Power 8

In the last byte, we looked at the positive and negative faces of power. In today's byte, we look at intergroup sources of power.

Teams in organizations derive their power from either of the 2 sources:

• Control of Critical resources
• Control of Strategic Contingencies.

Strategic contingencies refers to the activities that other groups depend on in order to complete their tasks.
Strategic contingencies could arise from any of the three factors:

1. ability to cope with uncertainty - a group’s ability to help others deal with uncertainty
2. high degree of centrality - the group's functioning is important to the organization's success
3. non substitutability - the extent to which the groups function is indispensible to an organization example a very specialized experience.