PERVASIVENESS OF POWER

Pervasiveness of Power

Pervasiveness of Power

Part A:

Introduction

The main purpose of this paper is to discuss that the pervasiveness of power is the most central aspect of organizational life. Power can be termed as the influence of one person or group to another person or group. Power lives in individuals, informal and formal groups. Power is considered to be the essential element to direct and control the organizational activities and goals. In organizations, power is useful to control the people and other resources in order to make them cooperative and achieve the current organization's goals (Covin, 2000, p. 23). The two perspectives of power chosen in this paper are symbolic-interpretive perspective of power and modern perspective of power.

Modern Perspective of Power

This approach is associated with Michel Foucault and others. Foucault distinguishes three types of power: a) disciplinary power, defined as a technique for producing strategic effects on various individuals sought and collections of individuals, b) bio-power, considered as a set of techniques aimed at the subjugation of bodies and population control in general and c) the sovereign power, defined as that associated with the state apparatus as a complex organization (Jaffe, 2008, p. 45).

For this work, the first definition, disciplinary power is relevant, for Foucault is dominant since the nineteenth century to the present. This power is associated with politics, not only in the formal sense, but politics that occur in everyday life. Foucault's developments are based on Machiavelli (2001), who states his conception of power as a strategy, emerging alliance, grouping and regrouping, positioning and repositioning, resistance and counter-resistance, as an expression unstable due to the contingencies and events always changing and as microphysics of power (Kumar, 2000, p. 67).

The use of power creates resistance, which is its other side, creating a dialectic that lies at the heart of the organization and serves to demonstrate the need for power and its use. The resistors are formed in the right place in which power relations exercise. The resistance comes with the power and is integral to it; its forms are varied and can be individual or collective, peaceful or violent, spontaneous or organized, short or long range. The main thing is that they are answers to specific micro-powers, which act as power strategies interrelated.

For Foucault, there is no central authority, having regard only as the political. The forms and practices of power are many. To him all power is a way or manner of action of each other. Power is exercised to the extent that some individuals are able to "govern and direct the conduct" of others, this being the most successful power (Gordon, 2001, p. 890).

For Foucault, power and knowledge are dialectically related, since all forms of power entails a discourse that legitimizes and reproduces. The exercise of power is to some extent, the production of discourses that become unquestionable truths. Speech is a form of power and knowledge is institutionalized. Knowledge is not only legitimate but also the production of effective formation and accumulation of knowledge, observation ...