The Power of Social Collectivities

The analysis and measurement of social power, particularly that of social collectivities, continues to present difficulties to theorists and researchers alike.l In a recent attempt to resolve some of these problems,Jacobsen and Cohen2 have suggested an integration offour major theoretical approaches to the study of power, and derived from that a 'predictor measure' for assessing power relationships between social collectivities. The utility of the integrated approach was then demonstrated by the high correlations they had found between the predictor measure and the parties' stated readiness to use their potential power. But there is still a great differenceconceptually as well as empiricallybetween an expressed willingness to act and actual behaviour. This note reports a follow-up of the same organizations, that traced power events as they occurred over a fouryear period following the original study, and compared them with what had been predicted. The results are thus to be seen as an attempt to empirically validate the integrated approach suggested in the earlier article. The predictor measure for each party had been defined as the ratio of its relative resources to its relative position vis-a-vis the contended issues. Questionnaire responses from the managements and shop committee of 16 organizations in Israel constituted the data base for computing this measure. The original hypothesis was that the extent to which the predictor measure exceeds unity for a given party indicates that party's propensity to use its relative advantage in resources in order to improve its relatively low position by enacting its potential power. Conversely, the extent to which the predictor measure is below unity indicates that party's propensity to exploit its relative advantage in position unobtrusively, that is to say, not to initiate a confrontation. The raw scores in Table I, taken from the original study, would lead us to expect that the committees generally will be more willing to enact their power potential than the managements, but also that, among the managements, those with higher predictor scores will be

Physics · Power (physics · Sociology · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Management and Organizational Studies · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory

• The Power of Social Collectivities

  Chanoch Jacobsen, Aaron Cohen•British Journal of Sociology•1986

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• Power and Resistance

  J M Barbalet, Jack Barbalet•British Journal of Sociology•1985

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• Industrial Conflict and Unionization

  D W Britt, David Britt et al.•American Sociological Review•1972

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