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Sources of Power

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Submitted By dtnavy2002
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Sources of Power

by
Roberta D. Harris

An Assignment Submitted to the
George Herbert Walker School of Business and Economics in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the Course of Management 5670

Webster University
2013
Abstract

One of the highest concerns about power is its effects on those who use it. The more people use power, the more they tend to notice situations in terms of power relationships, the more they are motivated to use power for their own personal end result. This risk in this use of power is stated in the statement “Power tends to corrupt; and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” (Lynch, 1985) Plato was convinced that power would continue to corrupt unless philosophers became rulers and rulers were philosophers. The five bases of power defined by French and Raven denote the classical reason why one person influences others as well as the foundation for most research on power. Recently, other sources of power have been defined, explaining other sources of influence. I discussed the five indicators for accessing power and identified the five sources of social power which includes reward power, coercive power, legitimate power, referent power and expert power. (Frenche & Raven, 1968) Additionally, I discussed other sources of power such as information power, persuasiveness, charisma, and social versus personal power.

Keywords: power, indicators, reward, coercive, legitimate, referent, expert, sources

Power
Power refers to the possession of authority and influence over others. Power is a tool that, depending on how it's used, can lead to either positive or negative outcomes in an organization. In 1959, American sociologists John French and Bertram Raven published an article, "The Bases of Power," that's regarded as the basis for classifying power

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