Two-step leverage: managing constraint in organizational politics

Administrative Science Quarterly,  March, 1993  by Martin Gargiulo

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1990 "Can big owners make a big difference?" Harvard Business Review, Sept.-Oct.: 70-82.

Thompson, James D.

1967 Organizations in Action. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Thurman, Blake

1979 "In the office: Networks and coalitions." Social Networks, 2: 47-63.

Since the publication of March and Simon's (1958)influential book, the political image of the business firm has been a key component in organizational theory (Thompson, 1967; Zald, 1970; Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978; Pfeffer, 1981; Perrow, 1986; March, 1988). Like any political system, organizations are rife with conflict. Here the controversy focuses on the power to control resource allocation and the organization's goals. Organizational players differ in their ability to attain this control. Some positions carry high levels of discretion in determining organizational goals and resource allocation. Yet individuals in those positions are considerably interdependent, and their actual exercise of discretion must take this interdependence into account. According to Thompson (1967: 125), individuals in highly discretionary positions ". . . seek to maintain power equal to or greater than their dependence on others in the organization." Thus, a key issue in any organization is how decision makers overcome the constraints of interdependence on their ability to exercise discretion. To understand this issue, one must first understand how differences in power arise among organizational actors.

Organizational analysis has followed Emerson's (1962) exchange theory of power-dependence relations by stressing the control of key resources and decisions as an important basis of asymmetric interdependence between organizational players (see Pfeffer, 1981: 97-135, for a review). Network analysis has substantially clarified how the structure of interdependence affects the distribution of power in the system. A key intuition of exchange theory is that power is a positive function of the availability of alternatives (Emerson, 1962; Blau, 1964). This intuition has been confirmed in a series of experimental and simulation studies whose results show how power and influence accrue to players with access to several exchange partners who themselves lack such alternatives (Cook and Emerson, 1978; Cook et al., 1983; Marsden, 1982, 1983).

A second line of research in network analysis has focused on how social structure affects an actor's actual control of resources and decisions, to determine the social conditions under which the actor must exercise discretionary control. Burt (1982, 1988, 1991) has proposed a network model based on the assumption that constraint results from dependence on coordinated actors. The more an actor depends on parties who can coordinate his or her behavior, the less ability he or she has to exercise discretionary control on the resources at his or her disposal. Conversely, lack of coordination among those parties enlarges the actor's span of discretionary behavior.

Strategic Responses to Constraint

If constrained dependence imposes limits on the actor's performance, it may equally confer advantages on the limiting party. Following Thompson (1967: 125), we should expect actors in highly discretionary positions to try to minimize the limits imposed on them by other players in the organization. When faced with constrained dependencies, the actors are likely to engage in "balancing operations" (Emerson, 1962: 34; Blau, 1964; Jacobs, 1974). In some cases, these operations may reduce the salience of the dependence by incorporating new players into the network, or actors may eliminate the constraint altogether by withdrawing from the troublesome relation. Choosing between these options, however, is not always feasible in organizational settings, where dependence is born of circumstances largely outside personal control, such as institutionalized rules or a technical division of labor. Short of quitting his or her job, withdrawal strategies are often impossible for the actor, while effective expansion requires the existence of players who have access to the same resources but are not coordinated by the limiting party. Although withdrawal and expansion maneuvers may be more feasible in flexible organizational structures, such as the so-called matrix firm (Davis and Lawrence, 1977), they ultimately have limits: People with a record of cutting ties make untrustworthy partners. Repeated withdrawal may make an actor autonomous but also resourceless. The key to success is not to reduce complexity artificially by minimizing the number of dependencies but to "make social complexity work for us, not against us" (Kotter, 1985: 31). When constraining dependencies are unavoidable, the question is no longer how to avoid constraint, but how to manage it, if it can be or needs to be managed.

In some cases, efforts to manage constraint might be superfluous, for potential constraint does not automatically result in actual control. To gain control, the dominant party must pursue his or her structural advantage, or at least he or she must maintain a credible threat to do so. Many things may undermine this advantage, ranging from the personality traits of the dominant party to societal norms that penalize exploitative behavior. Although these circumstances are mostly beyond the dependent actor's control, he or she may nevertheless benefit from these kinds of safeguards in the situation. In such cases, strategic manipulation might be not only superfluous but also harmful. It may complicate a previously smooth functional relation, creating an overpoliticized and even more uncertain work environment (Kotter, 1978).