Power strategy formation in a human service organization undergoing turbulent change

The present research examines power strategy formation of employees in a mental health organization that went through a long separation from a psychiatric hospital. The central questions addressed were: What kinds of strategies emerge when there is turbulent organizational change? How do the employees deal with the turbulent events in terms of power strategies? How are their power strategies similar or different? What relational power patterns emerge around the power strategies?

The research explored twelve surface and four deep level strategies. The uneven distribution of strategies across hierarchical groups is viewed as a reflection of differing access to power sources and of historical context. Senior managers placed more emphasis on deep level strategies than team leaders, therapists, and clerical staffs. Senior managers focused on formal or structural sources of power and strategies and somewhat on cultural identity around issues of hiring. Middle managers, for their part, described themselves as sandwiched between levels and avoided the crossfire or tended to go to outside sources for support. Therapists, for their part, anchored themselves to the past to thwart change efforts and exercised psychological distance. The fourth hierarchical group, clerical staffs, played a more peripheral role and showed little engagement in power games.

Comparisons between newcomers and veteran staffs in the organization showed fewer differences than between hierarchical levels, although newcomers resorted move to deep level strategies. Veterans anchored themselves to the past while newcomers could not invoke the past in their strategies. Senior managers, who tried to break radically with the past engendered a feeling in veteran staffs that their skills and experience were not needed nor wanted.

The data provided evidence that deep level strategies supplemented weakened power bases at all levels, although more evidently in the senior managers and therapists levels. Values and beliefs at the deep level acted as a catalyst to counteract surface level strategies, particularly when there were organizational history and cultural dynamics involved. The model of analysis helped understand the contrast between how senior managers focused on the future and how therapists countered this by anchoring themselves to past history.

The research provided empirical evidence that power strategy formation occurred at every level of the organization, regardless of position or rank. This challenges the traditional notion that strategy formation is for top management only. The study collected detailed information about strategy formation at the micro level in a human service organization, and it identified possible indications of problem spots. The literature from the industrial sector was found to be a valid starting point for study of power strategies in the human services sector.

The research affirms the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of power strategy formation, where power is studied from many sources of information and from different angles. The power relations and games perspective that was used to study power strategies in this research epitomizes the interdisciplinary aspects of the field. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)