Power and Performance in Organizations

We are, by nature, social animals, interacting in an endless variety of situations and relationships. This book reveals how we express passions and fears within an organization. It shows us how consensus is achieved, coalitions built and dissolved, and how leaders and "stars" emerge from the footlights. The struggle for power, defined here as "the capacity to have others play parts in a drama largely of one's own construction" is at the centre of what goes on here, as elsewhere, in social life. Iain Mangham shows that it is precisely through subtle hierarchic and ceremonial role-playing that control and power are maintained.