Conceptualizing Power in Organizations
Rethinking Power in Organizations, Institutions, and Markets
ISBN: 978-1-78052-664-5, eISBN: 978-1-78052-665-2
Publication date: 5 April 2012
Abstract
The question of power, long indispensable to organizational analysis, remains the elusive but essential key to understanding the employment relation within the contemporary capitalist context. Taking up this question, this chapter critically examines two of the more prevalent approaches toward work organizations – neo-institutionalist theory and labor process analysis – and engages a third, less widely utilized approach: Foucault's theory of governmentality. By weighing the strengths and weaknesses of familiar analytical traditions and providing insight into an emergent theoretical approach, we offer some observations and suggestions that might enrich the study of work, power, and organizations in the coming years.
Keywords
Citation
Vallas, S.P. and Hill, A. (2012), "Conceptualizing Power in Organizations", Courpasson, D., Golsorkhi, D. and Sallaz, J.J. (Ed.) Rethinking Power in Organizations, Institutions, and Markets (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 34), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 165-197. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X(2012)0000034009
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2012, Emerald Group Publishing Limited