The Bases and Use of Power in Organizational Decision Making: The Case of a University

TLDR

The study examines how subunit power influences organizational decision making and investigates the bases of subunit power in a large midwestern state university. The authors hypothesize that subunits acquire power when they provide critical resources and that power shapes resource allocation based on resource criticality and scarcity. Departmental power correlates most strongly with a department’s ability to secure outside grants and contracts, followed by national prestige and graduate program size, and power is primarily exercised in allocating graduate fellowships—critical and scarce—while having no effect on summer faculty fellowship allocation. The authors thank the Bureau of Economic and Business Research at the University of Illinois and colleagues Janice Barton and Ray Zammuto for data collection assistance.

Abstract

The authors appreciate the support of the Bureau of Economic and Business Research at the University of Illinois. They wish to thank Janice Barton and Ray Zammuto for their invaluable assistance in the collection of data for this study. The effects of subunit power on organizational decision making and the bases of subunit power are examined in a large midwestern state university.@ It is hypothesized that subunits acquire power to the extent that they provide resources critical to the organization and that power affects resource allocations within organizations in so far as the resource is critical to the subunits and scarce within the organization. Departmental power is found to be most highly correlated with the department's ability to obtain outside grants and contracts, with national prestige and the relative size of the graduate program following closely in importance. Power is used most in the allocation of graduate university fellowships, the most critical and scarce resource, and is unrelated to the allocation of summer faculty fellowships, the least critical and scarce resource.