Is POWER positive?

How do we use Evidence-Based Management? Or how can it help the organization solve a problem?

Integrating a positive sense of power.

The Search...

For today, let’s take just part of the question to reduce the complexity of the task. What is positive power? For this partial question, we will log on to the library, whichever we have access to, and search for “positive power” and “positive aspects of power”.

What do we find? We find multiple articles on power and we read all the abstracts to determine if the articles found are applicable to the overarching question. As a matter of fact, we find over 40, but determine only 10 are worth a solid reading. We retrieve these articles and complete an analysis. While we read, we take notes and find repetitive themes and keywords. For power, we find some seminal studies from authors that present concepts that have not changed over the years. The first paper is written by French and Raven(1). This paper discusses structural power in the following six terms:

· Referent power is based on influence and trust.

· Legitimate power is authority based on position.

· Expert power is influence based on knowledge.

· Coercive power is ability to punish or harm.

· Reward power is to award positive outcomes.

In additional works, these terms are found to be separated into hard and soft power as well. Referent and expert power are considered soft power. Legitimate and coercive are considered hard power.

Another author describes these bases of power as positional and personal. Legitimate, reward, and coercive are positional power. Referent and expert are considered personal power2.

Descriptions of power also fall into categories like authority, centralization, influence, and politics.

Besides these thirteen varieties of power, we are still reviewing to find positive power. Soft power and personal power are a start, but we need a type of “power” that describes a positive relationship.

A final article discusses relational power (2). What is relational power? It is based on the power of relationships and the exchange between leaders and subordinates. An old concept that parallels relational power is a concept called power-with which is a form of collaboration within the organization and empowerment of the individual.

What else can we do with these articles? We can synthesize the information. What do these articles on power tell us?

1. We found leaders with high power status negate teamwork because the team follows this high-powered individual’s directions.

2. We found power in a non-dominant context can increase task persistence and creativity.

3. Leaders that have purposeful control over few sources create negative perceptions for employees. Negative perceptions can affect employee performance.

So What?

These articles help us solve the problem of whether the concept of power can be positive. We can say, yes, there is some evidence that supports power as positive: relational power.

This first synthesis of evidence gives the practitioner information as follows:

Power can be positive and we need a leader with focus on relationship versus status to increase positive employee perceptions.When creating your posts you can:

Figure 2: Positive Power

In the next segment, to continue the investigation, I will discuss what factors of “leadership and power,” together, can be positive.

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1. French, J. R., Raven, B., & Cartwright, D. (1959). The bases of social power. Ann Arbor Michigan: Institute for Social Science Research, 259-269.

2. Zhao, X., Shang, Y., Lin, J., Tan, J., Li, H., & Liu, T. (2016). Leader's relational power: Concept, measurement and validation. European Management Journal, 34(5), 517-529. doi:10.1016/j.emj.2016.02007

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