Field studies of French and Raven's bases of power: Critique, reanalysis, and suggestions for future research.

Among the most widely used conceptualizations of social power is the five-fold typology developed by French and Raven in 1959, and numerous field studies have used this conceptualization over the past few decades. Unfortunately, however, a majority of them suffer from severe methodological shortcomings that make their interpretation problematic at best. In this article, we discuss these problems and present a reanalysis of the literature, which strongly suggests that at least some of our knowledge about the five bases of power is methodologica lly suspect. Following this, we also present and discuss suggestions for improving future research in this domain. Social power and influence processes have occupied a central place in psychological theories over the past few decades, perhaps most notably in the areas of industrial/ organizational and social psychology. Undoubtedly, among the most popular and widely accepted conceptualizations of social power is the five-fold typology developed by French and Raven in 1959. In fact, despite recent criticisms that have been advanced against this conceptualization (e.g., Kipnis Kipnis, Schmidt, & Wilkinson, 1980), the French and Raven typology is widely used. For example, a survey of the authors' bookshelves disclosed that it was included in every survey textbook in the areas of organizationa l behavior and social psychology! An examination of the research literature also discloses that numerous studies have used French and Raven's typology. However, only field studies seem to have used explicit and complete operationalizations of the French and Raven framework. Although experimental studies often mention the French and Raven power bases, such studies either investigate only a subset of the five power