A Multi-dimensional Analysis of Managers’ Power – Functional, Socio-political, Interpretive-discursive, and Socio-cultural Approaches

Thomas Diefenbach, Rune Todnem By and Patricia Klarner

management revue - Socio-Economic Studies, 2009, vol. 20, issue 4, 413-431

Abstract: Managers’ power within organisations has been analysed by several approaches: Orthodox management and organisation studies (‘functional approach’), Critical Management Studies (‘socio-political approaches’), interpretive, discourse-oriented and constructivist concepts (‘interpretive-discursive approaches’), and anthropological, socio-psychological and sociological approaches (‘socio-cultural approaches’). In organisational reality functional, socio-political, interpretive-discursive, and socio-cultural aspects are closely related and intertwined. However, because of division of intellectual labour, probably more because of different worldviews, researchers often make use of these approaches quite selectively. Such focussing has its advantages but also weaknesses. This paper therefore argues that it often helps to investigate complex phenomena such as managers’ power in multi-dimensional ways.

Keywords: power; managers; management studies; organisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A14 J20 M12 M50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nomos-elibrary.de/10.5771/0935-9915-2009-4-413 (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:nms:mamere:1861-9908_mrev_2009_4_diefenbach

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, Waldseestraße 3-5, 76530 Baden-Baden, Germany
https://www.nomos-sh ... w.aspx?product=29288

Access Statistics for this article

management revue - Socio-Economic Studies is currently edited by Simon Fietze, Wenzel Matiaske, Ina Aust, Matthias Baum, Susanne Gretzinger, Sylvia Rohlfer and Florian Schramm

More articles in management revue - Socio-Economic Studies from Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG ().