Negotiating Power Paradoxes: Contradictions in Women's Constructions of Organizational Power

Abstract

This study explores women's constructions of organizational power and the ways women negotiate tensions when their own constructions of power conflict with organizational norms. Through interviews, participants were asked to define organizational power and to provide examples of more and less powerful individuals based on their own organizational experiences. Findings suggest that women not only experience tension between their own constructions of power and organizational norms but that they actually construct their own contradictory meanings of power. Employing contradictory meanings suggests participants employ gendered code-switching as a response to a gendered power paradox. The following reviews the various contradictions in women's definitions of organizational power and develops a theory of gendered code-switching as a response to gendered organizational paradoxes.