ABSTRACT
Power often defines how people think and feel in organizational settings. Social psychologists have long argued that power relationships are inherent to social interaction (French and Raven 1959) and organizational theorists stress the ubiquity of power and influence acts in organizations (Kanter 1977; Kipnis 1984; Kipnis, Schmidt, and Wilkinson 1980; Kotter 1985; Pfeffer 1981, 1992; Yukl and Falbe 1990). The “thinking” side of dyadic power is well developed in cognitively oriented models of social influence (see Barry 2001; Kipnis 1976; Raven 1993, 2001; Kelman and Hamilton 1989). A common theme in all these models is the assumption that the influence agent is a rational decision maker who engages in a primarily cognitive process of determining effective influence strategies based on a cost/benefit analysis (Bruins 1999). An element missing in the extant models, however, is the “feeling” side of power: the effect of agent emotions on the influence process. In the influence tactic literature, for example, emotions are considered primarily in terms of a marginal cost for the agent: in their rational decision-making process, agents are encouraged to consider the possible negative emotions of their targets as a potential cost exacted on the relationship. They are not, however, urged to consider their own emotions about having and using power in the workplace.
