Where

Where's the Power in Empowerment?

Answers from Follett and Clegg

We can confer authority; but power or capacity, no man can give or take - (Mary Parker Follett, 1941: 112).

No sooner did empowerment books and articles appear (Block, 1987; Albrecht, 1988; Borman, 1988; Conger & Kanungo, 1988; Vogt and Murrell, 1990; Fleming, 1991; Bailey, 1995; Spreitzer, 1995, 1996) than critical reactions to them emerged (Clegg, 1989, 1990; Boje & Dennehy, 1993; Alvesson & Willmott, 1996; Jacques, 1996; Collins, 1998). There is growing debate between human relations' (HR) empowerment plan advocates, and critical theorists and critical postmodernists (CT/CP, see next section) who contend that there is more disempowerment than empowerment in such plans.

Although empowerment is a rather recent HR innovation, the empowerment-disempowerment controversy is at the heart of a century and half of debates over the democratization of capitalism. We will argue that the current HR empowerment plans have roots in non-union council initiatives encouraged in WWI and WWII, in the workplace democracy movements of the 1920s and 1930s in both the U.S. and Europe, and in the quality circles and quality of work life movements of the 1970s and 1980s,. Critical of these efforts, industrial democracy advocates contend that without formal power structures of direct worker ownership and representation, the HR empowerment movement as well as all its antecedents, are essentially disempowering. HR empowerment proponents counter that the hierarchy of management control in running the finances, policy, and strategy of business is inviolable and that participation should therefore be restricted to task areas (Gold, 1987: 19; Strauss & Rosenstein, 1970: 202-3). From our critical postmodern perspective, both HR empowerment and overcoming disempowerment by implementing workers' democracy, are arguments which are competing discursive formations that have been repeatedly locked in dualistic either-or opposition since the mid-1800s.

We think there is a way out of this dualism. The key lies in noting how discussions of power itself are conspicuously absent from these empowerment debates which have so permeated the management literature of the nineties (Hardy, 1998). We suggest that the work of both Mary Parker Follett and that of Stewart Clegg fills this gap, because they contextualize their conceptions of empowerment (and disempowerment) firmly within well-developed theories of power. It is perhaps this rootedness of their views of empowerment within theories of power, which allows both these writers to escape the all-or-nothing dualistic trap of much of the contemporary literature in this area. Clegg and Hardy (1996: 684), for example, suggest that those favoring empowerment programs and those critical of them can work together. "Instead of dismissing empowerment, critical researchers might consider how to make organizations more empowering¼" (p. 684). And those favoring HR empowerment programs can learn from the critical theory and postmodern critiques being advanced, how to enact more democratic forms of worker involvement. This paper explicitly takes up the Clegg and Hardy "work together" suggestion by putting empowerment-disempowerment in the context of wider historical movements to democratize the workplace at the last fin de sicle. We will argue that management, owners, and labor working together in a theory of co-active power was the life work of Mary Parker Follett in her campaign for cooperative forms of power and democratic corporate governance.

Our thesis is that the work of Follett speaks directly to the contemporary empowerment-disempowerment debate between the HR empowerment and critical and postmodern theory approaches. This is because Follett's work occurred in the historical context of a debate over organizational governance and workplace democracy concerning the role of workers in organizational control. Follett's intellectual stance and consultancy work takes us beyond the either/or quality of the current debate, providing an alternative role model of co-active power for today's consultants and organizational practitioners.

Why pair Follett and Clegg? It is not their striking similarities, but rather their complimentary differences, which offer the synergistic benefits of this combination. Follett's work does not delve into the embeddedness of organizational power which Clegg describes as "circuits of power." While Follett endorses workplace democracy through interpersonal strategies, Clegg sees the necessity of concerted action to influence the systemic effects of the "circuits of power." And while Follett was quite popular with the managers of her time, we view Clegg's work as inaccessible to most practicing managers and organizational consultants--to most, in fact, except dedicated scholars. By bringing together Clegg and Follett, we offer a more complete understanding of power and empowerment in the workplace than either offers alone. Further, we address the audiences of both theoreticians and practicing managers and change agents.

This paper proceeds From Title/Abstract through 7 steps: (1) briefly reviewing the current empowerment-disempowerment debate; (2) contextualizing Mary Parker Follett's work with a review of the democratic workplace movements of Marxist socialism, trade unionism, guilds, cooperatives, and non-union workers' councils; (3) discussing Follett's theory of co-active power circularity, with its roots in Hegel's and Dewey's philosophy; (4) summarizing Clegg's circuits of power theory; (5) combining Follett's power-as-capacity concept with Clegg's circuits of power in an assimilative reading we term "co-power," which can move us beyond today's empowerment-disempowerment duality; (6) drawing implications for organizational development and change practices regarding co-power as a way of linking micro and macro issues; and (7) offering conclusions regarding co-power as a way of increasing the effectiveness of organizational change efforts. (And References).

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