Power

Power is an inescapable force, without which organisations would not function (Fleming & Spicer, 2014: 285–286). As such, power is omnipresent, albeit not necessarily omnipotent. According to Fleming and Spicer’s review of the conceptualisation of power in organisation and management studies, power and politics are entwined.

Politics consists of activity that rearranges relations between people and the distribution of goods (broadly defined) through the mobilisation of power. In turn, power is the capacity to influence other actors with these political interests in mind. (Fleming & Spicer, 2014: 239)

Following this definition, it is not hard to imagine that a person who finds himself on top of the hierarchy in a bureaucratic organisation holds power over others (subordinates) qua that position, which might be legitimised through that person’s mobilisation of resources, here understood as (technical) knowledge. And this form of power would be legitimate according to Weber’s rational-legal type of authority insofar as the legitimacy of power is founded in the formal rules of the organisation.

This would be to conceive of power as something that one can possess, perhaps due to a valued skill or a high-ranking position in the organisation, such as CEO. This

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notion of power would go a long way to explaining the politics of organisations from a structure theory perspective.

Power can, however, also be understood in relational terms as something between people – as dynamic and shifting rather than something that belongs to certain organisational members, which would make it possible to elucidate the politics of organisational culture. Fleming and Spicer (2014) make an overall split between what they call episodic (possession) power and systemic (relational) power.

Whereas the former relies on identifiable acts that shape the behaviour of others, the latter mobilises institutional, ideological and discursive resources to influence organisational activity. The episodic form of power is, therefore, more visible and explicit than the systemic. As subcategories of episodic power, the authors list coercion and manipulation. Under systemic power, we find domination and subjectification. These are together referred to as the four faces of organisational power. Additionally, Fleming and Spicer (2014) locate four different sites of organisational power. For the purpose of this review, I focus on what they call power in organisations; that is, the ‘struggles that take place within formal boundaries to influence, maintain, or change hierarchies and norms’ (2014: 245, my emphasis). I will in the following two paragraphs use their framework as point of reference to describe the four conceptualisations and the different aspects of organisational power that each captures.

A prime candidate for the exercise of coercive power would be bureaucracy with a clear chain of command; that is, the flow of formal authority (cf. Mintzberg, 1983).

Power works through clear rules and direct orders with clearly stipulated consequences for not obeying. In this way, power comes to play the dual role of

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reducing uncertainty and maintaining organisational stability. And the pecking order may, as said, be established through authority or ownership, or perhaps possession of resources that are vital to the organisation. The other episodic form of power, manipulation, works through the implicit shaping of issues. By mobilising bias through storytelling and narratives, the manipulative form of power limits a given issue by framing it within a certain agenda, thereby potentially preventing the issue from being recognised as such. It should be evident from my description of the two episodic faces of power that both subscribe to a notion of power as something that can be held by someone or something (e.g. by individuals, institutions or organisations) and wielded over someone else. Moreover, it should be clear that any given use of power comes with certain intentions; for example, managerial strategies to secure control. In other words, power has a centre that it emanates from, and it is used with specific (intentional) purposes in mind (Townley, 1998). The main concern is the why of power, the intentionality behind its uses and abuses. The systemic forms of power differ in that research inspired by relationality tends to emphasise the how of power.

Domination, as one of the two systemic forms of power, constructs ideological beliefs and makes constructed values seem inevitable and natural, thereby making it implausible, if not impossible, to question organisational values. The ideological in domination becomes apparent when considering how it can ensure that a given organisational culture may remain uncontested. The locus of power stems from grand theories – what Alvesson and Kärreman (2000, 2011) call big ‘D’ Discourse;

for example, neoliberal capitalism or ideas from fads and fashion, such as flexibility and excellence. A thought example could be company layoffs that are taken as a necessity due to globalisation, obscuring the fact that the layoffs are a result of prioritisation; that is, of political power plays in organisations (indeed, globalisation

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as a phenomenon is by no means a universal necessity). Subjectification, the second of the two systemic power forms, works through the normalisation of ideology by means of shaping people’s identities and emotions – the lived sense of selfhood. It constructs ideals and expectations to live up to and installs a form of self-management or self-monitorisation with regards to normalised ideals. As such, subjectification produces the ideal employee and makes subjects feel responsible individually to live up to that ideal. Hence, the locus of power is the creation of an ideology that appeals to people’s sense of selfhood, and it is expressed tacitly in everyday microprocesses and micro-practices in organisations.

An example. Consider the human resource management practice of conducting appraisal interviews with employees – in Danish known as an employee development conversation (medarbejderudviklingssamtale; see e.g. Brinkmann, 2014). That the employee is expected to develop herself is implied. It is not a matter of if she should develop, but how she can. The questions that structure the conversation tend to place the management responsibility firmly on the shoulders of the employee (contrary to the idea of scientific management), who is to exercise self-direction when reflecting upon how well they are doing, what they can do better, how they can improve their weaknesses and where they see themselves in three to five years. Do the power relations in that particular space allow for the employee to state they would rather not continue developing themselves, that they are perfectly fine where they are, doing what they do, or, that they perhaps would prefer to step down from the treadmill for a while to prevent stress and burnout?

Obviously, the employee could bring up these issues. The point is that the power dynamics in the space facilitated by the appraisal interview make such response seem illegitimate because continuous development as an ideological value is fully integrated into the practice. To not bring suggestions for personal and professional

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development to the table means to not live up to that ideal. It would, in other words, break with the expectations for the appraisal interview to express satisfaction with the status quo. In this way, human resources practices, as Townley (1998) has it, become implicated in strategies of power and knowledge. The appraisal interview becomes a regulatory, and thereby, organising principle. Individuals have to monitor and control themselves by their selves, which become moulded by disciplinary power (Foucault, 1977; Grey, 1994).