Lower Participant Power: Toward a Conceptual Integration

Abstract

A model of lower-level-participant power, grounded in a strategic contingencies theory of intraorganizational power, provides the conceptual basis for deriving a series of hypotheses concerning lower-level-participant power. Organizational power is related to access (to persons, information, instrumentalities), expertise, and effort. Generally speaking, the more contingencies that can be controlled by the lower-level participant (LP), the more power the LP has within the organization.