2022/08/12 by Sonja Heller, Johannes Ullrich, Marianne S. Mast +1 · 9 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Autonomy #Feeling #Interpersonal communication #Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior #Management and Organizational Studies #Power (physics) #Psychology #Sense of agency #Situational ethics #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Social psychology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/jasp.12922
published in Journal of Applied Social Psychology 53(1), 5-20 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 2022/08/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Abstract Experimental research conducted with student participants has documented that feeling powerful or powerless (psychological power) affects outcomes with high practical relevance for organizations. However, it is unclear how results from these studies can be generalized to organizational settings in which individuals have various roles that imply more or less objective power . To address this gap, we present a theoretical framework to aid in the understanding of how objective power in organizations affects psychological power. We assume that stable differences in organizational rank (i.e., structural power) determine the likelihood of interactions with superiors, subordinates, or peers. These interactions give rise to within‐person variation in situational power which should lead to dynamic fluctuations of psychological power and eventually its outcomes. Results of a preregistered experiment ( n = 190 participants) and a preregistered experience sampling study ( n = 129 participants) conducted with working adults support our key predictions: Structural power was associated with the likelihood of being in a high power versus low power situation. Within‐person differences in situational power were related to feelings of power such as judgments about (1) one's own ability to influence others in a given social situation (i.e., interpersonal power) and (2) one's own competence, agency, autonomy, and independence (i.e., personal power).