Abstract:
Power plays a significant role in many organizational theories such as resource dependency theory and transaction cost economics. It allows the strong companies to win more than others, or more broadly, to coerce others to do what they would not otherwise do. Power can seriously affect the confidence and commitment between parties. This paper aims to analyze the power concept in inter-organizational relationships. We discuss some formal results modeling power and the set of elements and property necessary to understand these concepts. We also proposed a "power generation process" that allows to describe how power is developed in a relationship according to dependency. As far as we were able to browse the scientific literature, these are the first attempts to suggest a robust foundation of the power theory.
Machine summary:
"com Power imbalance in collaboration relationships Driss Essabbara*, Maria Zrikemb, Marc Zolghadric a Moroccan School of Engineering Sciences, Marrakech, Morocco bTIM Laboratory-ENSA, BP 575 Abdelkarim Khattabi, Marrakech, Morocco c Phenics-LISMMA Laboratory EA2336 Supmeca, 3 rue Fernand Hainaut, Paris, France Abstract Power plays a significant role in many organizational theories such as resource dependency theory and transaction cost economics.
One of the primary concrete motivations of a research study examining power is that it could help avoiding possible future conflicts and malfunctions that may occur during the operational phase of product design or due to the implicit decision imbalance within a supply chain.
Weber , 2009) defined power as "the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests" In the psychological literature, power is the ability of the individual to make a difference to a pre-existing condition (Thomas Hobbes, 1968).
According to (Henry Mintzberg, 2003) power is based on 1) control of a resource, 2) technical expertise, or 3) a set of crucial knowledge for the company.
1. Power relationship Having examined different aspects of power, we conclude that power generally refers to the ability or potentiality to influence or to control intentions, decisions or actions of others in the pursuit of its own objectives or interests.
From the perspective of organization managers, this is an issue worth studying that gives consideration to the need to understand the role of power as an influencing factor in organizational relationships."