The Dark Side of Organizational Behavior

7 Negative aspects of organizational power

Deniz Dirik

DOI: 10.4324/9781003292401-8

Introduction

Power is a central concept in social sciences (Russell, 1938). Research shows (Bruins, 1999: 13) that any social-psychological theory that overlooks the significance of power will at best be imperfect and “a concerted attack on the problem of power should produce a major advance in the field of social psychology”. As such, the concept of power has received extensive scholarly attention across various disciplines of social sciences (French and Raven, 1959; Raven, 1976, 1999, 2008). By a straightforward description, power is an agent’s potential to direct a target toward a desired course of action (Somech and Drach-Zahavy, 2002). Social ...