Bases of Power

UNIT 9 BASES OF POWER

Objectives
After going through the Unit you should be able to

understand the concept of power

appreciate the difference between functional and dysfunctional power

examine your own bases or power

Structure
9.1

Self Test

9.2

What is Power?

9.3

Bases of Power

9.4

Coercive Bases of Power

9.5

Persuasive Bases of Power

9.6

Power Bases and Managerial Effectiveness

9.7

Further Readings

9.1

SELF TEST

Before going through the Unit, respond to the following instrument.

Self Test
Below are given some items which may contribute to your effectiveness in your
present role. Rate each one for its importance to you.
A little
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Some
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Quite
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Very much
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2. Knowledge and information to ----explain the logic and convince

others
3. Functional expertise
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-----

-----

------

-----

-----

-----

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4. Charisma (to arouse emotion)

-----

-----

-----

-----

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5. Helping (when needed)

-----

-----

-----

-----

------

6. Close contact with or direct

access to chief executive

-----

-----

-----

-----

------

1. Formal authority

9.2

None
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WHAT IS POWER

Power has been defined many way. Kotter and Scheesinger (1979) seem to capture
the spirit of most definitions when they define power as a measure of a persons
potential to get others to do what he or she wants them to do as well as to avoid
being forced to do what he or she does not want to do".
Power as potential to influence individuals and groups, as well as organisational
outcome may be an adequate concept to work with. Influence can be both on the
covert (attitudes, values, thinking), or on the overt part (behaviour and action) of
persons.
One concern in understanding power relates to the sources of power or from where
one derives power. These are called bases of power, and have engaged the attention
of several researchers and organisation interventions.

Power Dynamics

9.3

BASES OF POWER

Ever since Machiavelli (1950) suggested a couple of centuries ago fear and love as
bases of power, some suggestions have been made to dichotomize power bases.
Flanders (1970) in his seminar work on classroom strategies of influence by teachers
differentiated "direct" influence from "indirect" influence, because these "coerced"
the students into accepting what the teacher wanted them to do or think. Incluencing
behaviour that gave freedom to the student to think and experiment (encouragement,
compliments, open questions with alternative answers, sensing and voicing individual
and group feelings\etc.) were put in the category of "indirect" influence. Flanders
thus seemed to use a similar classification: coercion (fear) or persuasion (love).
Hersey and Blanchard (1982), who .in their work on situational leadership proposed
seven bases of power (coercive, legitimate, expert, reward, referent, information,
connection), accepted the dichotomy of "position power" and "personal power",
although they pointed out the limitation of dividing "pie. always into two pieces"
(p. 178).
Berlew. (1986) suggested two influence strategies, "push" and "pull", the first being
located in the system, the second being the part o the spirit of the individual
inflencing others. This suggestion is similar to position and personal power.
Pettigrew (1986) has suggested the dichotomy or overt and covert, the first being
concerned with "perferred outcome in conflict", and the second (which is
unobtrusive)" ensuing no conflict through use of symbols and myths to manage
meaning' (p. 134).
All the dichotomies suggested have a common thread, whether influence is used to
force the other individual into accepting what the influencor wants him/her to think
or do (fear power, direct influence, position power, push energy, overt influenced or
to help the individual choose to think or do things (love power, indirect influence,
personal power, pull' energy, covert influence). The first has the element of coercion,
and the second that of persuasion. It seems to be useful to classify the bases of power
into coercive and persuasive bases.

9.4

COERCIVE BASES OR POWER

From the literature it is clear that position power and punishment are coercive bases.
Power drawn from the oranisational position (legitimate power in the role, or power
to allocate resources) coerces people to accept influences. Punishment deserves to be
listed separately as coercive power.
As discussed above, power derived out of close affectionate bonds (relationship)
often acts like coercious, because the person accepting influence does so more out of
emotional bond, rather than by making a conscious choice. It has been put in the
category of coercive power.
The main rationale has been that when people accept an act of influence because of
emotion (fear, excessive love) they are being coerced, being manipulated. For then
same reason charisma is included in coercive power, because a charismatic leader
arouses strong emotions, and gets things done. The leader does not treat his/her
followers as mature people with competence to make their own choices. Referent
power is different as we shall see in the next section.
Another base included in coercive power is the power derived from a person with
larger power bases. For example, the private secretary of the chief executive may use
his association with the CEO as a source or influence. This is reflected power from
anther source and a king of manipulation, and so is included in the group of coercive
power.
Another type of manipulation is the use of negative power, by withholding or
depriving a person of information, or delaying action, some clerks exercise power by
delaying issue of the decisions made.
Thus six bases or power are included in coercive power are included in coercive
power group. organisational position, (legitimate power), punishment (coercive
power) charisma (charismatic power), personal relationship (emotional power),
closeness to. a source of power (reflected power), and withholding
information/resources (manipulative power).

Bases of Power

Activity 9.1
Which among the above six power bases do you experience in your organisational
life. Prepare a short write up on this.

9.5

PERSUASIVE BASES OF POWER

Personal power has been accepted as opposite of coercion, i.e. can be put in the
category of persuasive power, there are three main sources of personal power:
expertise (special knowledge), competence (general effectiveness to produce results),
and modelling (example set by behaviour). We accept the suggestion or a mechanic,
because he is an expert. A competent manager influences because he can get results.
A person who "lives" certain values (not smoking, encouraging others to speak,
listening, giving credit for new ideas etc.) influences other into behaving the same
way, or at least attempting such behaviours, because they admire his behaviour. He
does not make any covert appeal. He models a behaviour, which is more .eloquent
than the words used by somebody else. This is often called referent power. These
three bases have been included in the category of persuasive power.
Reward has also been included here, because reward encourages people to
experiment, give them more autonomy, unless, of course, it is manipulated, as in the
case of operant shaping.
Another base included is the concern for other, caring for them, and helping them to
develop. Again this helps in widening the autonomy of the individuals.
Raven suggested information as a base of power (French and Raven, 1959) but was
subsequently dropped because his co-author French did not agree (Raven, 1992), and
so was listed only as a form of influence in 1959, but was subsequently included as a
base or power. Many people are influence by the facts given and by the logic behind
information. This can be called logical power, as the basis is rational aspect
information. This is also included as a persuasive base.
We thus have six bases of power in the category of persuasive power: reward
(reinforcing power), expert power, competence power, referent power (being a role
model), extension power (empathy, caring and helping others), and logical power
(based on information and the rationale of the information). The bases and types of
power are show in Exhibit 1.
Exhibit 1
Bases and Types of Power
Coercive Power
Base

Persuasive Power
Type

Base

Type

1. Organisational
position

1. Status

1. Expertise

1. Expert

2. Closeness to
power source

2. Reflected

2. Competence

2. Competence

3. Charisma

3. Charismatic

3. Role Modelling

3. Referent

4. Ability to punish

4. Coercive

4. Ability to reward

4. Reinforcing

5. Helping/caring

5. Extension

6. Information

6. Logical

5. Personal relationship 5. Emotional

6 . Ability to withold\
deprive information

6. Manipulative

Power Dynamics

Now examine your responses to the instrument and score these to find out your
comparative scores of coercive and persuasive bases. Items 1, 4 and 6 are coercive
power items, and 2, 3 and 5 are persuasive power items. Think how you can
strengthen your persuasive bases or power.

9.6

POWER BASES AND MANAGERIAL

EFFECTIVENESS

Keshote's results (1.991) from one multi-national, one public sector, and one private
corporation showed that production managers had significantly higher value as well
as need for coercive power compared with "service" managers.
"Service" managers, on the other hand had higer need for persuasive power (NPP)
than production managers who had higher need for coercive power (NPP) than
marketing managers. These differences were statistically significant at 0.05 level.
Regarding organisational levels, value and need for both types of power were found
highest amongst the junior, followed by middle, and then the senior levels.
Keshote (1991) found that internals had higher value for persuasive power, the
externals higher value as well as need for coercive power, and external (chance) lover
value for persuasive power. He also reported significant positive correlation between
value for persuasive power (VPP) and negative correlation of need for persuasive
power (NPP) with enlarging life style. No significant correlation was found with
coercive power. Keshote found negative correlation between perceived deficiency of
coercive power and interpersonal trust. The various studies on the relationship of
power bases and satisfaction have showed a positive relationship with persuasive
bases, and negative with coercive bases. Coercive base was strongly and negatively
associated with satisfaction. amongst all the three groups of students (Jamieson and
Thomas 1974), as well as a variety of five organisations (manufacturing firms, sales
organisations, life insurance companies, utility firms and liberal arts colleges)
(Bachman, Bowers and Marcus, 1968), and in several offices of a utility company
(Burke and Wilcox 1971). Expert and referent power have been reported to be
associated with employee satisfaction (Bachman, Bowers and Marcus 1968; Burke
and Wilcox 1971).
The relationship of bases of power with productivity shows the importance of the
persuasive bases. Referent and expert power were positively related with four
measures of performance (Student 1968; Bachman, Bowers and Marcus 1968).

9.7

SUMMARY QUESTIONS

The basic objective of this unit is to make you understand the concept of power. One
of the primary concerns in understanding power is the source of power as from where
one drives the power, which is known as bases of power. This unit gives you the
views of various researchers as their topic who have divided these bases into the
following coercive bases of power and persuasive bases of power, Exhibit 1 describes
for you the types and base of both the bases of power. Logically relating the
discussion, the unit goes ahead. explaining the relationship between the power bases
and the managerial effectiveness.
.

9.8

SELF-ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS

Define and describe the concept power.

Summarising various behavioural scientist's Hanggist power, describe the

bases of power with suitable examples.
.

Do you see any relationship between power bases and managerial

effectiveness? Support with suitable example.

Bases of Power

9.9

FURTHER READINGS

Bachman, J.G.Bowers, D. G. and Marcus, P.M. (1968), Bases of supervisory

power: A comparative study in five organisational settings. In A.S. Tannenbausm.
Control in organisations, New York, McGraw, Hill.
Berlew, D.E. (1986), Managing human energy; Pushing versus pulling. In
S. Srivastava And Associates, Executive power, pp. 33-50, San Franciso: JosseyBass.
Burke, R.T. and D.S. Wilcox, (1971), Bases job supervisory power and subordinate
job satisfaction, Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science.
French, J.R.P. and B. Raven, B. (1959), The bases of social power. In D.
Cartwright Studies in social power, pp. 150-167 Ann Arbor: U. Michigan, Institute
for Social Research.
Heresy, P. and K. H. Blanchard, (1982), Management of organisational behaviour,
Englewood Cliffs, N. J: Prentice Hall.
Flander, N. A. (1970), Analzing teacher behaviour, Reading, N. J: AddisonWesley.
Jamieson, D.W. and K.W. Thomas (1974), Power and conflict in the studentteacher relationship. Journal of Applied Behavioural Science, 10(3).
Keshote, K. K. (1991) Personal and organisational correlates of conflict
management styles. Unpublished Doctoral Dessertation, U. Gujarat.
Machiavelli, N. (1950), The prince and the discourse, (Chapter 17), New. York,
Random House.
Raven, B. H. (1992), Bases of power: Origins and recent developments, Journal of
Social Issues, 49(4), 227-251:
Student K. R. (1968), Supervisory Influence and work group performance Journal
of Applied Psychology, 52(3), 188-194.