Journal zyxwvutsrqp o f Management Studies zyxwvutsr 25:3 May 1988 0022-2380 $3.50 RELEVANCE OF SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONIST APPROACH IN UNDERSTANDING POWER: A PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS[’] zyx HARI DAS Department of Management, Saint Mary’s University, Halgax, Canada INTRODUCTION Power - the essence of all social and political interaction, that dirty, manipulative device, the latent force, the bottomless swamp, the essence of management process and the symbol of success - has, for several years caught the attention of organiza- tional researchers. Several books discussing solely the topic of power have appeared in the academic zyxwvu (e.g. Bacharach and Lawler, 1980; Mintzberg, 1983; Pfeffer, 1981) and popular zyxwvu (e.g. Harragan, 1977; Korda, 1975) press in the last decade alone. Some writers have suggested that every instance of social interaction and relationship involves an exercise of power (e.g. Astley and Sachdeva, 1984) and every social act is ‘an exercise of power, every social relationship. . . a power equation and every social group of system. . . an organization of power’ (Hawley, 1963, p. 422). Despite this, the concept of power has not been fully understood. March (1966), referring to the pervasiveness of the concept of power, asserted that the concept of power has become almost a tautology - a concept used to explain that which cannot be explained by other constructs and ideas and incapable of being falsified as an explanation for individual and social actions. Nor is there any great degree of agreement among social scientists as to what precisely constitutes power. As Cartwright (1959, pp. 185-6) noted, most authors have taken pains to provide a definition but each felt compelled to invent one of his own. The consequence is that a wide variety of definitions exist. For example, Bierstedt (1950, p. 738) looked at power as hidden and as a ‘latent force. . .power itself is the prior capacity which makes the application of force possible’. Others like Blau (1964) and Dahl (1957, pp. 202-3) have focused on the more manifest nature of the phenomenon, the latter defining power of person A over person B as ‘the extent to which he can get B to do something that he would not otherwise do’. Also, writers such as Dahl have primarily studied power at the individual level, while others such as Salancik and Pfeffer (1977) and Parsons (1960) have studied power mostly at the organizational level. For example, to Parsons, power is the realistic capacity of a system unit to actualize its interests within the context of system interaction and in this sense exert influence on processes in the system to attain specific goals. To French and Raven (1968), identifying the basis of power was important in understanding its occurrence and usage; to Weber (1947, p. 47), on the other Address for reprints: Hari Das, Department of Management, St. Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, B3H 3C3.