Radical Revisions: Power, Discipline and Organizations

Typically, organization theorists have defined 'power' against 'authority' around the axis of 'legitimacy'. Power, thus regarded, is a 'capacity' grounded outside the authoritative structure of the organization. Organizations have typically been regarded as coherent and homogenous entities in which these capacities occur. Against these views, organizations are defined here as comprising locales, cross-cut by arenas, in which agencies, powers, networks and interests are constituted. Power is not a thing but a process constituted within struggles. Power is always embedded within rules: these cannot provide for their own interpretation independently of those agencies whose interpretations instantiate, signify or imply them. Specific disciplinary practices within organization studies prescribe these interpretations, but it is argued, they can provide no general theory of the organization.