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The Microfoundations of Organizational Attempts to Redistribute Power

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2228547
AutoresAmanda Barrett Cox (0000-0002-3914-5309, Bryn Mawr College, autor correspondente)
Ano2021
Volume127
Fascículo2
Páginas285-336
Data de publicação2021-09-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAmerican Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0002-9602 • E-ISSN: 1537-5390
EditoraUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/716591
OpenAlexW4205839481
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas5
Referências citadas50

What types of interactions facilitate the redistribution of power across institutional roles? To answer this question, the author draws on ethnographic data from two organizations attempting to shift the conventional power relations within their respective institutions: a private philanthropic foundation seeking to transfer control over its grant making to a community-based board and a democratic school designed to give students and adults an equal voice in decisions. The author offers a typology of power-shifting encounters and focuses on two types of encounters that facilitate the balancing of power relations—symmetrizing encounters and encompassing encounters. She shows that these encounters supported and were supported by power-redistributing discourses and organizational structures within each organization. These findings suggest that the balancing (or near balancing) of asymmetrical power relations relies on power-distributing mechanisms that are consistent and aligned across multiple levels within an organization, from interactions, to organizational structures, to organizational culture and discourse. Symmetrizing encounters and encompassing encounters are the interactional building blocks within such an effort

Democracy · Economics · Ethnography · Management · Microfoundations · Organizational culture · Organizational theory · Political science · Power (physics) · Public relations · Sociology · Typology · Gender Diversity and Inequality · Law · Management and Organizational Studies · Psychology · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Social Psychology