Power exists in all social situations and practically pervades in all organisations. Different authorities have tried to define power in different ways . According to R. A. Dahl , power is the ability of one person or group to cause another person or group to do something they otherwise might not have done. It is the ability to influence others successfully in the desired fashion.
In ancient India, the master of statecraft, Kautilya, wrote about power in the fourth century B.C. as the possession of strength (an attribute) derived from three elements: knowledge, military, and valor. Twenty-three centuries later, Hans Morgenthau, following Kautilya’s realistic line, preferred to define power as a relationship between two political actors in which actor A has the ability to control the mind and actions of the actor.
Thus, power, in the words of Morgenthau, may comprise anything that establishes and maintains control of man over man (and it) covers all social relationships which serve that end, from physical violence to the most subtle psychological ties by which one mind controls another.
Schwarzenberger defines it as the capacity to impose one’s will on others by reliance on effective sanctions in case of noncompliance. He distinguished it from both influence and force by considering it as containing a threat not present in influence and stopping short of force’s actual use.
To Dahl, power is the ability to shift the probability of outcomes. According to him, A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do. Hartmann observes that power ma infests itself along the line of influence beginning with latent or unintended use of power (that is to say, persuasion) through conscious but regulated power (that is to say, pressure) and reaching up to its final gradation (that is to say, use of farce).
Though power and authority are used interchangeably, but there exists difference between the two. While power is the ability to influence others, authority is the right to command. Normally power is exercised by the person but authority is attached with the position and it is legitimate. Authority is one of the major sources of power. Authority is always positional, concerned with position and legitimate. However, when one’s authority can increase one’s growth in organisational hierarchy, but the growth may not accompany same amount of power. Moreover while authority normally moves downward but power moves in all direction , depending upon the power being used by the person in the organisation. It is because power is not institutional but the authority is institutional.
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