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Summary Power & Leadership Articles + Lectures
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Summary of all the articles and lectures of the Power & Leadership course from the University of Groningen 2019. PSMAB-7.
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Power & LeadershipCluster 1: The basics
Lecture 1 – Also, see the slides
Power: definition changed over time
- Simon, 1957: power is the ability to affect someone’s behaviour. Person’s A’s behaviour
causes person B’s behaviour. They look at the effect of power, influence. However, you
describe a concept by the effect rather by what it is in essence.
- French & Raven, 1959: the maximum potential ability of O to influence P. Power is the
potential for influence. They look at the capacity for effect, the potential for influence. But
still, the source of power is not clear.
- Fiske & Berdahl, 2007: relative control over another’s valued outcomes. Power is the relative
control over someone. They look at the source of power, outcome control. Power is seen as
relative; something that takes place in a social context. When you have power, it is always
over other individuals, it can not act in isolation. The control and outcome vary among
situations.
Sense of power: feeling of having power. Not per definition in a social context.
Kipnis: power corrupts
Milgram and Stanford experiment showed what (lacking) power does to a person. People give high
electric shocks when having low power and get instructed by someone in a white coat.
The power level of the evaluator has a big impact:
- Powerful people attend less. Powerless pay close attention to those who control their
outcomes. The powerful people do not need to pay much attention to the powerless. The
powerful may not be able to attend because they may experience attentional overload.
- Influence leads to devaluation. He performed good because I told him to do so, it says
something about me.
- Approach and inhibited behaviour.
Power leads to a bias in performance evaluation. Employees won’t agree with their evaluation
because the above mentioned points.
Power affects performance evaluation. The more power a person has, the more likely he thinks
positively about own performance and the more negative he is in evaluations of others.
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, Power & Leadership
Perspectives on Power in Organisations – Anderson & Brion 2014
Power: asymmetric control over valued resources, a process that unfolds over time. A resource can
refer to anything of value on which others depend, such as money, knowledge, decisions of
personality. Power is inherently relational.
Power is distinct from influence, because it involves a potential influence which is realized or not.
Power is also distinct from status, because power entails a structural position in which individuals
have control over resources, and status is a social-perceptual construct where people are admired
and respected in the eyes of others.
Leadership: persuading other people to set aside for a period of time their individual concerns and to
pursue a common goal that is important for the responsibilities and welfare of a group. Leadership Is
defined by numerous tasks that are not part of power, such as planning, organizing, problem solving
and supporting others. However, leadership, power, status and influence are correlated.
The extensive organizational literature on power has identified a diverse set of antecedents of
power. A long tradition of research that has examined power dynamics in smaller group settings has
complemented the organizational literature on power. Some subfields within the wide literature on
leadership are relevant as well, e.g. personality. Power also has a psychological consequence.
Power is studied in three distinct dynamics; acquisition, maintenance, and loss of power.
Acquisition of power: factors that help people to attain power. People can obtain control valued
resources, increase the value of the resources they already possess or can enhance the impression in
others’ eyes that they possess control over valued resources in order to gain power. Antecedents:
- Competence: you gain power if others believe you possess superior competence. Both task-
related skills and interpersonal skills (social skills), can be important, dependent on what the
group needs.
- Structural position: one’s position determines the access to information and the ability to
gain power. Network centrality and bridging structural holes (connecting two otherwise
disconnected individuals) provides control over the flow of information and gains power.
- Demographics and morphology: characteristics such as age, sex, and race impact power.
Beneficial to power: male, older, length, not being overweighed, dressed like a leader, SES,
and facial features (more mature faces, they are perceived as more competent than baby
faced for white people. However, when being black, people more likely to want a leader with
a baby face. Baby face look more trust worthy, and the problem with black people is not
competence, but trust.). All these demographics and morphology contribute to the external
perception of resource control.
- Personality: need for agency, control, and dominance
- Motives: the one that desires power acquires power. Individuals vary in their drive
for power. They increase their visibility, seek positions with authority and so on get
control over resources.
- Traits: higher levels of narcissism, dominance, and self-monitoring. Extraversion is
the most consistent predictor of leadership emergence from the BIG-V. These
personality traits are associated with stronger social skills and desire for higher social
standing and power.
- Interpersonal style: communication style; verbally, nonverbally and paraverbally
(vocal tone and speaking style), more gazing, higher volume, less smiling, more other
touching, more gesturing and expansive body postures (high power body language
vs. low power body language). These behaviors contribute to the ascriptions of
power because they signal the possession of valued resources. E.g. dominant
handshake, big posture, speed of walking.
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, Power & Leadership
Antecedents of power according lecture:
- Possessing characteristics that confer status: social roles, gender, race, attraction, non-verbal
- High need for general agency, control, dominance, influence and self-monitoring
Maintenance of power: how individuals retain power, antecedents:
- Exogenous factors: factors operating outside the individual with power. Perceptions and
attributions that others make that contribute to the maintenance of power.
- System justification: people have the tendency to defend and justify the status quo,
which includes to maintain the hierarchical system in which they function. They see
the hierarchical system as legitimate. Intended by both people who have power and
who have no power, particular people with low power positions.
- Attributions: power impact attributions, powerful people are perceived more
positively than is justified by their actual behavior. Those with power are stereotyped
as being more competent. Halo effect: assumed positive ability with presence of
other characteristic (power).
- Endogenous factors: power changes the individual, factors within the power holder.
- Affect and physiology: power holders experience and express more positive affect,
are less susceptible to stress, and have benefits in their health. This will help them to
maintain power.
- Cognition: power enhances cognitive performance on goal setting and pursuit,
abstract thinking, and executive functioning. They set achieve goals and display more
creativity. This contributes to increased optimism and confidence.
- Behavior: power impacts how they interact with their environment. According to the
power-approach theory, power holders behave disinhibited, action-oriented. They
engage in less conformity and more frequently violating norms.
How do individuals lose power, antecedents:
- Exogenous factors:
- Environmental competition: the amount of resources is a constraint for power. Less
resources results in more competition for power. Power holders receive greater
social attention and are blamed for failures.
- Intragroup characteristics: even-sized groups experienced less certainty and cohesion
than odd-sized groups. Power holders in such unstable even-sized groups have more
risks in losing their power with small changes in opinions. They lose their majority.
- Individual characteristics: race and sex. Women and minority ethnicity are more
likely to lose powerful positions. Women are more often placed in risky power roles.
- Endogenous factors:
- Ethical transgressions: corruptive behaviors and reduced sensitivity to social
disapproval lead to unethical behaviors. When power holders feel threated or feel
incompetent, they act aggressive an assertive. They treat other in a more abusive
way and engage more in self-serving behavior.
- Decision-making biases: elevated power increases the contribution to cognitive and
decision-making biases that damages their own power. Overconfidence leads to
excessive risk taking, reluctance to accept useful advice, and inhibition of
subordinate voice. This leads to reduce of performance and so on loss of power.
- Biased interpersonal perception: power holders overlook interpersonal information
that is relevant to maintaining power. They disregard social comparison and
frequently rely on stereotypes. They surround themselves with similar thinking and
pleasing others which contributes to inaccurate network perceptions.
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, Power & Leadership
Power holders engage in self-serving behaviors that undermine their power versus collective, group-
serving behaviors that strengthen their power. Moderators in the relationship between power and
maintenance/loss are:
- Personal and dispositional characteristics: Whether or not they depend on self-serving
behaviors depends on their personal drive for power. Persons with a personal power
motivation, engaged more in self-serving behavior. Persons with prosocial orientation with
strong moral identities engage more in group-serving behaviors. The way in which power
holders perceive their power also impact the controversy. Personal power increased
stereotyping, social power requires responsibility for others which leads to careful attention
of individuating information.
- Responses to threat: influence the dependence on self-serving behaviors
- Stability: unstable power holders experience more stress and engage in more risk
taking decision-makings. If relations are not stable
- Legitimacy: the extent to which people obtained their power in legitimate ways. In
absence of legitimacy, they rely on influencing followers through force.
- Status: low-status power holders are especially likely to engage in abusive behaviors
toward others in positions of low power. Power holders who use dominance were
not liked, which damages their power.
More research is needed to the influence of culture on acquisition, maintenance and loss, the
influence of sex, and the study in real offices instead of labs taking the organizational complexity into
account.
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