Women and Organizational Power

What is Power?

It is everywhere. You can see it, hear it, feel it and sometimes even smell it. Power is ubiquitous. Power is the influence of one person over others, derived from a position or role in an organization, from an interpersonal relationship, or from an individual characteristic (Ragins & Sundstrom, 1989). Power is the capacity or potential of changing others’ attitudes or behaviors. Power can be objective or perceived meaning that an individual may have formal power due to his/her role in the organization but may not be perceived by others as having power (Kaplowitz, 1978).

There are two types of power – socialized power and personalized power (Kinicki & Kreitner 2007). Socialized power is used to influence, to get things done, to achieve goals and for meeting the needs of others. Socialized power is not used for personal benefit. Personalized power is used to gain power to inflate oneself and to satisfy a strong need for esteem and status. An individual employing personalized power tends to exercise this power impulsively, have little inhibition and self-control and desire to dominate others.

Five Bases of Power

French and Raven (1959) developed a model of power that presents five bases of power: reward, coercive, expert, legitimate, and referent. These five sources can be categorized as either positional or personal in origin. The positional category of power is usually based on an individual’s position in the organization and is comprised of three of the five bases of power – reward, coercive and legitimate. Expert and referent power are in the personal power category as these two power bases are derived from individual characteristics.

An individual possesses Reward Power when others perceived that the individual has the ability to provide positive outcomes or can grant positive rewards or is able to remove negative ones. Coercive Power is the perceived ability to obtain compliance through threats of or actual punishment. While this type of power is often associated with management as is reward power, this form of power can be used by members of teams to control team members’ behavior and productivity. Legitimate Power is the capacity to influence others through formal authority, a social role that commands respect or authority, informal rules of conduct or because others feel a certain obligation to defer to that individual. The degree of legitimate power possessed by an individual is a function of the extent that others believe that he or she has the right to exert influence over others.

Expert Power is based on an individual’s ability to influence others based on one’s distinct knowledge, skills, ability or information. Referent Power is power acquired through charisma or personal attraction. It is based on the individual and is derived through a sense of connection with another.

Contingencies of Power

The perceived and objective degree of power of an individual can be affected by several contingencies of power (McShane, & Glinow, 2003). The contingencies of power are substitutability, centrality, discretion, visibility and networking. Substitutability is the degree to which one’s power can be substituted with an alternative. An employee with expert power due to her knowledge on a subject would find her level of expert power lowered if another employee gained equivalent knowledge on the subject. Centrality represents the interdependence between the powerbroker and others that depend upon him. The restaurant manager has legitimate power with a high degree of centrality as patrons and employees are dependent upon him to open the restaurant for business. Discretion embodies the degree to which a powerbroker has the freedom to make exercise judgment and make decisions. A first level manager may be perceived as having formal legitimate and reward power but, in truth, is very restricted by management above her. Visibility refers to the extent that a powerbroker gets noticed and is identified for their power. Expert power is clearly affected by visibility. What good does it do to be a gifted speaker if the opportunity to give speeches and have your abilities noticed never arises?

Consequences of Power

The use of leadership power has three possible outcomes – compliance, resistance or commitment. Compliance is gained through the use of reward, coercive and negative legitimate power (Kinicki & Kreitner 2007). Resistance on the part of another is usually a result of using coercive power. The target opposes the demands of the powerbroker and actively tries to avoid following through with any requests. Commitment is generated through the use of expert, referent and positive legitimate power. Leadership should seek for commitment from employees as it intrinsically motivated rather than settle for compliance as it may be given grudgingly.

Women and Power

While a description of power and its associated elements is fairly straight forward, a review of women and organizational power is more convoluted. Research has linked career advancement, access to benefits and resources and wage equity to an effective use of power within organizations (Ely, 1995; Kanter, 1977). Men and women differ in their ability to influence others which is directly related to gender differences in power. These gender differences in the use and perception of power cause social power inequities for women. Evidence shows that women are perceived differently than men based on gender role stereotyping.

Women in leadership roles face numerous challenges based upon gender congruencies associated with power. The gender congruency theory of power associates expert, legitimate and coercive power to men and reward power to women (Johnson, 1976). When women assume a leadership style that is gender-role incongruent, they are viewed negatively by both men and women. These gender-role incongruent styles – direct, autocratic, unemotional, and assertive – are consider masculine and therefore, not perceived acceptable for women to use in any role within the organization.

Men are perceived as having greater social or interpersonal power than women due to structural or external advantages. Men possess higher levels of coercive and reward power because men have more opportunities and resources with which to reward or punish others, greater legitimate power because of their role in the organization or informal authority, and are perceived to have greater expert power than women (Johnson, 1976). For example, in group settings, men are given more opportunities to speak than women because women are presumed to be less competent than men. Group members will agree more often with men and will defer more to the opinions of men than those of women (Berger, Fisek, Norman, & Zelditch, 1977).

Because women are perceived as being less competent with lower levels of expertise, women have to outperform men for others to consider them equally competent as men (Foschi, 1996). While men and women will judge themselves more critically in interactions with a man, they feel more competent in interactions with a woman suggesting that they have a lower perception of the competence on the part of the woman. Even if a woman is perceived as being competent, she may not be as influential as a man due to lower legitimate power. Legitimate power is associated with the right to exert influence and to command respect and authority. Unfortunately, many women do not command the same degree of respect and authority that men do nor do they use legitimate power as much as men do. Therefore, a woman is considered not as deserving of status as a man is. In a group setting, this has a huge impact in as group members may ignore her ideas, give her limited opportunities to participate and are resistant to her attempts to influence within the group dynamics.

If a woman appears to be too assertive, too interested in influencing others, or too confident, she is violating expectations about appropriate behavior for women and other low-status individuals and is censured as a result (Meeker & Weitzel-O'Neil, 1985). In fact, modest women are considered more acceptable than self-promoting women; the exact opposite of men. Men were more trusting of modest women than women that display confidence and assertiveness.

Women possess higher amounts of referent power than men as it involves building and maintaining good relationships and is more congruent with gender role expectations for women. Those possessing referent power are perceived as socially skilled, pleasant and agreeable. Research has shown that people consider women to be warm, expressive, understanding, compassionate and concerned about others’ feelings (Williams & Best, 1990). Given their low levels of expert and legitimate power, women use less direct and assertive influence strategies than men and rely more on interpersonal warmth and agreeableness to wield power and influence.

The essence of any truly successful leader is the ability to use a variety of leadership styles based on the requirements of the situation (Symphony Orchestra Institute, 1998). Men are able to exhibit incongruencies without consequences and have more opportunities to use different leadership styles. Unfortunately, women leaders are not afford the same latitude in deploying leadership styles. They can either act in accordance with gender-role expectations or be subject to negative reinforcement from peers and subordinates.

How do organizations and its leadership (hopefully comprised of both genders) deal with the dilemma associated with the inequalities in social power, gender biases and women? Leaders need to reflect on their own leadership styles and identify their internal biases. As well, the organization as a whole should assess the organization work environment to identify stereotypic biases and then implement measures to remediate these biases. Some remediation tactics would include providing the resources, tools, and training for employees to gain a greater understanding of diversity and the effects of stereotyping of gender roles. Furthermore, organizations should provide mentoring for women to help with building social networks, to understand the effects of different leadership styles, and to prepare them to advance within the organization.

Bibliography

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