Abstract
What does having power mean, not for, but to an individual at work? In this article, we focus on the individual’s concerns and experiences in the work setting and discuss how individuals conceptualise and construct their own power at work. This perspective is important due to its corresponding implications for how individuals choose their jobs, how they show proactive work behaviours and how they are engaged in power relations in organisations. In-depth interviews with 11 participants were subjected to interpretative phenomenological analysis and key themes were identified to explain how these individuals cognitively, socially and operationally crafted their ‘own’ versions of power in their organisations. Despite the idiosyncratic similarity among the participants, our analysis revealed a clear divide: ‘position-based power holders’ and ‘territory holders’. We first present our findings and results with interview excerpts and implications drawn from the emergent themes based on participant accounts. Next, we focus on two individual cases to explain how these individuals identified themselves as power holders within their own organisational contexts. Finally, we discuss our findings in association with other theoretical frameworks and concepts including the meaning of power, the organisational context and proactive work behaviours.
Highlights
What does having power mean to an individual at work? Studies that attempt to explore the source and use of power at work are countless
Our findings showed that conceptualising and constructing power, or power crafting as we call it in this study, was a cognitive, social and operational act performed by individuals at work
We focused on subject positions the participants demonstrated (Gibbs, 2018: 95) and analysed significant roles they assumed with regard to their power crafting actions and how they adopted these roles in their discourses
Summary
What does having power mean to an individual at work? Studies that attempt to explore the source and use of power at work are countless. The literature is haunted by a perspective that confines the individual to a context predominantly shaped by organisational structures and policies, and the underlying assumption almost never changes – power and the flexibility to use it can only be granted by the organisation in the form of a formal authority. We see much emphasis in this assumption placed on the organisation as the institution that has the ultimate power. Researchers, in this vein, dwelt more on identifying structural antecedents for having power at work and organisational consequences when power is used. We ask: what does having power mean, not for, but to an individual at work?
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