Power, for All

by Julie Battilana

  6 Michel Crozier, The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (London: Tavistock Publications, 1964). For Michel Crozier’s in-depth study of the interaction between power relations and bureaucracy, see Michel Crozier and Erhard Friedberg, Actors and Systems: The Politics of Collective Action (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).

  7 David Krackhardt first told the story of Manuel in “Social Networks and the Liability of Newness for Managers,” Trends in Organizational Behavior, vol. 3 (New York: Wiley, 1996): 159–73. The figures of the auditing department’s formal structure and informal network are reproduced from this article.

  8 For an analysis of how the visual representation of networks changes how we interpret them, see Cathleen McGrath, Jim Blythe, and David Krackhardt, “The Effect of Spatial Arrangement on Judgments and Errors in Interpreting Graphs,” Social Networks 19, no. 3 (1997): 223–242.

  9 For an empirical study showing the (limited) influence of the formal chart on the advice network of an organization, see Tiziana Casciaro and Miguel Sousa Lobo, “Affective Primacy in Intraorganizational Task Networks,” Organization Science 26, no. 2 (2015): 373–89; for a review of research on the link between formal structure and networks in organizations, see Bill McEvily, Giuseppe Soda, and Marco Tortoriello, “More Formally: Rediscovering the Missing Link between Formal Organization and Informal Social Structure,” Academy of Management Annals 8, no. 1 (2014): 299–345.

  10 Krackhardt, “Social Networks and the Liability of Newness,” 166.

  11 Battilana and Casciaro, “Change Agents, Networks, and Institutions,” 381–98; Battilana and Casciaro, “The Network Secrets,” 62–68; and Debra Meyerson, “Radical Change, the Quiet Way,” Harvard Business Review 79, no. 9 (2001): 92–100. For a theory of the firm as a political entity, see James G. March, “The Business Firm as a Political Coalition,” The Journal of Politics 24, no. 4 (1962): 662–78.

  12 For a classic study of how people gain influence through their network, see Daniel J. Brass, “Being in the Right Place: A Structural Analysis of Individual Influence in an Organization,” Administrative Science Quarterly 29, no. 4 (1984): 518–39.

  13 For a historical recounting of the power of networks, see Niall Ferguson, The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook (New York: Penguin Books, 2017).

  14 William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser, “Status Quo Bias in Decision-Making,” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 1, no. 1 (1988): 7–59.

  15 Battilana and Casciaro, “The Network Secrets,” 62–68.

  16 David Krackhardt measured reputational power by asking every company employee to rate everybody else in the company for their capacity to get things done despite resistance, and their capacity to influence others based on personal magnetism. See David Krackhardt, “Assessing the Political Landscape: Structure, Cognition, and Power in Organizations,” Administrative Science Quarterly 35, no. 2 (1990): 342–69.

  17 An accurate power map also gives you two-step leverage: you may not be connected to an influential person, but you can reach them by going through someone who is connected to them, as well as to you. See Martin Gargiulo, “Two-Step Leverage: Managing Constraint in Organizational Politics,” Administrative Science Quarterly 38, no. 1 (1993): 1–19.

  18 Evidence that people become increasingly inaccurate in perceiving relationships farther from their direct connections is presented in Daniele Bondonio, “Predictors of Accuracy in Perceiving Informal Social Networks,” Social Networks 20, no. 4 (1998): 301–30. For how people define the social world relevant to them in an organization, see Barbara S. Lawrence, “Organizational Reference Groups: A Missing Perspective on Social Context,” Organization Science 17, no. 1 (2006): 80–100; and Barbara S. Lawrence, “The Hughes Award: Who is They? Inquiries into How Individuals Construe Social Context,” Human Relations 64, no. 6 (2011): 749–73.

  19 Brent Simpson, Barry Markovsky, and Mike Steketee, “Power and the Perception of Social Networks,” Social Networks 33, no. 2 (2011): 166–71.

  20 Tiziana Casciaro, “Seeing Things Clearly: Social Structure, Personality, and Accuracy in Social Network Perception,” Social Networks 20, no. 4 (1998): 331–51.

  21 This famous line is often misattributed to Sun Tzu but in fact comes from Machiavelli—for a change! “It is easier for the prince to make friends of those men who were contented under the former government, and are therefore his enemies, than of those who, being discontented with it, were favourable to him and encouraged him to seize it.”—Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. W. K. Marriott (London & Toronto: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1908), 171.

  22 Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro, “Overcoming Resistance to Organizational Change: Strong Ties and Affective Cooptation,” Management Science 59 (2013): 819–36.

  23 Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, vol. 55 (New York: Collins, 2007).

  24 Julie Battilana, “Agency and Institutions: The Enabling Role of Individuals’ Social Position,” Organization 13, no. 5 (2006): 653–76; Julie Battilana, Bernard Leca, and Eva Boxenbaum, “How Actors Change Institutions: Towards a Theory of Institutional Entrepreneurship,” Academy of Management Annals 3, no. 1 (2009): 65–107.

  25 For details on centrality measures in networks, see Linton C. Freeman, “Centrality in Social Networks Conceptual Clarification,” Social Networks 1, no. 3 (1978): 215–39. For analyses of the strengths and weaknesses of different types of networks, see Ronald S. Burt, Brokerage and Closure: An Introduction to Social Capital (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), and Marissa King, Social Chemistry: Decoding the Elements of Human Connection (New York: Dutton, 2021).

  26 “EPA’s Budget and Spending,” United States Environmental Protection Agency, accessed April 9, 2021, https://www.epa.gov/planandbudget/budget.

  27 Carol Browner in discussion with the authors, October 2019.

  28 Names and organizations are disguised for confidentiality.

  29 Marc Bain, “Women’s Labor, Ideas, and Dollars Prop Up the U.S. Fashion Industry, but Men Still Run It,” Quartz, March 23, 2018. To understand the network constraints that women face in male-dominated organizations, see Herminia Ibarra, “Homophily and Differential Returns: Sex Differences in Network Structure and Access in an Advertising Firm,” Administrative Science Quarterly 37, no. 3 (1992): 422–47.

  30 Robin J. Ely, “The Effects of Organizational Demographics and Social Identity on Relationships among Professional Women,” Administrative Science Quarterly 39, no. 2 (1994): 203–38.

  31 “Lady Gaga Praises Céline Dion during Her Show in Las Vegas,” YouTube, video, December 31, 2018, 1:28, https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=ZpwPhh91w2Q.

  32 Juliet Eilperin, “How a White House Women’s Office Strategy Went Viral,” Washington Post, October 25, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/10/25/how-a-white-house-womens-office-strategy-went-viral/.

  33 Tiziana Casciaro, Bill McEvily, and Evelyn Zhang, “Gendered Evaluations: How Men and Women Assess Each Other in the Workplace,” Working Paper, University of Toronto, 2021.

  34 Yang Yang, Nitesh V. Chawla, and Brian Uzzi, “A Network’s Gender Composition and Communication Pattern Predict Women’s Leadership Success,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, no. 6 (2019): 2033–2038.

  35 Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and James M. Cook, “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks,” Annual Review of Sociology 27, no. 1 (2001): 415–44.

  36 Ronald S. Burt, “Structural Holes and Good Ideas,” American Journal of Sociology 110, no. 2 (2004): 349–99; Lee Fleming, Santiago Mingo, and David Chen, “Collaborative Brokerage, Generative Creativity, and Creative Success,” Administrative Science Quarterly 52, no. 3 (2007): 443–75; Jill E. Perry-Smith and Christina E. Shalley, “The Social Side of Creativity: A Static and Dynamic Social Network Perspective,” Academy of Management Review 28, no. 1 (2003): 89–106.

  37 Jan E. Stets and Peter J. Burke, “Self-Esteem and Identities,” Sociological
Perspectives 57, no. 4 (December 2014): 409–33.

  38 Scott L. Feld, “The Focused Organization of Social Ties,” American Journal of Sociology 86, no. 5 (1981): 1015–35.

  39 For an example of a professional who has overcome systemic racism to build a powerful global network with people profoundly different from him by taking a genuine interest in them and discovering common interests, passions, and causes, see Julie Battilana, Lakshmi Ramarajan, and James Weber, “Claude Grunitzky,” Harvard Business School Organizational Behavior Unit Case 412-065 (2012).

  5. POWER IS STICKY, BUT IT CAN BE DISRUPTED

  1 Mary Douglas, How Institutions Think, 1st ed., The Frank W. Abrams Lectures (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986).

  2 Julie Battilana, Bernard Leca, and Eva Boxenbaum, “How Actors Change Institutions: Towards a Theory of Institutional Entrepreneurship,” Academy of Management Annals 3, no. 1 (2009): 65–107.

  3 Stephen G. Bloom, “Lesson of a Lifetime,” Smithsonian Magazine, September 2005.

  4 Bloom, “Lesson of a Lifetime.”

  5 Jean-Léon Beauvois, Didier Courbet, and Dominique Oberlé, “The Prescriptive Power of the Television Host: A Transposition of Milgram’s Obedience Paradigm to the Context of TV Game Show,” European Review of Applied Psychology 62, no. 3 (2012), 111–119.

  6 Stanley Milgram, “Behavioral Study of Obedience,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67, no. 4 (1963): 371–78. Since the Milgram experiment was conducted, researchers have raised ethical and methodological concerns about it. See Gina Perry, Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments (London-Melbourne: Scribe, 2012).

  7 Stanley Milgram, “Some Conditions of Obedience and Disobedience to Authority,” Human Relations 18, no. 1 (1965): 57–76.

  8 The researchers tested four scenarios: One was the standard re-creation of Milgram’s experiment in which thirty-two contestants participated; one “social support” scenario, where a production assistant ran on set midway through asking the host to stop because the game was too immoral, in which nineteen people participated; a “TV broadcast” scenario, where contestants were told that the game show would be broadcast as a pilot, in which eighteen people participated; and lastly, a “host withdrawal” scenario, where the host left the stage after making the conditions clear, in which seven people participated. The percentage of contestants who went all the way varied by condition, with 81 percent of standard condition contestants going all the way, 74 percent of social support contestants, 72 percent of TV broadcast contestants, and 28 percent of host withdrawal contestants. The overall average among all conditions was about 72 percent. (See Beauvois, Courbet, and Oberlé, “Prescriptive Power.”)

  9 Eleanor Beardsley, “Fake TV Game Show ‘Tortures’ Man, Shocks France,” NPR, March 18, 2010, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124838091.

  10 See also Philip G. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil (London: Rider, 2007).

  11 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (East Rutherford, NJ: Penguin Publishing Group, 2006): 276.

  12 Dacher Keltner, Deborah H. Gruenfeld, and Cameron Anderson, “Power, Approach, and Inhibition,” Psychological Review 110, no. 2 (2003): 265–84; Deborah H. Gruenfeld et al., “Power and the Objectification of Social Targets,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 95, no. 1 (2008): 111–27; Adam D. Galinsky et al., “Power and Perspectives Not Taken,” Psychological Science 17, no. 12 (2006): 1068–74; Cameron Anderson and Adam D. Galinsky, “Power, Optimism, and Risk-Taking,” European Journal of Social Psychology 36, no. 4 (2006): 511–36; Kathleen D. Vohs, Nicole L. Mead, and Miranda R. Goode, “The Psychological Consequences of Money,” Science 314, no. 5802 (2006): 1154–6; Jennifer E. Stellar et al., “Class and Compassion: Socioeconomic Factors Predict Responses to Suffering,” Emotion 12, no. 3 (2012): 449–59.

  13 See also Keely A. Muscatell et al., “Social Status Modulates Neural Activity in the Mentalizing Network,” NeuroImage 60, no. 3 (2012): 1771–7. The experiment tests for neural activity related to mentalizing, i.e., thinking about others’ thoughts and feelings, and finds that subjectively lower-status participants had higher levels of neural activity associated with mentalizing, while higher-status participants had the opposite response.

  14 Adam D. Galinsky, Deborah H. Gruenfeld, and Joe C. Magee, “From Power to Action,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85, no. 3 (2003): 453–66.

  15 For more on the correlation between higher social class and increased illegal and unethical behavior, see Paul K. Piff et al., “Higher Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences—PNAS 109, no. 11 (2012): 4086–91.

  16 Bruce M. Boghosian, “Is Inequality Inevitable?” Scientific American, November 1, 2019, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inequality-inevitable/.

  17 Michael W. Kraus, Paul K. Piff, and Dacher Keltner, “Social Class, Sense of Control, and Social Explanation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 97, no. 6 (2009): 992–1004. The powerful can also be willfully blind to their advantages: They justify their privilege by denying it. See L. Taylor Phillips and Brian S. Lowery, “Herd Invisibility: The Psychology of Racial Privilege,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 27, no. 3 (2018): 156–62.

  18 For more on how power and status self-reinforce, see Joe C. Magee and Adam D. Galinsky, “Social Hierarchy: The Self-Reinforcing Nature of Power and Status,” The Academy of Management Annals 2, no. 1 (2008): 351–98.

  19 John Jost, Mahzarin Banaji, and Brian Nosek, “A Decade of System Justification Theory: Accumulated Evidence of Conscious and Unconscious Bolstering of the Status Quo,” Political Psychology 25, no. 6 (2004): 881–919.

  20 Jost, Banaji, and Nosek, “A Decade of System Justification.” For an illustration of this dynamic with regard to landlords, evictions, and poverty, see Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2016).

  21 Jojanneke Van Der Toorn et al., “A Sense of Powerlessness Fosters System Justification: Implications for the Legitimation of Authority, Hierarchy, and Government,” Political Psychology 36, no. 1 (2015): 93–110.

  22 John Jost et al., “Social Inequality and the Reduction of Ideological Dissonance on Behalf of the System: Evidence of Enhanced System Justification Among the Disadvantaged,” European Journal of Social Psychology 33, no. 1 (2003): 13–36.

  23 Dov Eden, Pygmalion in Management: Productivity as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1990).

  24 Joe C. Magee and Adam D. Galinsky, “Social Hierarchy: The Self-Reinforcing Nature of Power and Status,” Academy of Management Annals 2 (2008): 351–98.

  25 For a case study detailing why disadvantaged groups may not challenge inequality, see John Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980).

  26 Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991); Manuel Castells, “A Sociology of Power: My Intellectual Journey,” Annual Review of Sociology 42 (2016): 1–19. See also Jim Sidanius and Felicia Pratto, Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Social Hierarchy and Oppression (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

  27 Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (New York: Random House Publishing Group, 2007).

  28 Etienne de La Boetie, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2012).

  29 “Code of Hammurabi,” Encyclopædia Britannica Academic, July 2, 2020, https://academic-eb-com.eres.qnl.qa/levels/collegiate/article/Code-of-Hammurabi/39076.

  30 Iselin Claire, “Work Law Code of Hammurabi, King of Babylon,” Louvre Museum, Paris, accessed October 6, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20201021003238/https://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/law-code-hammurabi-king-babylon.

  31 Robert Francis Harper, The Code of Ham
murabi, King of Babylon, about 2250 B.C. (Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1904), xii.

  32 The specific connection to scrofula, a disease of the lymph nodes of the neck resulting in swelling and usually infection, dates back at least to the reign of Edward the Confessor (1042–1066) in England and Louis VI (1108–1137) in France; monarchs healing by hands dates even further back in France to the reign of Robert the Pious (987–1031). See Marc Bloch, The Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France, trans. John Anderson (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1973).

  33 David J. Sturdy, “The Royal Touch in England,” in European Monarchy: Its Evolution and Practice from Roman Antiquity to Modern Times, eds. Heinz Duchhardt, Richard Jackson, and David Sturdy (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1992), 171–84.

  34 Pierre Bourdieu, Masculine Domination (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001).

  35 Mary Beard, Women & Power: A Manifesto, 1st edition (New York: Liveright, 2017), 4–21.

  36 Sir Patrick Geddes and John Arthur Thomson, The Evolution of Sex (London: Walter Scott, 1908), 270; see also D. A. Dewsbury, “The Darwin-Bateman Paradigm in Historical Context,” Integrative and Comparative Biology 45, no. 5 (2005), 831–7.

  37 Anne Fausto-Sterling, Myths of Gender: Biological Theories about Women and Men (New York: Basic Books, 1985); Cordelia Fine, Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2017).

  38 For one instance of this effect, see Brian Pike and Adam D. Galinsky, “The Power Shield: Powerful Roles Eliminate Gender Disparities in Political Elections,” Journal of Applied Psychology 106, no. 2 (2021): 268–80.

  39 Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxième Sexe (Paris: Gallimard, 1949).

  40 American Experience, The Eugenics Crusade: What‘s Wrong with Perfect? (Arlington, VA; PBS Distribution, 2018); Wendy Zukerman, “How Science Created Morons,” Gimlet, May 25, 2018, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/science-vs/o2ho5g.