"Power is typically conceptualized as a person’s ability to exercise control over the rewards, punishments, and outcomes of others...Having power means possessing the relatively unconstrained capacity to provide (or to withhold) resources, rewards, and punishments to other people." (Maner, et al. 452). "The link between power and decision making is particularly noteworthy because very often it is powerful people (rather than people who lack power) who are in a position to make important group-level choices" (Maner, et al. 460).
According to Bauman and Lyon (2013), power is "the way to manipulate probabilities to increase the likelihood of desirable conduct and reduce to a minimum the chances of the opposite" (p. 57).
According to Bauman and Lyon (2013),"...burden of proof and responsibility has been dropped by managers, as team leaders and unit commanders, on to the shoulders of individual performers or "contracted out,"
outsourced" or "hived off" laterally and judged according to a seller-buyer pattern rather than a boss-subordinate relationship, the aim is to harness the totality of the subaltern personality and their whole waking time to the company's purposes" (p. 59). "State institutions are now burdened with the task of inventing and providing local solutions to globally produced promems; due to a shortage of pwer, this is a load the state cannot carry and a task it cannot perform with its remaining resources" (p. 112).
According to Anderson (2006), Karl Deutsch stated, "'Power is not having to listen'" (p. 210-11).
References:
Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.
Bauman, Z. & Lyon, D. (2013). Liquid surveillance. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Maner, Jon K., et al. "Power, Risk, and the Status Quo: Does Power Promote Riskier or More Conservative Decision Making?" Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 33.4 (2007): 451-62. Sage. Web. 24 Mar. 2014.