In Organizations, power is seen as tool that authority possesses to wield out instructions to their staff, ensure internal disputes are settled, fire staff if they are intolerable for various reasons and so forth. Therefore, one could deduce that those who possess leadership skills require a high level of responsibility amongst other attributes to be bestowed with power (varying amounts depending on what management level). Certainly, as mentioned in the first Spiderman movie (2002),
‘With Great Power comes Great Responsibility’ (Bolle & Vogel, 2011)
This is certainly true in every organization that is successful. Leaders who responsibly use their power for the greater good of the organization tend to find success easier than those who don’t. For example, the most famous leaders of today, Steve Jobs (Apple), Bill Gates (Windows) and Sir Richard Branson (Virgin) are all visionaries and managed to responsibly use their power to make their companies amongst the most successful and revolutionary in the world.
This essay aims to provide a detailed understanding into the various bases of power as mentioned by French & Raven (1958): -Reward, Coercive, Legitimate (Positional Powers)-, -Informational, Referent and Expert (Personal Powers) - (Lo & Ramayah, 2011). It also aims to provide an analysis of the use of power by managers within an organizational setting. Finally, this essay will describe managers’ utilization of the various bases and use different examples. This essay will also provide recommendations and argue how managers should be acquiring more personal power characteristics to increase chances of success in the workplace.

Firstly, to fully grasp the idea of what ‘Power’ is in an organization, the bases of power must be comprehensively discussed. As mentioned in the introduction, the six bases of Power are: Reward, Coercive, Legitimate,