EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Building Organization Theory from First Principles: The Self-Enhancement Motive and Understanding Power and Influence

Jeffrey Pfeffer () and Christina T. Fong ()
Additional contact information
Jeffrey Pfeffer: Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305-5015
Christina T. Fong: University of Washington Business School, Seattle, Washington 98195-3200

Organization Science, 2005, vol. 16, issue 4, 372-388

Abstract: In developing and advancing organization theory, it is useful if we can uncover fundamental constructs that can then be used to integrate larger areas of inquiry, even as we continue to accumulate more knowledge, evidence, and concepts. However, accomplishing this will require a somewhat different approach to theory building and testing. We illustrate the process of building an integrated model from fundamental constructs by using the idea of self-enhancement to explore phenomena of power and influence. We argue that many psychological processes related to power and social influence (such as escalation of commitment, similarity attraction and in-group favoritism, the disinhibiting effects of power, and the persistence of hierarchical structures) can all be logically derived from the self-enhancement idea, the desire to see oneself and one’s actions in a positive light. The conceptual model can help us understand apparently anomalous behavior (such as individuals being willing to tolerate poor treatment at the hands of leaders), bringing together a number of ideas and constructs frequently treated as distinct in the literature and providing some hypotheses for future research.

Keywords: power; influence; commitment; careers; similarity attraction; theory development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1050.0132 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:16:y:2005:i:4:p:372-388

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Organization Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().

 
Page updated 2025-04-09
Handle: RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:16:y:2005:i:4:p:372-388