T he subject of power, of interest to people for millenia, has been on the social science agenda for at least the last 100 years. George Simmel, the father of American sociology, suggested in the late 1800s that the exercise of power among people was a central issue deserving of study and understanding (Simmel, 1896). Russell (1938) wrote of power as the fundamental concept in social science, “ in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics” (p. 10). Lewin felt that “Not the least service which social research can do for society is to attain better insight into the legitimate and non-legitimate aspects of power” (Marrow, 1969, p. 172). Mannheim (1950) argued that “Power is present whenever and wherever social pressures operate on the individual to induce desired conduct” (p. 46). Kornhauser (1957) wrote of “one most important-and in my judgment greatly under-emphasized —aspect of the relations of social science to society, namely, questions of social science in the context of the power structure” (p. 187). Writers from sociology, psychology, communication, management, politics, organizational behavior, and other disciplines have

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continued to stress the centrality of power to any explanation of the human experience.