subjectivist view of power in Miller, 1988). Empirical studies, on the other hand, could examine different power concepts and trace their relationships within the contexts in which they are born. Several examples from my own and other researchers’ studies can illustrate this approach.

2. THE BRACKETING OF POWER

The procedure which I employed can be best explained by referring to Egon Bittner and his proposal to study the concept of organization as a commonsense construct (Bittner, 1965). Since then it has been suggested that a similar operation (sometimes called “bracketing” in Alfred Schutz’s terminology) should be performed on “authority”, “hierarchy”, “structure” and “leadership” (Brown, 1978). Garfinkel showed that

POWER AS AN EXPERIENTIAL CONCEPT 33

“rationality” socially constructed 1967), and idea was extended to rationality (Thompson, There is reason to that the

of power not socially To paraphrase argument: if isolates the of power the world everyday life, becomes empty, the sense we do know what it relates

or how relates to “Without knowing structure of relationship of the meaning the concept its terms be determined”

p. 247). order to this difficulty, researcher can one of procedures. The

consists of that “the common-sense meanings the terms adequate definitions the purpose his investigation” p. 247). we can

constructing a about power power allocation, structure, etc., the assumption the respondents what power and that

they know it is with what researcher knows. is of a perfectly assumption if researcher is to prove existence of shared meanings.)

to another and a common one, concept is an operational This procedure the actors abandon their perspective in of the

The third and the I adopted this paper, to discover meaning(s) of concept by its use real situations people who considered to socially competent this case, actors).

. . in order to understand the meaning of the actor’s thought and action (. . .) one must study how the terms of his discourse are assigned to real objects and events by normally competent persons in ordinary situations (Bittner, 196.5, p. 247).

The investigation starts when (and because) the researcher observes the phenomenon in question in the same way as everybody else in the relevant social setting. People talk about power. People certainly did in several studies which I conducted, even though I never asked them about it. They used the concept to interpret the significance of actions - their own and other people’s - which they were describing.

There is a distinct contrast here with the first and second procedures, where it is the researcher who introduces the concept. In my opinion, these procedures risk producing descriptions of non-existent phenomena, of non-referential discourse. A common background of shared meaning cannot be taken for granted. Respondents asked about a concept belonging to the common language (be it “strategic planning”, “authority allocation” or “pink elephants”) but which has no concrete meaning for them, are nevertheless able to produce convincing answers. Questions and answers then become a test of linguistic competence, by-passing reality.

Thus, only if we know that competent actors are using the concept can we proceed to look for its meaning, which, as we have noted is located in relation to actions taking place in the relevant social setting. We can discover and identify this relation only from the actors’ accounts of their actions. Note that observation alone is not sufficient: it coincides with the second procedure whereby the researchers’ definition dominates; what they see as power is power. The best method is to listen to actors using the concept in accounts produced for other actors; the second best is to use spontaneous accounts made to the researcher.


The concept then appears as a general formula to which certain events (actions) are assigned. The researcher’s task is to identify these events, and consequently to establish the method of attribution. The attribution gives the events “a distinctive meaning that they would not otherwise have” (Bittner, 1965, p. 249).

What follows, then, is my account of actors’ accounts and an attempt to relate these to the contexts in which the actors live and act.

3. POWER AS A PUDDLE: POLISH RETAIL COMPANIES

Between 1978 and 1980 I made a study of control relations between the headquarters and companies of Polish “centres of trade”, which are organized along the same lines as large retail corporations in Western countries. Part of the investigation focused on the incentive systems aimed at the general managers of the companies belonging to a particular “centre of trade” (corporation). The study revealed that the formal reward system did not work (see Czarniawska, 1984, 1985). Bonuses were regarded as an integral part of a manager’s salary, and their withdrawal could count as a punishment. Other incentives were regarded as unattractive (e.g. letters of praise) or improbable (e.g. receiving a car allotment). The punishment system was much more elaborate, the most severe penalty being the loss of the general manager position, since the position as such was a source of rewards - and these rewards were largely independent of the formal incentive system. High salary (bonuses included) was a reward that depended not upon performance, but merely upon remaining within the system. Another reward was power in the sense of influence, prestige and special privileges outside the organization.

To understand this system we need to examine the context in somewhat greater detail. The Polish economy is an economy of scarcity - a so-called producer’s market. It is not the decisions and choices of the consumers which shape demand and therefore influence supply; rather, it is the producers who determine supply in loose association with demand. This results in a state of relative scarcity, often referred to as “shortage” (Kornai, 1980; Nove, 1983). Since the producers, or rather the central planners, do allow for demand up to a point, it is only certain goods or certain amounts of goods which are in short supply for varying periods of time. As Nove puts it:

. . . shortage must be distinguished from scarcity, the latter being a situation in which demand unlimited (by either price or rationing) exceeds supply, while shortage means that individuals (factory managers or consumers) with a legitimate claim on resources cannot obtain what they want or need, even though they have the money (Nove, 1983, pp. 7k71).

This specific economic situation, which has characterized the entire post-war period in Poland, has two important consequences in our present context. First, it causes a dramatic gap between nominal and real wages, thus rendering formal incentives unattractive. Secondly, it encourages barter to an extent that is unusual in industrial economies: the relative character of scarcity allows for the exchange of goods between different demand groups. There are basically two kinds of barter: barter among the powerless and barter among the powerful. There is no sharp distinction between these groups: there are many shades of power. For the purpose of the present analysis, however, we are concerned with extremes. Barter among the powerless implies that friends and neighbours exchange any surpluses they have from their most recent


purchases, such as toothpaste in exchange for toilet paper. Barter among the powerful can be illustrated by the following incident which occurred while I was engaged on my study.

I went to interview the general manager of a clothing retail company, and he was late. His secretary was just leaving, so she let me into the manager’s room and asked me to wait. After a while somebody knocked at the door. A woman with a big parcel looked in. “Is Mr. X here? ” “No”, I said, “I am waiting for him”. She hesitated, and then said: “Unfortunately I can’t wait. Can you take a message for him? Listen carefully, as it is somewhat complicated. This parcel contains suits for two sons of the director of the high school. Now, the older son wants to have the same colour, but one size bigger; the younger wants the same size, but blue and not grey. Have you got it right?”

When Mr. X returned, I recited the whole story, expecting him to be embarrassed or even frightened. He was neither. “You know, it is the director of the high school where my younger daughter is, and his older son is graduating just now. What a bother! AS if I had nothing better to do.”

I should perhaps explain the transaction in greater detail. This was not, strictly speaking, a case of barter, as the director would pay in cash for the suits, thus ensuring the legality of the situation. Nor was it a case of extended nepotism, as the general manager had no need of favours for his daughter. This was a barter of privileges, a barter between the powerful. The school director obtained a desired good (in the graduation season there is always a shortage of good suits) and saved himself (or, more likely, his wife) a lot of time spent standing in queues. The general manager received nothing in exchange. One day, however, a friend of his may want to send his child to a school outside his own particular district, and then the power of the school director will come in handy. Quite likely the friend will turn out to be the managing director of a nearby cloth factory, and so the barter network will be advantageously extended. (Favours are rarely done for people outside the barter network, families being an obvious exception.) The managing director might then be willing to do our general manager a favour in the supply of summer skirts, thus helping him win the regional May Day supply competition.

Our general manager would not call himself “powerful” although other people would. “Power” in Polish has inevitable political connotations and always sounds slightly pejorative.

Let us examine this notion of power in greater depth. It can be helpful to distinguish between two types: vertical power and horizontal power. Verticalpower can be described as an increase in influence, prestige and privileges at a higher level in the hierarchy. This is the traditional vision of power. Horizontal power implies influence, prestige and privileges resulting from membership in a specific network, in our example composed of local general managers and their counterparts in other institutions, who do each other certain services and are therefore mutually dependent upon one another. The increase in horizontal power means, above all, an increase in the influence one can exert outside one’s own organization, in spheres pertaining to company activities as well as in the private sphere, as in the case related above.

Promotion in the hierarchy does not necessarily mean an increase in horizontal power. On the contrary, some types of promotion threaten horizontal power by detaching the individual from the “barter network” to which he or she belonged. Some hierarchy levels accumulate a significant amount of horizontal power, while others do not. Like rainwater in puddles, power collects only at certain levels. The only attractive promotion is the one


that allows a person to step into the next “power puddle”, which is by no means the same as the next level in the hierarchy. For a general manager of a company it would mean promotion to the president or senior vice-president level. As the “centre of trade” has 49 divisions throughout the country, the likelihood of such a promotion for any one of the 49 general managers is not very high. But the most probable promotion, for instance, as director of one of the departments at the headquarters lacks the desired horizontal power. Hence the apparently surprising fact that few general managers want promotion. Even if, like rain, power comes from on high, it collects only in the puddles.

4. POWER AS A PROPERTY: U.S. RETAIL COMPANIES

My study of retail companies was then extended to U.S. retail corporations (Czarniawska, 1984, 1985). The situation of general managers in the United States was naturally very different from that of their Polish counterparts. Nevertheless, even here the results brought to light some surprises that require explanation.

According to the top executives, even young managers working somewhere around the middle rungs of the ladder have exciting and autonomous jobs. Their salaries are very high, rising every year faster than inflation; and they often enjoy fringe benefits as well. To fire them would probably call for something as dramatic as conviction for theft. Nevertheless, promotion is their main ambition. Apparently, though, many top positions mean that deprivations and frustrations are added to what are otherwise interesting occupations. Again, according to the top executives, top positions mean work overload, loneliness (“company presidents don’t have friends. Our only friends are the other company presidents”), and the risk of being removed from a post from one day to the next, if there is a change of owner or if the board decides to change management. It means an even higher income of course, but, as one of the chief executives said of his younger subordinate, there are other motives as well:

Why isn’t he happy with what he is doing? He’s got all the money in the world. He does not have any economic worries at all. He’s got a beautiful home, he’s got a car, he’s got kids in college, he’s got everything that an East European would give all his teeth to have. What’s driving him? Power. That’s what it is. Power and ego. And it’s very strong. It’s phenomenally strong . . .

Very often, however, my respondents spoke of “achievement”, “self-fulfillment”, etc. when describing the same situation - especially those who were still waiting for promotion. Why was power not always called by its proper name? Here is a conversation I had with one of the younger executives:

Yes, power, power. I am reluctant to say it, but it’s true. I am embarrassed by it, but it’s true. - Why? - Because it is evil sounding to say that I like the power. - OK, influence, does that sound better? - It’s just as evil. - But is it true? - Sure. Power, power.


McClelland’s paper on “The Two Faces of Power” (1970) offers an interpretation of the embarrassment felt by my respondent. Power, he claims, is understood in the U.S. culture as power over people, ultimately reduced to manipulation or coercion. It is therefore considered ethically wrong, and McClelland claims that this is why young, bright and well-educated people want to be experts, scientists or consultants rather than managers or politicians. (The reader should remember that McClelland’s paper was written when the influence of the students’ movements of the 1960s was at its height.)

Yet surely this negative face of power is only part of the story. Power must have a positive face too. After all, people cannot help influencing one another. Organizations cannot function without some kind of authority relationships (. . .) A man who is consciously concerned with the development of proper channels of influence is surely better able to contribute to group goals than a man who neglects or represses power problems and lets the working relationships of men grow up unsupervised by men (McClelland, 1970, p. 6).

McClelland then proceeds to rehabilitate the concept of power in the eyes of American youth, but we need not follow him in this endeavour. What is interesting is that only one of his two faces of power was described by my respondents. Power, they claimed, is influence over people, and as such is morally dubious. However, it is necessary to the survival of organizations; it is functional both for organization and individuals (see also the introductory quotation from Berle, whose opinions epitomize this type of stance).

Basically, power is a property acquired within a certain position, and then maintained and enhanced at subsequent promotions. Again it is a question of influence, prestige and privileges, but now of influence inside, not outside the organization, with prestige stemming from money rather than from an absolute status in society such as that of a general manager, together with a great many special privileges coded, however, in a language of privileges specific to a given time and place. This power is distinctly vertical in character: it starts at a certain point and then grows upwards.

We can note certain regularities in the conceptualization of power. There is a concept of power as it is, a descriptive one, and then, almost inevitably, an e,valuative concept in moral and in functional terms. This seems to lead to the conclusion that although power is immoral it is also functional, and therefore must (or will) remain as it is.

5. POWER AS AN INFINITE RESOURCE: WOMEN STUDIES

The two previous examples show clearly that experience shapes the concept of power; it does not take much imagination to recognize that the opposite relationship should also be true: the way in which power is perceived must influence the way it is exerted. Like many other social phenomena, the relationship is in the nature of a loop, often of a self- reinforcing kind.

It is particularly rewarding to study this phenomenon in relation to the question of the power exerted by women in organizational settings. It has been noted that women tend to exert power in organizations in ways different from those of men.

Johnson (1974) reported that women exert power in indirect rather than direct ways; exploiting personal resources (such as affection or attractiveness; see also Hirdman, 1987) rather than concrete resources (such as money or qualifications); emphasizing


helplessness rather than competence. “Helplessness has become women’s legitimate power base, which may be why helpless power strategies seem to work better for females than for males and better than competent power strategies” (Colwill, 1982, p. 100). The same can be said about the two other attributes of “female power”: the indirect way of exerting influence (“the husband is the head and the wife the neck which turns the head”) and the personal basis of power (charm and attractiveness) fit the socially approved stereotype of feminity, thus giving legitimacy to power attempts based on these attributes.

The contextual origins of this specific way of exerting power are obvious: the socialization process initiated in early childhood and persisting until retirement provides rewards for “feminine” behaviour and punishes deviations from it. That is only one part of the process, however. The other part is well illustrated by the fact that women want to exert power differently. Texts on power written by women indicate that women- researchers tend to see power in normative terms as infinite rather than finite (increasing one person’s power does not decrease the power of others; Miller, 1977; Colwill, 1981), as given rather than taken (organizational leaders exist to serve their subordinates and not vice versa), as consisting of responsibility rather than privileges, and of energy rather than control (Kanter, 1972; Rich, 1976; Hirdman, 1987). All these attributes seem actually to stem from this last one: power is energy, a force, and therefore it is an infinite resource, and given: “This is the Zeus’ thunder and the Thor’s hammer; Odysseus’ ingeniousness and Hercules’ strength” (Hirdman, 1987, p. 148). This “natural” character of power transforms it into responsibility: it is a gift of the gods and as such should be humbly directed towards the service of humankind.

This concept of power, again, can be traced to contextual factors and socialization processes. At no point should it be assumed that the genetic equipment of women and of men lead to different perceptions of power. There may be many men who would describe power in terms like the above. But it is our cultural and social experiences which most influence the concepts we uphold, and so long as the “male” and “female” contexts are sharply differentiated, the differences in conceptualization will persist. It is also likely that women, as those directly responsible for the earliest stages of socialization, are to a large degree also responsible for the conceptualization of power. The modelling process that takes place in the family at a subconscious level can, if supported by explicit educational attempts going in the same direction, shape many of the descriptive and normative concepts applied in adult life.

This discussion of “feminine power” throws some light on the two aspects of the power concept-the descriptive and the normative. In the previous examples of power in retail corporations, the difference between the two was difficult to detect. Moral judgements were applied to actual power; no alternative image was considered. Now, first of all, we have a difference in the perception of how men and women exert power. This difference is observed not only by women-researchers, but also by men and women in organizations. Next, Lips (1981) notices, “women are torn between a desire to increase their power and the distaste they feel for the idea of imposing their will on others” (p. 10). In other words, women suggest that the way power is usually exerted (Lips, 1981, and many other studies show that power is ascribed mainly to men, so that whenever power is discussed without a qualifier, it refers to “male” power) is ethically wrong. The paramount importance of the moral criterion accords with a typical women’s role in society, that of the moral guardian (Lipman-Blumen, 1984).


However, power as exerted by women is also described in negative terms, but from the point of view of effectiveness rather than ethics. “Feminine power” is ineffective; it is almost the equivalent of powerlessness. In a simulated work situation Colwill et al. (1982, 1983) found that ways of exerting power which were direct and based on concrete resources and competence (and therefore to be considered “masculine”) were more effective for both women and men. The “feminine concept of power”, on the other hand, is regarded as positive in moral terms: it emphasizes strength rather than force, creation rather than limitation, mutual help rather than unilateral influence. So we face a dilemma: what’s the good of power that is moral but ineffective?

One possible answer immediately offers itself: feminine power is ineffective because reality lags behind the ideal. It is doubtful whether either Zeus or Athene ever had to use helplessness as the basis of their power. But if less obvious answers are to be sought, we could say in the terms of the present analysis that the dominant concept of power (for a given group) does not agree with the dominant context. As long as contexts are man- defined, women-defined power will be inappropriate to them. This dilemma can be seen as one of the causes of what Hirdman (1987) calls “a deep societal neurosis”. And she goes on: “in the same way that a personal experience of identity threat creates intricate defence mechanisms, this conflict creates certain deferring tactics that acquire a structural, societal quality” (p. 144). Examples of such techniques are problematizing (women do not really want power), diminishing (women belong to minority groups and cannot therefore claim power), redefining (power is not an important aspect of women’s situation), and reversing (claiming that women are the real rulers of the world, hiding from responsibility behind the men’s backs). Most women-researchers, among them those who are primarily interested in organizational power (Kanter, 1977; Colwill, 1982), propose counter-strategies directed towards changing the ways in which power is exerted not only by women but also by men. At the societal level counter-strategies of this kind found their most visible expression in the feminist movement and the variety of tactics that it embraces (Lipman-Blumen, 1984). Nevertheless, the original dilemma remains unsolved.

The following case also confronts the dilemma of the morality or effectiveness of power, and solves it in yet another way.

6. POWER AS MOULD: THE SWEDISH PUBLIC SECTOR

A recent reform in Swedish local government was intended to promote the decentralization of political decision-making to submunicipal units (Submunicipal Committees) in order to increase local involvement in municipal issues. I have made a study of the reform in which I have tried to describe how the organizational actors perceived of an organizational change, which followed - and was embedded in - a political change (Czarniawska-Joerges, 1987). My respondents rarely used the word “power”. As we have recognized, “power” is usually a negatively charged concept:

As a municipal counsellor, I have, in addition, a certain power, as it’s called in quotation marks. It’s a dirty word.

Nevertheless, power was mentioned, and it was very interesting to hear how it was explained. Power on the same organizational level was described as some sort of natural,


almost biological, phenomenon, which comes into being without any connection with human will but which, like fog or waterfalls, can and should be controlled by humans. Alternatively, in its negative aspects, power was regarded rather like dust or mould which settles in corners when nobody is looking. Here is the picture presented by one of the top politicians:

We also felt that power was extremely concentrated at the top, despite everything, in the municipal context, and we’ve been criticized for that, of course, and we’ve been thinking about what kind of methods one could apply here.

The top politicians were not those in power, as in the Polish example, nor were they those with power, as in the United States: they were those with a duty to prevent power from “concentrating” or “accumulating” in undesirable places. One of the most important functions of the reform was to “clean up” the local governments by removing power from the corners where it had accumulated: in specialized central offices (such as social welfare or schools, as opposed to central staff offices, like finances or personnel). But no personal attributions were ever made: nobody was called “power-hungry” or “power-seeking”. Sometimes such an expression could be used in relation with a group (politicians want more power; central administrators have too much power), but power did not seem to have any relation to specific individuals.

One possible interpretation of this impersonal approach is that, like everywhere else (or perhaps more than anywhere else), “power” in Sweden is a social taboo, something to be discussed exclusively in impersonal terms. There could well be other interpreta- tions. We could say that the way power is discussed is not so much impersonal as non- personal; the point is not that power is unconnected with specific individuals, but that it is connected with so many individuals (or groups), all trying to control the course of events, that the actual power is a result of all these attempts. Everybody tries to control other people, and any statement concerning power is a description ex post facto of who has

succeeded, and when, something which may change from one situation to another. The result as reflected in actual organizational activities often came as a surprise to those most involved:

I sometimes wonder about who wants the child care to have the form that it does today I mean, it is certainly not parents, and not really us, social welfare workers, but rather the universities and the experts, who then require that things must be like this or like that in the child care area.

The use of professional and political ideologies, of more or less hermetic languages, creates opportunities for exercising power while also contributing to the confusion regarding its source.

Power was also seen as an almost natural process, in the sense that nobody wants it and yet it happens. As we have observed, it is like mould: we have to watch out for it, and not let it develop. Power was presented as a side-effect of other positive processes. When power-related issues had to be discussed in a positive way, they were usually called “responsibility”.

As part of the municipal administration, the management groups are responsible to the elected representatives’ committees for fulfillment of the objectives of the submunicipal reform, assisted by municipal activities in the submunicipal area. In this context, the concept


of “responsibility” covers rights, duties and opportunities for the management group to operate (from a document).

Thus, power can be understood as responsibility which has gone wrong. Where and when can this happen ? The perception of power was also affected by distance. The further away the power was from a particular actor, the more personal and distinct power seems to have appeared. On the same level power was thus perceived as mould, something undesirable that must be avoided. At other levels from themselves respondents were more likely to speak of “power struggles”, “power games”, etc.

If power is mould, then it is impossible to control it firmly and predictably, to assign it as desired. If it is a natural process, if politics is “alive”, then its results can only be foreseen in very rough outline, and more often than not they can come as a surprise. This was amply demonstrated as the reform proceeded. Several potential “winners” realized that they might be losing some of their autonomy instead of increasing it. It turned out that, with this type of “indistinct” power, it was easier to dilute power in one place than to redirect it precisely to where it was needed. Unexpectedly, it began to accumulate in a new place: in the central staff offices at the municipal level. Decentralization, at least in the local perspective, began to resemble a sort of selective centralization. Some political decisions were delegated downwards, but some administrative responsibilities were transferred up.

The politicians, who were the main “cleaners”, watched all this with mixed feelings. Some insisted that every decentralization requires a certain amount of centralization, and it was therefore natural that some responsibilities should accumulate in central staff offices. Others maintained that central staff offices were usurping power that should be vested in the local politicians. No matter what the particular opinion, the pattern held: the opportunity to wield influence, when viewed favourably, is called responsibility; when viewed unfavourably, it is called power.

When I first presented the results of my study at an international conference, some of them at least were greeted with incredulity. Was it possible that “losers” did not defend their positions? Were there no coalitions between winners, no resistance from losers, no struggles?

To simplify matters, let us assume that there were three groups who hoped to gain more influence as the result of the reform: local politicians, central politicians and local officials. All three groups seemed to think they would be the “winners”, but it is important to note that the will to win was always motivated by reference to the public good. If any group was striving for more power, it was because they believed they would be better able to serve the citizens that way. If any personal gains came into it, they were never mentioned.

We could explain these attitudes as part of the culture of the Swedish public sector, in which no trace of cynicism is allowed. Public Service is a value on a level equal with that of Democracy, and although incompetence or mistakes are obvious human failings, there is never any suspicion of ill intent.

By the same token, no coalition is possible between the groups. Such an idea is excluded on both constitutional and cultural grounds. No matter what the groups might think about each other, nobody tried to usurp anyone else’s role, or even to question it. Together with my colleague Anders Forssell, who worked with me on the study, I witnessed an interesting confrontation between a local politician and a local official,


which vividly illustrated this point. They differed in their view of how some minor problem in the community should be solved.

Even more than their words, their body language and tone of voice were very expressive. “This is utter nonsense and will never work” the official seemed to be saying. “But as you represent the political will, I shall do as you say. This is my role, and God only knows how much I have to go through because of it!” “I know you think it’s nonsense” the posture and gestures of the politician were indicating. “But I’m of a different opinion, and you will do as I suggest. And unless you prove to me that it doesn’t work, I shan’t believe you”. Aloud he said: “We’ll try this solution first, and if it doesn’t work we’ll think about something else”. No matter what their personal feelings were, neither of them was willing to challenge the other’s authority. This explains why the situation in which three groups all counted on gaining in power led not to power struggles but to the implementation of the reform.

Thus we are confronted with yet another version of power, and one which again clearly bears the stamp of the cultural and organizational context in which the concept was forged. In the final section below I shall try to summarize the relationships observed in a model for use in the comparative analysis of concepts of power according to different contexts and experiences.

7. CONCLUSIONS

The examples reviewed above suggest certain contextual elements which are obviously important to any formulation of the concept of power: political and economics systems, gender, culture, type of organization. But trying to make a complete list of such factors reduces their socially conceived significance. In every case they are all reflected in social representations as a particular whole, in which various elements influence all the others, resulting in a specific historical and cultural combination. Our overarching goal should be to seek to understand the phenomenology of power.

What should be studied with special interest is the dynamic relationship between normative and descriptive concepts of power. Power as observed in use engenders normative concepts either by idealizing or by rejecting the current practice. Normative concepts maintain or challenge this practice. Figure 1 provides an outline of this process.

A given social reality is reflected in a social representation, a descriptive concept of power shared by a group of people who are in contact with the same reality. This description is then submitted to evaluations on both moral and functional grounds, in which both criteria and final judgement are strongly influenced by value systems and cultural preferences. This is a social process, whereby, with the help of gossip and other forms of informal communication, people test their concepts, confirm their judgements and verify whether their opinions are congruent with those of the group (Sabini and Silver, 1982). If the resulting normative concept of power includes approval of existing realities, the resulting behaviour will further support the original description. In such situations the effectiveness criterion seems to be chosen as most relevant. My first two examples concerning Polish and U.S. retail managers illustrated this point. The respondents had doubts about the moral aspects of power as they saw it practised, but they found it effective and therefore adapted their behaviour to this picture. In contrast, women-researchers and politicians in Swedish local governments judged power primarily


Fig. 1. The interrelations of descriptive and normative concepts of power.

on moral grounds, found it wanting and proposed measures to improve the reality. It may be that the third face of the prism is an aesthetic judgement.* There were

elements of this in the women-researchers’ view of power. However, the organizational language does not regard aesthetic criteria as legitimate.

This formal model can be used in analysis at the individual level, but its social applications seem much more interesting. First, there is the interesting dialectic between contextual changes and changes in perceptions of power, which provides an obvious focus for the study of power especially in a historical perspective. Secondly, and equally interesting, are. the internal dynamics in a particular group; the contexts here are created by the fossilization of established ways of being and of corresponding social perceptions.

Power is not a single social phenomenon. Power is a socially constructed concept of some particular social phenomena.

Organization research usually concentrates on the final product of this process. If we want to understand it, however, we have to begin with the process itself. Ethnomethodo- logists would argue that the understanding of the process is the ultimate aim and end of the research. I do not agree. Although people use similar methods to construct their concepts of power, this does not mean that the result is always the same. There are different organizations, different organizational experiences and different organizational power. Understanding how organizational actors construct their concept of power can be compared to making a pair of binoculars according to the prescription they provide.

*I thank Udo Zander for this suggestion.


Once we have the binoculars we may be able to see reality as they do. We will be able to compare different concepts of power, despite the different binoculars that have been used. Instead of forcing the empirical data into a universal model which is value- independent, we can arrive at many particularistic models which are value-relative.

Acknowledgement - The work on this paper has been sponsored by the Study of Power and Democracy in Sweden.

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Power as an experiential concept