Power and influence in a dissolving society

With increasing globalisation, the normative framework of industrial society, in which relations of power were traditionally embedded, no longer provides a viable approach to the analysis of organisations. The collective identity of the industrial firm evaporates in a haze of transnational, multicultural networks, held together by a brand name in cyber space. Against this background we need to understand social processes in terms of culturally specific actors, ranging from individuals to groups or networks, which may cut across national borders. The mode of influence that such actors may exert on one another may range from legitimate, even benevolent, to illegitimate forms of power use. This makes the conceptual clarification of power relations the more urgent, and this is the aim of the present paper.

Although the concept of power has proven notoriously difficult to define, the present paper makes a fresh attempt to do so. The conceptual strategy takes its starting point in Rational Choice Theory, but develops its model of the actor by adding social aspects: actors are not only motivated by egocentric calculations, but also by attitudes towards other actors as well as towards themselves. An analytic typology of influence relations is then generated from the question: in what different ways is it logically possible for one actor to influence the behaviour of another? The result is nine basic influence types grounded in the socialised actor model. Power is then defined in terms of influence types which are costly to the receiving party, but even more costly to counteract. The social aspect of power and influence is conceptualised by allowing both ’benefits’ and ’costs’ to relate to the positive, or negative, effects of the other actor(s) as ends in themselves.