From academic communities to managed organisations: The implications for academic careers in UK and German universities

This paper examines the implications for academic careers of the apparent global trend towards marketisation and managerialism in higher education with reference to the UK and Germany. It discusses how university employers might exercise greater control over their employees, privileging research and international publication, and fragmenting the traditional unity of the academic role. The effect is to challenge the values of academic communities, subject individuals to greater uncertainty, competition and insecurity, and influence the shape and direction of academic careers. The paper notes how today’s academic careers could be understood in terms of Kanter’s three forms of career as well as the boundaryless and protean career. However, it argues that these approaches do not address the key issue in both the UK and German cases: the changed locus and exercise of power within the employment relationship. It concludes that, to understand how careers are changing, this power relationship and the context of career in general have to be taken into account.     

Exposing operations of power in supervisory relationships

Through a poststructural lens, we examine how power may show itself in relationships between supervisees and supervisors, producing both helpful and harmful effects. Drawing from our own experiences, as well as conversations with other members of our supervisory group, we demonstrate how privileged discourses around professional status, gender, and race may bring about difficulties including a sense of doubt, worry, inadequacy, and a fear of speaking up. We also illustrate how these difficulties can be addressed in a manner that may lessen their influence, while increasing supervisees' sense of agency.     

Facilitating relational empowerment in couple therapy

Couples in distressed relationships often get caught up in power struggles, "Power Over" interactions that are informed by both neurobiology (e.g., the fight-flight reaction) and by cultural assumptions (e.g., competition, individualism, and patriarchy). This article seeks to widen the discourse about power by highlighting "Power To" and "Power With." Power To includes the ability to self-regulate, to read and manage one's own emotions, and to have voice while respecting the other's voice. Power With reflects the couple's commitment to conurture the relationship through empathy, respect, and generosity. Power To and Power With are proposed to constitute relational empowerment, the ability to navigate one's inner world and the interpersonal realm. The neurobiology of both couples' reactivity and relational empowerment are considered. Techniques are offered to facilitate Power To and Power With, interventions that interrupt couples' cycles of reactivity and allow them to make more thoughtful choices. Emotion regulation and empathy are particularly important skills of relational empowerment, and examples are offered to increase these capacities in couple therapy. The therapeutic perspective offered in this article challenges cultural practices and assumptions that keep intimate partners polarized in power struggles, and explores how relational empowerment can foster an egalitarian, mutually respectful relationship.     

More than fair: Outcome dependence, system justification, and the perceived legitimacy of authority figures

Legitimacy is a source of power for authorities because it promotes voluntary deference on the part of followers. From a system justification perspective, there is also reason to believe that power is a source of perceived legitimacy. We report five studies demonstrating that in addition to procedural fairness and outcome favorability, outcome dependence is an independent contributor to perceived legitimacy. In two cross-sectional field studies and one panel study, we hypothesized and found that dependence on an authority figure is positively associated with appraisals of legitimacy, measured in terms of trust and confidence in, empowerment of, and deference to authority. These effects were demonstrated in educational, political, and legal settings. Two additional experiments provided direct causal evidence for the hypothesized effect on both perceived legitimacy and voluntary deference (i.e., acquiescence to additional requests). We also found that participants assigned to a high (vs. low) dependence condition judged their outcomes to be more favorable, despite the fact that the outcomes were identical in the two conditions; this effect was mediated by perceived legitimacy. Taken as a whole, these findings suggest that perceived legitimacy is enhanced not only when authorities exercise fair procedures and deliver favorable outcomes, but also when subordinates are dependent on them. Implications for society and the study of legitimacy and social power are discussed.     

Power as a Structural Phenomenon

In an effort to inform empowerment theory and research, this paper provides a structural conception of power. First, we examine the essential features present in three dominant conceptions of power in community psychology: social power, psychopolitical power, and relational power. Next, commonalities in the key features of power identified by these conceptions are explored and pared down to yield a more parsimonious conception of power that is grounded only in the structural pattern of relationships through which resources are exchanged. Drawing on social exchange theory, we offer a method for measuring this streamlined, structural conception of power that allows for its more precise examination. Finally, we discuss the implications of a structural conception and measurement of power for targeting and facilitating empowering processes and evaluating empowered outcomes.     

The detrimental effects of power on confidence, advice taking, and accuracy

Incorporating input from others can enhance decision quality, yet often people do not effectively utilize advice. We propose that greater power increases the propensity to discount advice, and that a key mechanism explaining this effect is elevated confidence in one’s judgment. We investigate the relationships across four studies: a field survey where working professionals rated their own power and confidence and were rated by coworkers on their level of advice taking; an advice taking task where power and confidence were self-reported; and two advice taking experiments where power was manipulated. Results consistently showed a negative relationship between power and advice taking, and evidence of mediation through confidence. The fourth study also revealed that higher power participants were less accurate in their final judgments. Power can thus exacerbate the tendency for people to overweight their own initial judgment, such that the most powerful decision makers can also be the least accurate.     

The bigger they are, the harder they fall: Linking team power, team conflict, and performance

Across two field studies, we investigate the impact of team power on team conflict and performance. Team power is based on the control of resources that enables a team to influence others in the company. We find across both studies that low-power teams outperform high-power teams. In both studies, higher levels of process conflict present in high-power teams explain this effect fully. In our second study, we show that team interpersonal power congruence (i.e., the degree to which team members’ self-views of their individual power within the team align with the perceptions of their other team members) ameliorates the relationship between team power and process conflict, such that when team interpersonal power congruence is high, high-power teams are less likely to experience performance-detracting process conflict.     

Kant on animal and human pleasure

Feeling, for any animal, is a faculty of comparing objects or representations with regard to whether they promote its vital powers (pleasure) or hinder them (displeasure). But whereas these comparisons presuppose a species-concept in non-rational animals, nature has not equipped the human being with a universal principle or life-form that would determine what agrees or disagrees with it. As humans, we must determine our mode of life for ourselves. Contrary to other interpretations, I argue that this places the human capacity for pleasure and displeasure outside of nature and in a realm of spirit.     

权力相关词语的判断的大小效应及其可控性

采用Stroop干扰实验范式,证实权力词语判断的大小效应,并探索采用意识性干预和试次偏差分布策略是否会使大小效应得到控制。实验1中试次类型变量主效应极其显著。实验2中试次类型变量与提示条件变量的交互作用边缘显著。实验3中试次类型变量与提示条件变量的交互作用显著;试次类型变量与试次分布变量的交互作用显著。结果表明,权力相关词语的判断中存在大小效应,提示信息使大小效应得到控制,试次偏差分布使大小效应发生反转。     

Male susceptibility to attentional capture by power cues

The present investigation explores the possibility that power has increased salience among males but not females. Evidence indicates that stimuli that are self-relevant or related to chronic goals are more likely to capture attention than neutral information. Across three studies we explore the possibility that the premium males place on power influences how they attend to their environment. Consistent with the common belief that power more readily captures their attention, results indicate that males “dwell” longer on power-related cues (Experiment 1) and are more subject to distraction by task-irrelevant power cues (Experiment 2) than are females. Experiment 3 demonstrates that this increased salience has enduring social consequences by increasing the likelihood that males commit power-relevant material to memory.