Philip
>I've just read a great overview article on power in organisations called
>"Some Dare Call it Power" by Cynthia Hardy and Stewart Clegg. It can be
>found on page 622 of the Clegg edited book "Handbook of Organizational
>Studies."
>
>The authors review the immense iterature on power in organisations and see
>it as as dividing into two main strands which virtually do not talk to
>each other:
>
> 1. functionalist
>
> 2. critical
It is a pity that they have only divided it into two main strands. I
would like to see power mapped onto the four sociological pardigms that
Burrell and Morgan used to analyse organizational theory. By the way, you
did not say who wrote the chapter, only that your colleague Stewart Clegg
was an editor.
>In contrast, the critical theorists including those of the Marxist and
>Weberian tradition once had a powerful critical model which explained and
>predicted abuse, isolation and unhappines at work in terms of class
>conflict, but their methodology has been eroded and muted by
>post-modernists such as Foucault. The fall of communism has not helped
>either...!!
IMHO, we must be careful to distinguish between Marxist analysis and the
communism poltical system implemented in using Marx's name. Analysis
might provide some insight into society, it cannot give us an
implementation tool for running society (In my view, this is what the fall
of communism confirms).
Marxist analysis might highlight potential inequalities in our
organizational structural designs. A number of authors recommend using
this type of analysis. It is represented by the domination metaphor by
Gareth Morgan in his eight metaphors collectively titled "Images of
Organization". If an analysis of an organizational structure suggests
that a particular role has a high power potential, would we really want to
select somebody with strong autocratic tendenacies?
Roy Benford
Fulmer, UK
--"Roy Benford" <roy@benford.demon.co.uk>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>