ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews some of the major schools of thought in which power plays an important part. In psychology the emphasis is on cognitive processes in solving problems or making judgements, and typically the phenomena are investigated under controlled laboratory-like conditions. Even when group decision-making is investigated, as in the well-known work on risky shift the artificiality of the setting enables experimenters to exclude variables which take on a dominant role in organizational settings. Power is one such variable, but until quite recently it has received surprisingly little attention even in work on organizations. Several authors like to make a distinction between power and influence. While power is thought to be dependent on a measure of coercion, influence is said to depend on personal abilities, charisma and the like. The direction of the effect could also be reversed; satisfied people will be allowed more participation.
