Mirror Up to Intraorganizational Power and Dependence: An Exploratory Account

Abstract

Introduction: The most interesting feature of research on power in organizations is that we are blessed and plagued by variety of approaches and theories. Being blessed means that we have multitude of ideas and approaches while plagued means that many theories are fragmented and a little integration efforts have been made yet. Consequently, the clear picture of intraorganizational power relations is quite difficult to obtain. An interdisciplinary approach is needed to define links among the many aspects of power. In this theoretical synthesis, a serious attempt is made to summarize what we know and don’t know about power in organizations. Roadmap: So, here is the roadmap for this piece of writing. We begin with the definition of power followed by a short description of relevant literature review so that the reader can get a sense of what was done with reference to key concepts, findings, and contributions from exemplar research studies on this topic. In the end, we briefly incorporate the contemporary debates, central questions that remain unanswered, and new directions for future research.