Power As Control Theory

What is Power as Control?

Viewing power as outcome control fits Harold Kelley's and John Thibaut's early perspective on power as the ability to affect another's reward-cost outcomes. David Kipnis held a related view. Fiske, along with Eric Dépret, defined power as symmetrical outcome control and elaborated its link to a core social motive for control, that is, needing to perceive a contingency between actions (what one does) and outcomes (what one gets). Keltner, Deborah Gruenfeld, and Cameron Anderson later explored how holding resource control disinhibits the (by definition, less contingent) power holder and inhibits those who are more contingent but less powerful. Rather than defining power by its probable effects, such as influence, the power-as-control definition places power within the social structure. Those who control resources may or may not try to exert influence and may or may not be successful if they try. The PAC definition focuses on a structural factor (power over), regardless of whether the power-holder tries and the target chooses to cooperate (power to). Power is always relative.

Control over outcomes varies in formality, stability, and legitimacy. For example, organizations designate formal ranks and resource control (e.g., supervisor-subordinate), whereas society implies informal social rank through ascribed roles (e.g., caste systems). More stable forms of control (e.g., physical dominance) contrast with less stable ones (e.g., rotating leadership). Legitimacy varies by bases of power (e.g., perceived merit vs. arbitrary happenstance), reminiscent of John French and Bertram Raven's theory of the bases of power. Formal, stable, and legitimate power allow more influence and harsher tactics, accord to theories of Raven and of Kipnis. Informal and unstable power facilitate soft tactics.

The nature of the controlled outcomes matters less than the degree of control over them and their value. Outcomes (rewards and punishments, approached and avoided end states) run the gamut from physical to economic to social. Physical outcomes include food, health, safety, pleasure, and pain. Economic outcomes involve monetary and material goods, as well as positions (e.g., jobs) that provide them.

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