An Understanding Of Power - Term Paper Example

Discussion: The Analysis Of Knowledge Is Central To An Understanding Of Power While discussing the area of organizational analysis, the issue of power is significantly prevalent. Power is identified within a dissonance of social practices and conditions, which are in practice marked in an economy of discussion that eventually concludes power as the subset of the economy of discourse itself. Knowledge possesses the capacity to produce inter-subjective substitution along with mutual effect among the sharer within a given organizational structure. This paper aims at the idea illustrating the fact that knowledge is central to an understanding of power, essentially focusing on Foucault's power/knowledge system along with emphasizing on the philosophy of Sir Francis Bacon in relation to power-knowledge model. Power in Organizational Analysis The term 'power' is obtained from the French term 'poeir' which implies 'being able to take action'. Power is characterised by the ability to carry out or proceed efficiently inclusive of the situational context where not to proceed is considered as most effectual. In a democratic framework, power is essentially categorised against itself, in the archetypal tripartite segmentation of power in governmental, executive and legal power, for example. In modern pluralistic democracies the distribution of power has further implication which is particularly not restricted to the dominion of formal politics. Issues of power concern to languages, communication, promotion, technologies, sciences, fashions, designs, management and varieties of other fields. Evidently, it can be concluded that 'power is everywhere' in terms of relational definition of power attributing to omnipresence, multiplication and dynamism, not restricted to the 'centres of power', as prevalent in legislative organizations and political institutions, for instance. Power is an important aspect of organizational analysis. The objective of organizational discourse implies the common source of social power (Mills, 1957 as cited in Andrews et al., 1996), where organizational structure is defined as the set of individuals sharing few set of actions are directed towards common goal, as typified by redistribution of power (Russell, 1938). However, in organizational analysis the primary emphasis is on 'power over' in which coercion put prominence on asymmetrical framework while commanding over on resources, like possession on the mode of fabrication, and consent, on the other hand, put stresses on authorities as 'gripping power' revealing a control over all the resources for and after production. There are several numbers of classifications explaining the inferences power over another - the phenomenon is defined as 'forms of power' as described by Russell (1938), subcategorised fundamentally in two headings - - Influence over individuals - Psychological types of influence (Russell, 1938). While understanding the function of an organizational structure, the fundamental methodologies employed to understand the implementation of power need to be recognized. The forms of influence, in practice, are broken down into three general subtypes - - The power of Force and coercion - The power of Inducement and group conformity - The power of Propaganda and/or practice On the other hand, the psychological influences can be subdivided into three distinctive forms such as - - Traditional - Revolutionary - Naked These subtypes can be overlapped with the forms of influences in certain given contexts, for instance, naked power can be trimmed down into coercion alone. Coercion is found to be affected by the influence of carceral power, which is essentially characterised by the experience of agents as 'imprisoned' by virtue of the use of power as a force, as described by Marx, or the attainability of the knowledge of its ability (Weber). Resistance may be overcome by the presence of compliance, which is known as subjectification as 'power through' rather than the presence of naked use of power at the form coercion, which is known as domination or 'power over'. Relation of Knowledge to Power "Knowledge is Power" as coined by Sir Francis Bacon, originally derived from the Latin dictum Scientia Potentia est, is one of the most powerful statements ever made in the study of organizational analysis. The implication of this phrase includes the increase in one's potential abilities with an increase in knowledge or wisdom. There is a reciprocal relationship between knowledge and power. As stated by Flyvbjerg (1998), Bacon's maxim is actually an oversimplification of the definition of knowledge as similar to power. On the other hand, the opposite conclusion is also true which says that power is knowledge in the sense that power lets the system to come to a decision which knowledge is derived in a set of social framework by virtue of counting knowledge in communication and decision making policies. Bacon's means of using human knowledge implies a parallelism among motivated towards the constitution of human knowledge as central to human power. According to Bacon's philosophy, causality and finality can interrelate depending on human knowledge and will, signifying the attainment of feasibility through plurality of worlds, through the process of transforming the whole system (Bacon, 1889). Hence, according to Bacon, the possibility of exercising power not only features the acquisition of knowledge at its simplest form, but knowledge is a proviso for the development with an illustration of differentiation of civilization as a process. However, Michel Foucault contradicts with the notion of knowledge and power as implied by Sir Francis Bacon by putting an emphasis on his new model of power/knowledge, establishing the relation between power and knowledge. According to Barry Allen (1999), knowledge can be defined as the freedom of making a speech that can be spread among the social system as known or true, in which the operation of speech includes dialogical and inter-subjective substitution with mutual influences. Thus knowledge has essentially two components including 'object' (the subject matter), 'other' (individual concerned to provide and receive knowledge) in order to surpass the object to others as 'truth'. The discourse as acknowledged within the social structure brings power into subsistence in social relations which provide integrity to the philosophy that the practice of power is crafted by following these modes of components (McKerrow, 1999). This discourse is in fact considered as an encumbrance for those possessing power. One of the significant aspects of Foucault's power/knowledge considers the principle that those who are in power possess high-quality knowledge. At this point of intersection, the fabrication of knowledge and the practice of organizational power interlace where both of the components mutually initiate for enhancing each other. The phenomenon implies the mutual interaction of these two components as illustrated by Foucault's power/knowledge model, establishing the mutually underpinned relation between the exchange of knowledge and consequently the organizational power. Thus, as per Foucault's consideration, power acts not as a cause, but an outcome. It appears while it can be practiced, but not to be considered as if 'held'. However, Foucault's model has received much criticism due to its assumptions regarding 'truth' and its components as Foucault assumes knowledge as an arbitrary phenomenon, integrating notion of truth, to maintain power organizations pertinent and functioning. As Allen (1999) mentioned in his essay on Foucault that there is a significant difference among the 'contrived' knowledge originated as a result of economic discourse and a 'conventional' perceptual epistemology. Additionally Allen (1999) put an emphasis on the aspect of requirement of delineation among these two epistemological methodologies. Speech is in fact a derivative phenomenon of social environment which is a further add-on to our environment than society as well as a further add-on to knowledge than discourse (Allan, 1999). By analysing through these two above-mentioned distinct means of explanation, it can be concluded that knowledge is central to an understanding of power. In an organizational system, including its policy and planning, knowledge and power are related in a rational plane. Thus researches conducted on the analysis of knowledge and power initiates by putting emphasis knowledge-power relations in particular instances of policy and planning. Thus, while understanding the implication of knowledge in the set of power, it can be pointed out that the study of power and knowledge is essentially governed by six attributes - - Power is considered as prolific and constructive, not only provisional or unconstructive. - Power is considered as being concentrated facet of omnipresent relations. - Power is conceptually a dynamic phenomenon constituting a continual back-and-forth movement among the relationships of strengths, methods and approaches inside the system concerned. - Knowledge and power, truth and power and rationality and power are actually inseparable - The application power is assumed to have much importance rather than the source of the power or its epistemology. - The studies of power can be administered into small clusters as the small and insignificant queries may lead to significant answering with a careful analysis of the power dynamic in the context of given circumstance. Conclusion In an industrialized organizational framework, there are multiple relations of power in terms of permeation, characterization and constitution of the societal body, where these relations neither are, in practice, established nor put into practice by themselves without the fabrication, accretion, distribution and operation of knowledge in general. Quite prevalently, most of the conventional themes of power are generated from the ideology "Knowledge is Power" as proposed by Francis Bacon, and in contrast to it, Michel Foucault's model establishing the relation among power and knowledge, "Power-Knowledge" as Foucault proposed it, establishing the relation of power directly to the discourse itself. Reference Andrews, R.; Biggs, M. and Seidel, M., et al. (1996). Columbia world of quotations. New York: Columbia University Press. Mills, C. W. (1957). The Power Elite. New York: Oxford University Press. ASIN B000FCEPPE, ISBN 0-19-513354-4 Russell, B. (1938). Power: A Social Analysis. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-7661-3569-1 Flyvbjerg, B. (1998). Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Allen, B. (1999) "Power/Knowledge." Critical Essays on Michel Foucault. Ed. Karlis Racevskis. New York: G.K. Hall & CO. McKerrow, R. E. (1999) "Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis." Contemporary Rhetorical Theory. Ed. Lucaites, John, Celeste Michelle Condit, and Sally Caudill. New York: The Guilford Press. Read More