INLS 131
Management of Information Agencies
Fall 1999

Getting Ready for Non-Class of Nov. 8, 1999

POWER AND INFLUENCE

Although there is no class today, I'd like you to read an article that came out some years ago by one of today's leading women writers on management -- Rosabeth Moss Kanter. This article was originally written 20 years ago but I find the case she makes very powerful and useful to new managers.

Kanter, Rosabeth Moss, "Power Failure in Management Circuits," Reprinted in Developing Management Skills in Organizational Behavior. 2nd ed. (Prentice Hall, 1994) pp. 187-195.

She discusses some of the ways people who feel powerless act and suggests a recipe of actions to gain power through enpowering others if you are placed in a similar position.

• Please comment in your portfolio on situations where you have observed the kind of behavior Kanter describes in her article. Do you agree that the behavior could be the effect of feeling powerless or uncomfortably dependent on others?

• Why is it so difficult to empower yourself once you have been placed in a position of structural powerlessness?

• How should organizations be designed so that power can be shared rather than protected in the context of "fiefdoms of authoritarianism throughout the organization?

• What policies should organizations adopt to facilitate power sharing? How might this change the culture of most orgnizations? To what extent is this realistic?