The greatest and most common mistake in considerations of power, throughout the social sciences and humanities – very much including organizational communications theory – is the rather lackadaisical casting of “power” as basically a synonym in conceptual cahoots with the likes of oppression, domination, authority, control, etc. Yet, none of these has absolutely anything at all to do with the definition of “power.” Indubitably, all these forces require power, but no more so than brushing your teeth, shopping for shoes or reading this blog. The term “power” is used in this synonymic way to sneak certain ontological assumptions through the back door: e.g. that the dominated, oppressed, exploited, etc., are somehow, powerless, passive and innocent. This view serves ideological purposes associated to historicist analysis, justifying particular kinds of attitudes and actions. However, such use thoroughly obscures the actual richness and complexity of what’s going on in any real life organizational or social setting. Only by clearing up these erroneous notions will it be possible to have an ideology-free discussion of power and lay the basis for materialist revision of organization communications and theory.
The problem with dictionaries is that, eventually, they give in. If enough people use a term or phase in a certain way, long enough, regardless of how incorrectly, eventually the dictionary will list that usage. After all, the dictionary’s job is to record usage, not police it. Conceptual clarity and intellectual rigor have that job. Alas, it’s a big job. However, at least the dictionary does establish a hierarchy of meaning, so that we can see what the historically original and etymologically core sense of a term was. From there, observing the various derivations and misapplications can provide amusement. A truly keen philologist can even dig into the various ideologies and self-serving agendas that inspired those derivations and misapplications. We’ve already gone as far down that road as this revision will concern itself. This line of discussion has only been opened as a preface to inviting the reader to go and open an English dictionary – any one you want. Open it to the word “power” and read the primary meaning: the first one listed; the historically original and etymologically core sense of the word.
There’s no dispute or controversy on this point among those not responsible for the mental gymnastics of making everything fit their prefabricated ideology. Power refers to the ability to do or to act. It dates back to the 13th century, when it was derived from the same root as the French pouvoir, which we all know translates into English as “to be able to.” Je peux = I can. Not oppression, or domination, or any of these other ridiculously self-serving associations. This isn’t to deny that there are cultural, economic, political, and other, forces at work on a social or even organizational level and that such forces can only be activated by power, but analytically starting with these forces, as reifications of power, obscures the fundamental questions about where that power came from, how it came to be enacted in this way, what other possibilities could and do exist and, rather importantly, what other manifestations of power are relevant to, or present in, the situation. It seems like rather a lot to overlook.
The bottom line is straightforward enough: all the dramatic, glamorous and history-making manifestations of power that so many scholars in all fields prefer to emphasize all have their roots in the common, individual human actor. To put it as simply and concisely as possible: power is generated through the exercise of human vitality. Power is the doing of something and there is no power unless individual, specific, humans do something. Anything! It’s all the manifestation of power in its basic form. This basic, individual power may be generated simply for the passing moment or regular maintenance: blowing up a party balloon or brushing one’s teeth. Or, indeed, power may be generated with long term purpose: building a house, growing a garden. Reading this, or any other, blog is no less a manifestation of power than punching somebody or wrestling someone to the ground. Starting a company, working at a job for that company, joining the union, working overtime, taking a long lunch break, organizing the company Christmas party, working hard, finding ways not to work hard, flirting with one of the machine operators. Notwithstanding their differences in intent, values or impact, all share the core common denominator of being some kind or other manifestation of power. This is how it all begins.
So, to restate the matter, at a slightly more abstract level: In each case, each individual employs her or his vitality, or life force, in the practical context of some endeavour. The raw expression of vitality is manifested as force or intensity. The inherent plasticity of this force or intensity lends it to innumerable actions. The application of conscious or unconscious focus and direction to that force or intensity, guiding it into specific tasks, constitutes it as power. Obviously there’s nothing inherent in this idea that entails exercising one’s power over the will or interests of someone else. It is the sheer expression of sentient life at work. For our discussion, here, we’ll restrict ourselves to the human and the specifically social and organizational domains of human experience. In that context, there’s no denying the fact that one of the consequences of the creation of power is that some people do indeed use their vitality, their life force, to control, oppress or dominate others. We’ll have to look at exactly how this happens, but we’ll far better understand the role of power in these processes and the massive and extensive ways in which power always far exceeds the limits of these processes, once we appreciate the apolitical, indeed organic, roots of all power.
Not all the cases of wrongly used synonyms for power are analyzed to exactly the same conclusion, but let’s take probably the most common and maybe the most loaded of the erroneous synonyms: domination. Domination I’ll take to mean explicitly the successful imposition of one’s will over some other(s): for the dominant one to get over the other, on top; to wrestle the other down, actually or metaphorically. This requires power to realize will. At the same time, for you to exercise domination over me, you must be able to overcome my resistance: the action of my power applied against you. This could be due to your greater strength, but it also could be due to my surrender and or acquiescence, in which case my power is practically activated in the interest of my own submission – perhaps fearing, rightly or wrongly, the price I will pay, in one way or other, for resisting your imposition of power. It should be emphasized here that power does not mean exclusively physical power. Mental, intellectual and emotional power can evade, resist, deceive, subvert or tame the greatest physical strength if it is powerful enough. This, still at the level of individuals, should be straightforward. Now, though, we look at the escalation of these forces into social dynamics.
What is true between individuals is also true of collectives of such individuals, organized into cliques, gangs, clans, churches, armies, corporations, nations, etc. The more power that one group can muster over another the more likely will be its dominance. Obviously the collective with the largest number of individuals, assuming a rough equality of personal strength among all participants, would be at an advantage in this regard. However, as the “critical” theorists should remember from their Marx, and his discussion of labour power embodied in capital, power can also be embedded into material and immaterial objects, and such objects can be used as instruments for the overpowering of others: clubs (of either kind), firearms, missiles, computers, complex contingency strategies and propaganda are all examples of the vitality of some individuals embodied as objects, whose embodied power can be practically activated in the interest of overpowering others. All these kind of considerations must be calculated into the equation when we endeavour to determine who has the greatest scope of power at their disposal.
So, if certain states, corporations or other groups, as militaries, bureaucracies or more subtly power-embodied institutions, exercise power over “the masses” – the undifferentiated collective of individuals – this is due in part to the power they wield, not only in the number of coordinated individuals they employ, but in the fantastic range of other individuals’ power they practically activate in the embodied forms of material and immaterial objects as systems, symbols and mechanisms. My point here is merely that all forms of domination are ultimately rooted in the acutely felt and thoroughly tangible vitality of real individuals’ life forces. At ascending macro-levels the objects that embody past power investments can create forces that vastly supersede the original power invested. For instance, for all the vast investments of individual human power in the creation of nuclear weapons – in which the scientific-technical actual weapons development is only the tip of the iceberg – is completely dwarfed by the power of destruction now unleashed on the world by that initial investment of human vitality, vast as it was in its own right.
However, bear in mind, wielding such power is not the same thing as possessing or generating such power. Wielding power is about authority. It’s not power that gives individuals, offices or institutions strength beyond that of personal capacities, but the authority to wield the power of others. That authority may come from coercion, election, ownership, delegation, trust, loyalty, etc. Disparities, therefore, of control or influence, while they can be expressions of individual differences, within organizational settings are almost always expressions of authority differentials. No doubt, any person or persons who wanted to wield collective or embedded power would have to wield whatever power and authority they already had at their disposal to achieve the requisite level and degree of authority. The two, though, are separate and rigorous analysis requires the maintaining in our minds of that distinction.
In all this the rule remains: the force of all power is always ultimately traced back to the investment by individuals – knowingly or unknowingly, willingly or unwillingly – of their vital life force. (The fact that that investment may be coercively compelled by the force of objects created by prior power investments, in no way changes the proposition.) All power, always, is put into effect by the practical activation of individuals’ vitality.
This, though, we need to keep in mind is only one side of the equation. To be alive and in any way functional is to possess vitality and exert power. To be a mentally functioning human being is to dispose power. This is simply an inescapable reality. The exercise of our power can be in utter disregard to the existence of others. It also can be directed toward the dominance of others. And, certainly, it can be directed as resistance against those whom would aspire to exert their power in dominance over us. However, there is no guarantee that we will use our power to resist the power of others. Perhaps we are convinced of the rightness of others’ domination of us. Perhaps we merely desire the domination of another. One thinks, for instance, of the groundbreaking studies of Eric Fromm on the German workers of the Weimar Republic. In any such event, our submission and acquiescence involves us in activating our inescapable disposing of our power in the interest of our submission. The acts of surrender, acquiescence and submission are not less the manifestation of power than are those of conquest, control or dominance. There is no abdication of power in human life – except in death. And, obviously, even suicide and self-destructive choices are still the result of exercised power.
This opens the door to the far more complex and difficult question of desire, which is just as fundamental as power, and invariably intertwines with it in all human endeavours. It is really quite extraordinary how organizational communications textbooks without fail conduct some dutiful discussion of power – however inaccurately – but virtually never even whisper a hint about desire. And yet, while its power that makes organizations go, its desire that gives power its purpose. Power is the engine of organization, but desire is the fuel that feeds that engine. This is, then, an immensely important topic, but not one I’ll be able to address here. However, before going any further, a few caveats need to be added.
First, while a thorough discussion of all the contingencies and vicissitudes of submission as power is beyond the limits of the current undertaking, I should mention that in the real world I suspect that the reality of actual fragmented subjectivities suggests probably a complex interaction with domination. That is to say, even one who actually desires the dominance of another, probably, in a variety of subtle ways, also acts to deceive, evade or subvert the dominance of the other. Power is not a single package. Even if the majority of one’s power is activated in the interest of submission, that does not rule out discrete acts directed toward other purposes. Likewise, anyone who directs her power to the dominance of another surely simultaneously invites defiance and resistance, however unconsciously. As complex as human motives are, so equally diffuse, inevitably, will be the exercise of real world power.
Secondly, for those who bemoan these ideas as just an abstract version of the old blaming the victim trope, I plead guilty – and don’t sweat your maudlin political correctness in the least. My whole point is that victims, at various levels of conscious-to-unconsciousness, do choose to varied degrees and in varied ways their own victimization. If such critics’ primary objection is ontological, it will have to be taken up at another time and place. If, however, their objection is motivated by concerns for social change, I will mention that this model of power, insofar as it posits an always available, ever potential, untapped resource of resistance, it suggests a far more promising proposition for social change than a theoretical precept that assumes that victims are totally dominated – fully activating their power in the interest of resistance, but still overpowered by the force of the other. Their “victim” is just an object of bleeding heart hand wringing. My “victim” remains an active subject always implicated in the practical realization of his or her own power.
A third, and final, caveat: tyrants, societal or interpersonal, should not be taking heart in these observations. Nothing here legitimizes or apologizes for the exertion of domination over others. No doubt the agents of undesired domination, at whatever level, may comfort themselves with self-satisfied assurance of their subordinates’ desire of their conditions. But haven’t tyrants always bolstered themselves with their ideas about the others’ weakness, childishness, primitiveness, etc. In the end, it is either true or it is not. Nothing written here changes the existing material power relations within those real world affairs.
I will conclude, then, with some explicit sketching of what this means for organizational communications and theory. Organization is power. To organize anything is a form of acting and to act is a manifestation of power. So to suggest organizations without power is senseless. Incidentally, exactly the same is true of communication. Communicating is a kind of action; any acting is a form of power. Any consideration of organizations and organizational communication is drenched in the inescapable reality of power. It is all about power. Yet, none of this in even the slightest way implies the existence of dominance, oppression, exploitation or the control of one or some over others. And, in whatever organizational context in which such states do exist, they do not even come close to exhausting all the power that thrives and makes full, real and vital the organization in question.
Some might go with me as far as saying, well resistance is a kind of counter-power so perhaps you have a point. No, that’s not my point. First, resistance is not counter-power. It would only be counter-power if power were synonymous with dominance, which it is not. Resistance is power, but, again, it is still caught up in the mental fog imposed on so much of organizational theory by “critical” theory and postmodernism. Dominance is power, resistance is power, management is power, accounting is power, report writing is power, a departmental meeting is power, filing is power, typing is power, stocking shelves is power – none of them by means of some mental gymnastics that sees some devious expression of meaning or control – such as in the ludicrous and widely propagated notion of concertive control. They’re power simply because they are actions generated by the conscious focus of human vitality on a purpose. There is no organization in the absence of such power.
What I find oddly amusing is that very often the very same people who perpetuate this reified and distorted notion of power will also be the same people who celebrate Gidden’s theory of structuration. And yet, Gidden’s theory operates on very much the same premise as what I’m proposing. Structures, like organizations, do not exist in some trans-human dimension of reality. They exist because those involved with them, day after day, continue to do all the things, follow all the processes, abide by all the routines – all the management, accounting, report writing, meeting, filing, typing, etc., etc. – that make them possible. If the responsible people stopped doing those things overnight the organization would effectively cease to exist. There might be some empty buildings, abandoned fleets, inventories gathering dust, legal documents declaring rights and responsibilities – but none of that constitutes an organization. Without the power of human action, it’s merely concepts and things. Is a ghost town still a town? If so, why do we feel the need to qualify the character of the town?
Now, as Giddens would want to remind us, don’t make the mistake, therefore, of thinking that organizations are not real, are not, in fact, powerful. Powerful is exactly what they are. All those processes and routines create vast interlocking systems of mutual support and dependence that contribute to deeply seated imperatives for action. From self-interest to psychological comfort and beyond, people have plenty of reason, each day, to carry out the processes and maintain the routines that keep organizations running – keeps them brimming with human power. This is the great irony about any organization: they are simultaneously ingrained ways of thinking and acting that almost defy conscious evaluation while also being fragile expressions of human action requiring renewed commitment daily. The processes sustain the structure as the structure induces the processes. But none of it happens unless humans are exercising their power to act in the simultaneous creation of both.
Social things happen because people do those things. Some time that doing is only immediately relevant, sometimes it becomes imbedded in systems or machines that continue to have great influence long after those people are gone. However, though, the manifestations of human power – which is the force of human action – is articulated and activated within an organization, there is always an inventory of power input that can be broken down – deconstructed in the non-obfuscating sense of the word – to account for all the elements that make up any organization. This includes its purposeful operation as well as all the dynamics that go on within: competition over resources, struggles over control, cooperative problem solving, negotiation of informal responsibilities, shelves being stocked, and so on.
And, yet, as central as each discrete expression of power is in the composition of any organization, as has already been alluded to, that is not the whole story. For, in addition to recognizing the function of power in breathing life into organization, we have to be aware that that’s only half the story. At the end of the day, power follows desire. Any organizational theory, any understanding of the dynamics of organizational communication, is rudderless without desire. Gratifications and routines are not inherently compelling; they compel through their appeal to desire. To really understand power, in all its many dimensions, within any and all organizations, the draw and function of desire has to be tackled.
But for that you’ll have to buy the book.