The powers in the company types and forms of evaluation

The term "power" is considered by the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy as el Domain, Empire, Faculty and Jurisdiction that someone has to send or execute something. Thus, this power would include the ability or ability to force someone to behave in a certain way (Mulder, Dejong, Koppelaar and Verhage, 1986), or, as it is commonly said, going out with yours in a social situation in a social situation. In this psychology-online article, we will talk about The powers in the company: types and forms of evaluation.

French and Bell (1996), after a review of the different definitions of power that can be found in literature on work psychology, identify a series of elements common to all of them. Thus power implies:

1. obtain an effect (go out with yours)
2. It occurs during a social interaction (two or more people)
3. supposes the ability to influence others
4. The results favor any of the parties.

1. Positive power and negative power
2. Formal and informal power
3. Personal and position power
4. How to get power
5. Evaluation of power

Positive power and negative power

A first classification of power within companies, would be the one that distinguishes between positive power and negative power.

On the one hand, in the organization, the term power can be associated to activities such as guiding, influencing, persuading or selling, and even power can become constructive (Emans, Munduate, Klaver and Van de Vliert, 2003).

But power can also be associated with terms such as Force, oppress or coercer. Thus, in this scenario the power is ambivalent although the positive face or collective power as Roberts (1986) is the one that prevails in companies as various studies have demonstrated against the most negative or competitive power face (Roberts, 1986 ; Patchen, 1984). Thus, for example, problem -solving tactics and consensus search are much more popular in companies than coercive tactics.

Formal and informal power

Another classification of the different types of power derives from the bifactorial theory of social power proposed by Meliá (Meliá and Peiró, 1984; Peiró and Melia, 2003). Here two fundamental types of power are distinguished: formal power and informal power.

The formal power refers to the control that a certain person has on the exchange of resources within the organization and is linked to The hierarchical position that this occupies within said organization. This type of power is based on the ability to exchange scarce resources and is a type of vertical, descending and also asymmetric power, so that the more power has a certain person x on y, the less power it will have and over x.

Against this, Informal power is not necessarily linked to the formal structure of the company And it derives more from the person's own sources; It can spread both vertically and horizontally and is of great interest since it is based on the positive aspect of relations within the company having beneficial effects for it. Thus, for example, positive relationships between informal power and communication and contact between workers and negative relationships with conflicts are anticipated, since, to greater communication, which is facilitated by this type of informal power, lower number of conflicts and greater ease in resolving existing conflicts. Precisely, a fundamental study area within industrial psychology is related to conflict management within the organization.

Since conflicts, to a greater or lesser extent, will always be there, a primary interest is to prevent them from becoming harmful elements for the organization and learning to solve them in a productive way (Robbins, 1974).

Personal and position power

Whetten and Cameron (1991), identify two sources of power within organizations that are: a) personal power and b) the power of position.

The first would be related to the experience of the person, their personal attractiveness, effort and legitimacy.

On the other hand, the power of the position would have five differentiated origins that are:

• the position that the person has within an information and communication network;
• the importance that has the work that that person does;
• its degree of discretion at work;
• the visibility that the work done that person has influential people and
• the degree of importance that has the task Regarding the objectives of the company.

How to get power

On the other hand, Mintzberg (1985) distinguishes five possible sources of power within organizations that are: the possibility of controlling a certain resource, the control of a certain technical ability, the knowledge of a specific area, the legal prerogatives and finally and finally , the worker's ability to access people who have power in one of the first four bases.

Thus, it is not only interesting to have power but also to have the ability to access people who have power, that is, the ability to interact with people who exercise power in any of the bases mentioned.

However, when it comes to identifying the bases of power, it is French and Raven's proposal (1959) the one that has reached the greatest popularity. Despite the passage of time, these types of social power remain main actors in any industrial psychology manual, and, also today, they remain elements from which to develop organizational development strategies. Specifically, these authors distinguish five types of power:

1. Rewarding power. Based on the capacity that a person has within the organization to administer positive incentives with the aim of achieving certain results or behaviors among employees.
2. Coercive power. Based on the ability of a person to administer sanctions and punishments. This is, a person's ability to give something that a second person values ​​negatively.
3. Legitimate power. Based on the belief that whoever possesses power has a legitimate right to exercise it and who receives the consequences of this power have a legitimate obligation to accept it. This type of power is backed by the rules of the organization, which workers comply.
4. Reference power. It is based on the possession of certain features that are valuable for other people. Thus, the person who receives the consequences of power feels an attraction or feeling of unity regarding the person who is exercising power.
5. Expert power. Based on the knowledge, experience or skills that the person possesses with power and that the other members of the organization want.
6. Another form of power proposed by these authors, is within the expert's power and is the so -called Informational power. This type of power is based on the possession of information, the ability to obtain and administer it. This type of power is very important in organizations since the information is the raw material that is used in decision -making processes and has a great weight on the influence processes.

Evaluation of power

As noted, this last proposal has enjoyed great popularity, and the result of it, has been the development of different instruments to evaluate each of these types of power within organizations. Specifically, three were the most popular scales that were used to evaluate the different types of power: the Student scale (1968), the Thamhain and Gemmill Scale (1974) and the Batchman, Smith and Slesinger scale (1966) The latter resulting in the most prominent.

However, years later, various authors pointed out psychometric deficiencies on these first scales (Rahim, 1988; Melia, Oliver and Tomas, 1993). Given this situation, in 1988 Rahim publishes his inventory of Rahim on the power of the leader (RLPI) which has been valid and with adequate psychometric properties in different studies (HESS and Wagner, 1999; Rahim and Magner, 1996). This inventory evaluates the perception of the employee regarding the power that a supervisor or leader possesses and is composed of a total of 29 items. Specifically, five items are used to evaluate coercive power and six for each of the remaining types of power proposed by French and Raven: reward power, expert, reference and legitimate. The response scale of this inventory is Likert type with 5 response options where higher values ​​represent a greater perception of power.

In the following table a reduced version of this scale and adapted to Spanish to evaluate French and Raven's five power bases. This is composed of a total of 15 items (3 items for each dimension of power). For application, with the intention of avoiding biases in responses, it is advisable to present the items randomly

This article is merely informative, in psychology-online we have no power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to The powers in the company: types and forms of evaluation, We recommend that you enter our category of Business Management and Organization.