Power strategies of industrial workers
Keywords:
Power strategies, Strategy as social practice, Ideology, Real power, Symbolic power.Abstract
Mainstream of discussions about power usually approaches only organizational actors who have resources to exercise it, as, for instance, ownership conditions of production means, of location, of class, or of technical knowledge, in organization or in society. However, even with every all managerial technology of dominance and exploration developed in the Century XX, workers use political strategies to resist and to influence the owners of resources, trying to reach their own objectives with those maneuvers. In this paper we deal with analysis of power strategies of social actors without resources in organizations. Based in a qualitative approach, we made 18 interviews with a company workers selected by professional experiences at company and accessibility. Data were treated through discourse analysis, suggesting four power strategies used by employees: a) bargained experience based on experience knowledge; b) diversification of affective relations to groups with or without resources; c) submissive obedience to get recognition, permanence and/or future valorization; and d) planned popularity as a self-protection way based on visibility and good relations. We concluded that, although formal elements exhibit the real power in organization, to achieve their own goals, employees interpret games rules of the game and build dynamic strategies at context in which they operate, exercising, in this way, the power. Main contributions of this paper, in macro level of analysis, refer to discussion of implications of private property idea, that it doesn't drain organizational political dynamics. In the meso level meso, this study discusses knowledge objectivity produced in management area. As a science, before being applied, it is social and, because of that, it needs subjects to exist, and it cannot be built without them. In the level micro level of analysis, contributions highlight that social aspects are so important as economic ones. There are rationalities - in plural - coexisting and competing in organizations. This is something that organizational researchers cannot neglect, under penalty of reduce organization to an empty fiction, different from effective organizational dynamics.
Downloads
Downloads
Additional Files
Published
Issue
Section
License
Once the papers have been approved, the authors will assign their copyrights to this Journal. The Copyright Assignment Conditions include:
1. The Mackenzie Administration Journal holds the rights to all the papers published therein through assignment of copyright.
2. The author retains moral rights to the paper, including the right to identify the author whenever the article is published.
3. As of July 1, 2015 RAM adopted the CC-BY license standard (Creative Commons– BY). Authors are allowed to copy, distribute, display, transmit and adapt articles. Authors must attribute to RAM explicitly and clearly an article’s original publication (with reference to the journal’s name, edition, year and pages in which the article was originally published), yet without suggesting that RAM endorses the author or its use of the article. Contents are released by means of the CC-BY license to fully inter-operate with a variety of different systems and services, including for commercial purposes. In case of an article’s reuse or distribution, authors must make the article’s licensing terms clear to third parties. CC-BY criteria follow open access policies by major OA (Open Access) publishers and journals, such as PLoS, eLife, Biomed Central and Hindawi, among others.
4. When formally requested by the author, this Journal may allow the paper to be published as a chapter or part of a book. The only requirement is that prior publication in this Journal (Journal name, issue, year and pages) must be clearly and explicitly shown as a reference.
