Power and interdependence in work groups: Views of managers and employees

The dynamics and consequences of power may depend upon whether high- and low-power people believe they have largely cooperative or competitive goals. Managers and their employ-ees from 47 groups within a large company rated each other’s power and the extent to which they had developed cooperation, competition, and independence. Cooperation and power were both related to perceived effectiveness of manager and employee. The positive correlations be-tween cooperation and power contradict the common, implicit assumption that power occurs in competition. Results suggest that experimental findings generalize to ongoing relationships in or-ganizations and indicate that cooperative goals are critical for constructive power management. Power is an integral part of organizational life and is particularly relevant to the relationship between managers and their employees. Power evokes strong feelings and has been the subject of considerable discussion and research (Astley & Sachdeva, 1984; Pfeffer, 1981; Rahim, 1989). Traditionally, power has been portrayed as being a largely disruptive force in relationships, and the major suggestion for its management was to try to equalize power be-tween managers and employees to improve communication and interaction (Bennis, 1969; Walton, 1969). The contemporary perspective is that power is both inevitable and poten-tially constructive (Kouzes & Posner, 1987). Kanter (1977,1979), for exam-ple, proposed that powerful leaders have the confidence and resources to We thank Choy Wong and Jenny Tjosvold for their able assistance and the Social Sciences an