Power, for All

by Julie Battilana

  41 Felicia Pratto et al., “Social Dominance Orientation: A Personality Variable Predicting Social and Political Attitudes,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67, no. 4 (1994): 741–63.

  42 The term “meritocracy” was first coined in: Michael Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy (London: Thames and Hudson, 1958).

  43 For an early study of the concept of the “self-made man,” see Irving Wyllie, The Self-Made Man in America: The Myth of Rags to Riches (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1954).

  44 Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty (New York: PublicAffairs, 2012), 256. See also Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2013).

  45 Michael Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2020), 226. See also Daniel Markovits, The Meritocracy Trap: How America’s Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite (New York: Penguin Random House, 2019).

  46 John W. Meyer and Brian Rowan, “Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony,” American Journal of Sociology 83, no. 2 (1977): 340–63; Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell, “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields,” American Sociological Review 48, no. 2 (1983): 147–60; Cecilia L. Ridgeway, “Status Construction Theory,” The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, 2007; Richard W. Scott, Institutions and Organizations: Ideas, Interests, and Identities, 4th edition (London: SAGE, 2013).

  47 John Rajchman used the expression “politics as usual” in the foreword of Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault, The Chomsky-Foucault Debate on Human Nature (New York: The New Press, 2006), 6.

  48 Anthony G. Greenwald and Mahzarin R. Banaji, “Implicit Social Cognition: Attitudes, Self-Esteem, and Stereotypes,” Psychological Review 102, no. 1 (1995): 4–27; Anthony G. Greenwald, Debbie E. McGhee, and Jordan L.K. Schwartz, “Measuring Individual Differences in Implicit Cognition: The Implicit Association Test,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74, no. 6 (1998): 1464.

  49 For the Implicit Association Test, see https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html. For a dive into how to fight bias proactively, see Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be (New York: HarperCollins, 2018); Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Anti-Racist (New York: Penguin Random House, 2019).

  50 Laurie A. Rudman and Peter Glick, “Prescriptive Gender Stereotypes and Backlash Toward Agentic Women,” Journal of Social Issues 57, no. 4 (2001): 743–62; Madeline E. Heilman and Tyler G. Okimoto, “Why Are Women Penalized for Success at Male Tasks?: The Implied Communality Deficit,” Journal of Applied Psychology 92, no. 1 (2007): 81–92; Alice H. Eagly and Steven J. Karau, “Role Congruity Theory of Prejudice toward Female Leaders,” Psychological Review 109, no. 3 (2002): 573–98; Hannah R. Bowles et al., “Social Incentives for Gender Differences in the Propensity to Initiate Negotiations: Sometimes It Does Hurt to Ask,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 103, no. 1 (2007): 84–103.

  51 Victoria L. Brescoll and Eric Luis Uhlmann, “Can an Angry Woman Get Ahead? Status Conferral, Gender, and Expression of Emotion in the Workplace,” Psychological Science 19, no. 3 (2008): 268–75.

  52 Deborah Gray White, Ar’n’t I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999); Melissa V. Harris-Perry, Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011); Ashleigh Shelby Rosette et al., “Race Matters for Women Leaders: Intersectional Effects on Agentic Deficiencies and Penalties,” The Leadership Quarterly 27, no. 3 (2016): 429–45. Michelle Obama also recalls this stereotype being used against her in Becoming (New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2018), x.

  53 Robert W. Livingston and Nicholas A. Pearce, “The Teddy-Bear Effect: Does Having a Baby Face Benefit Black Chief Executive Officers?” Psychological Science 20, no. 10 (2009): 1229–36. The results of another study, in which White male participants reviewed résumés that signaled whether the applicant was White or Black and gay or straight, are similarly telling, in that they suggest that Black gay men are offered significantly higher starting salaries than White gay men and Black straight men because they are viewed as less threatening. See David S. Pedulla, “The Positive Consequences of Negative Stereotypes: Race, Sexual Orientation, and the Job Application Process,” Social Psychology Quarterly 77, no. 1 (2014): 75–94; John Paul Wilson, Jessica D. Remedios, and Nicholas O. Rule, “Interactive Effects of Obvious and Ambiguous Social Categories on Perceptions of Leadership: When Double-Minority Status May Be Beneficial,” Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin 43, no. 6 (2017): 888–900.

  54 Jennifer L. Berdahl and Ji-A Min, “Prescriptive Stereotypes and Workplace Consequences for East Asians in North America,” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 18, no. 2 (2012): 141–52.

  55 Claude M. Steele, Steven J. Spencer, and Joshua Aronson, “Contending with Group Image: The Psychology of Stereotype and Social Identity Threat,” in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 34 (Cambridge, MA: Academic Press, 2002): 379–440.

  56 Steven J. Spencer, Claude M. Steele, and Diane M. Quinn, “Stereotype Threat and Women’s Math Performance,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 35, no. 1 (1999): 4–28.

  57 Claude M. Steele and Joshua Aronson, “Stereotype Threat and the Intellectual Test Performance of African Americans,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69, no. 5 (1995): 797–811.

  58 Patricia Gonzales, Hart Blanton, and Kevin Williams, “The Effects of Stereotype Threat and Double-Minority Status on the Test Performance of Latino Women,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28, no. 5 (2002): 659–70.

  59 Zoe Kinias and Jessica Sim, “Facilitating Women’s Success in Business: Interrupting the Process of Stereotype Threat through Affirmation of Personal Values,” Journal of Applied Psychology 101, no. 11 (2016): 1585–97. See also Claude M. Steele, “The Psychology of Self-Affirmation: Sustaining the Integrity of the Self,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 21, no. 2 (1988): 261–302.

  60 Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (New York: Penguin Random House, 2020).

  61 Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro, “Overcoming Resistance to Organizational Change: Strong Ties and Affective Cooptation,” Management Science 59 (2013): 819–36; Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro, “Change Agents, Networks, and Institutions: A Contingency Theory of Organizational Change,” Academy of Management Journal 55, no. 2 (2012): 381–98; Julie Battilana, Bernard Leca, and Eva Boxenbaum, “How Actors Change Institutions: Toward a Theory of Institutional Entrepreneurship,” Academy of Management Annals 3, no. 1 (2009): 65–107.

  62 Marc Schneiberg and Michael Lounsbury, “Social Movements and the Dynamics of Institutions and Organizations,” in The Sage Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism, eds. Royston Greenwood, Christine Oliver, Thomas B. Lawrence, and Renate E. Meyer (London: SAGE, 2017), 281–310; Paul Osterman, Gathering Power: The Future of Progressive Politics in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002). See also Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution, n.d., accessed February 28, 2021, https://cripcamp.com/.

  63 Neil Fligstein, “Social Skill and the Theory of Fields,” Sociological Theory 19, no. 2 (2001): 105–25; Royston Greenwood, Roy Suddaby, and C. R. Hinings, “Theorizing Change: The Role of Professional Associations in the Transformation of Institutionalized Fields,” Academy of Management Journal 45, no. 1 (2002): 58–80; Elisabeth S. Clemens and James M. Cook, “Politics and Institutionalism: Explaining Durability and Change,” Annual Review of Sociology 25 (1999): 441–66; Petter Holm, “The Dynamics of Institutionalization: Transformation Processes in Norwegian Fisheries,” Administrative Science Quarterly 40, no. 3 (1995): 392–422; Neil Fligstein, The Transformation of Corporate Control (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).

 
; 64 Paul J. DiMaggio, “Interest and Agency in Institutional Theory,” Institutional Patterns and Organizations, ed. Lynne Zucker (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1988), 3–22; Neil Fligstein, “Social Skill and Institutional Theory,” American Behavioral Scientist 40, no. 4 (1997): 397–405; Nelson Phillips, Thomas B. Lawrence, and Cynthia Hardy, “Inter-Organizational Collaboration and the Dynamics of Institutional Fields,” Journal of Management Studies 37, no. 1 (2000); Pamela S. Tolbert and L. G. Zucker, “Institutionalization of Institutional Theory,” Handbook of Organizational Studies, eds. S. Clegg, C. Hardy, and W. Nord (London: SAGE, 1996), 175–90.

  65 Elisabeth S. Clemens and James M. Cook, “Politics and Institutionalism: Explaining Durability and Change,” Annual Review of Sociology 25, no. 1 (1999): 441–66; Mustafa Emirbayer and Ann Mische, “What Is Agency?” American Journal of Sociology 103, no. 4 (1998): 962–1023; Myeong-Gu Seo and W. E. Douglas Creed, “Institutional Contradictions, Praxis, and Institutional Change: A Dialectical Perspective,” Academy of Management Review 27, no. 2 (2002): 222–47; William H. Sewell, “A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation,” American Journal of Sociology 98, no. 1 (1992): 1–29; Patricia H. Thornton, William Ocasio, and Michael Lounsbury, The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure, and Process (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

  66 For details on the distinction between motivation and opportunity to rebalance power and its implication for how power relationships change, see Mikołaj Jan Piskorski and Tiziana Casciaro, “When More Power Makes Actors Worse Off: Turning a Profit in the American Economy,” Social Forces 85, no. 2 (2006): 1011–36; Tiziana Casciaro and Mikołaj Jan Piskorski, “Power Imbalance, Mutual Dependence, and Constraint Absorption: A Closer Look at Resource Dependence Theory,” Administrative Science Quarterly 50, no. 2 (2005): 167–99. For a complementary view of the distinction between power imbalance and mutual dependence, see Ranjay Gulati and Maxim Sytch, “Dependence Asymmetry and Joint Dependence in Interorganizational Relationships: Effects of Embeddedness on a Manufacturer’s Performance in Procurement Relationships,” Administrative Science Quarterly 52, no. 1 (2007): 32–69. An essential source on measuring such dependence is Ronald S. Burt, Toward a Structural Theory of Action: Network Models of Social Structure, Perception, and Action. (New York: Academic Press, 1982).

  67 For a memorable account of the lives of the European immigrants to Pittsburgh in the late 1800s and early 1900s, see the historical novel: Thomas Bell, Out of This Furnace (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976).

  68 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (London: S. Sonnenschein, Lowrey, & Co., 1887).

  69 Contemporary American corporations do not resort to bloodshed to discourage unionization, but often put up a fight using other methods: Jay Greene, “Amazon’s Anti-Union Blitz Stalks Alabama Warehouse Workers Everywhere, Even the Bathroom,” Washington Post, February 2, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/02/amazon-union-warehouse-workers/.

  70 Magee and Galinsky, “Social Hierarchy.” For more on the relationship between (il)legitimacy and systems change, see Paul V. Martorana, Adam D. Galinsky, and Hayagreeva Rao, “From System Justification to System Condemnation: Antecedents of Attempts to Change Power Hierarchies,” Research on Managing Groups and Teams 7 (2005): 283–313.

  71 For anger as a response to injustice, see Robert C. Solomon, The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1993); and C. Daniel Batson et al., “Anger at Unfairness: Is It Moral Outrage?” European Journal of Social Psychology 37, no. 6 (November 2007): 1272–85, on anger motivating action against injustice. For research on the relationship between sadness and helplessness, and anger and personal control, see Dacher Keltner, Phoebe C. Ellsworth, and Kari Edwards, “Beyond Simple Pessimism: Effects of Sadness and Anger on Social Perception,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 64, no. 5 (1993): 740; and on emotions that lead to action or risk-taking, see Jennifer Lerner and Dacher Keltner, “Fear, Anger, and Risk,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81, no. 1 (2001): 146–59; Nico H. Frijda, “Emotions and Action,” in Feelings and Emotions, eds. Antony S. R. Manstead, Nico Frijda, and Agneta Fischer (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 158–73; James Jasper, The Emotions of Protest (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018).

  72 See, for example, Michele Masterfano, “Unions: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly,” HuffPost, September 17, 2013, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/unions-the-good-the-bad-t_b_3880878.

  73 Joseph Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012).

  74 “Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos,” Frontline, February 18, 2020, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/amazon-empire/; Jay Greene, “Amazon Sellers Say Online Retail Giant Is Trying to Help Itself, Not Consumers,” Washington Post, October 19, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/01/amazon-sellers-say-online-retail-giant-is-trying-help-itself-not-consumers/.

  75 Erin Griffith, “To Fight Apple and Google’s Grip, Fortnite Creator Mounts a Crusade,” New York Times, August 25, 2020, sec. Technology, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/25/technology/fortnite-creator-tim-sweeney-apple-google.html.

  76 Piskorski and Casciaro, “When More Power Makes Actors Worse Off,” 1011–36.

  77 Adam Taylor, “The Global Wave of Populism That Turned 2016 Upside Down,” Washington Post, December 19, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/12/19/the-global-wave-of-populism-that-turned-2016-upside-down/.

  78 Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (New York: The New Press, 2018).

  79 Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality; Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini, “Is Inequality Harmful for Growth? Theory and Evidence,” American Economic Review 84, no. 3 (1994): 600–21; and, for an analysis of the relationship between the pursuit of economic efficiency, inequality, and threats to democratic capitalism, Roger L. Martin, When More Is Not Better: Overcoming America’s Obsession with Economic Efficiency (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2020).

  80 Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Good Economics for Hard Times (New York: PublicAffairs, 2019), 256.

  81 Emmie Martin, “Warren Buffett and Bill Gates Agree That the Rich Should Pay Higher Taxes—Here’s What They Suggest,” CNBC, February 26, 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/25/warren-buffett-and-bill-gates-the-rich-should-pay-higher-taxes.html; Sheelah Kolhatkar, “The Ultra-Wealthy Who Argue That They Should Be Paying Higher Taxes,” The New Yorker, January 6, 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/06/the-ultra-wealthy-who-argue-that-they-should-be-paying-higher-taxes.

  82 Anand Giridharadas, “The New Elite’s Phoney Crusade to Save the World—Without Changing Anything,” The Guardian, January 22, 2019, http://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jan/22/the-new-elites-phoney-crusade-to-save-the-world-without-changing-anything; Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World (New York: Knopf, 2018).

  83 Chad Stone et al., A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2020), https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/11-28-11pov_0.pdf.

  84 For detailed discussions of the neoliberal turn, see Thomas Piketty, Capital and Ideology, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2020); Paul Adler, The 99% Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019); Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism (London: Verso, 2006); and, for an account of its impact on the lives of Americans, see Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope (New York: Penguin Random House, 2020).

  6. AGITATE, INNOVATE, ORCHESTRATE

  1 Charles Tilly, Social Movements 1768–2004 (London: Paradigm Publishers, 2004). For a review of the literature on social movements, see David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi, eds., The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements (Hoboken, NJ:
John Wiley & Sons, 2008); David A. Snow and Sarah A. Soule, A Primer on Social Movements (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010).

  2 For an in-depth analysis of the impact of communication technology on social movements, see Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age, 2nd ed. (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2015).

  3 Gene Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation (Boston: Albert Einstein Institution, 2003).

  4 Micah White in discussion with the authors, January and March 2020.

  5 Micah White, The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution (Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2016).

  6 Julie Battilana, “Power and Influence in Society,” Harvard Business School note 415-055 (2015); Julie Battilana and Marissa Kimsey, “Should You Agitate, Innovate, or Orchestrate?” Stanford Social Innovation Review (online), 2017, https://ssir.org/articles/entry/should_you_agitate_innovate_or_orchestrate.

  7 Studies have documented the “radical flank effect” in which the bargaining position of moderate groups is strengthened, rather than weakened, by the presence of more radical ones (see, for example, Herbert H. Haines, “Black Radicalization and the Funding of Civil Rights: 1957–1970,” Social Problems 32, no. 1 [1984]: 31–43).

  8 Battilana and Kimsey, “Should You Agitate?”

  9 IPCC, Global Warming of 1.5°C: An IPCC Special Report on the Impacts of Global Warming of 1.5°C above Pre-industrial Levels and Related Global Greenhouse Gas Emission Pathways, in the Context of Strengthening the Global Response to the Threat of Climate Change, Sustainable Development, and Efforts to Eradicate Poverty, Valerie Masson-Delmotte et al., (eds.) (2018), https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/.

  10 Xiye Bastida in discussion with the authors, September 2019.

  11 For a psychological explanation of our inaction on climate change, see George Marshall, Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015).