Implicit Theories of Organizational Power and Priming
Effects on Managerial Power-Sharing Decisions:
An Experimental Study1
PETER T. COLEMAN2
Department of Organization and Leadership
Columbia University
Over 60 years of research on participative leadership has documented the many benefits of
power sharing in organizations. However, a common obstacle to power sharing is the
unwillingness of those with power to share it. An experimental study is presented that
investigated the effects of managers’ implicit theories of power in organizations on their
willingness to share power with subordinates. The study proposed that chronic differences
in implicit power theories (the degree of competitive vs. cooperative beliefs and ideals
regarding organizational power relations) would affect managers’ decisions to share or
withhold power. Subliminal priming was predicted to temporarily enhance the accessibility of these differences in implicit power theories, thereby fostering or inhibiting spontaneous decisions to share power. Results indicate that the subliminal priming of
competitive theories of organizational power negatively influenced managers’ immediate,
spontaneous decisions to share power, whereas chronic differences in their implicit theories similarly affected their more systematic decisions to share power. The theoretical and
applied contributions of the study are discussed.
Beginning with the pioneering studies of participative leadership by Lewin,
Lippitt, and White (1939) and Coch and French (1948), social scientists have
been interested in studying the consequences of power sharing. Since that time,
the value and benefits of power sharing have been well documented for individuals (Bagarozzi, 1990; Natiello, 1990), groups (Gutierrez, 1990; Home, 1991),
and especially organizations (Argyris, 1964; Bradford & Cohen, 1984; Hollander
& Offermann, 1990; Kanter, 1983; Likert, 1967; McGregor, 1960; Peters &
Austin, 1985; Peters & Waterman, 1982; Stewart & Barrick, 2000; Tjosvold,
1981, 1985a, 1985b; Vroom & Jago, 1988; Walls, 1990; Yukl, 1994).
Despite these findings, power sharing is often resisted by organizational
powerholders, and the power gap between leaders and followers appears to be
1 I wish to thank Morton Deutsch, Carol Dweck, Harvey Hornstein, Tory Higgins, and Leah
Doyle for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
2 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Peter T. Coleman, Box 53,
Department of Organization and Leadership, Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 West 120th
Street, New York, NY 10027. E-mail: [email protected]
297
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2004, 34, 2, pp. 297-321.
Copyright © 2004 by V. H. Winston & Son, Inc. All rights reserved.
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PETER T. COLEMAN
growing (Hogan, Curphy, & Hogan, 1994; Rudolph, Ho, & Yuen, 1993). In fact,
a significant obstacle to the implementation of organizational power-sharing initiatives (e.g., employee empowerment, decentralization) is the unwillingness of
those people with power in organizations to share their power (Jesaitis & Day,
1992; O’Toole; 1995). The social psychological variables contributing to the
powerful’s resistance to power sharing have received very little attention by
social scientists (Deutsch, 1973), particularly in organizations where the powerful have been able to shield themselves from study (Kipnis, 1976).
Researchers have long proposed that the values and beliefs of managers often
interfere with developing an empowered workforce (Argyris & Schon, 1978,
1996; Burke, 1986; Conger & Kanungo, 1988; McClelland 1970, 1975). In
recent years, the study of implicit theories (unarticulated beliefs and ideals) has
played an increasingly important role in understanding the impact of socialinformation processing on organizational phenomena, such as motivation
(Dweck, 1996), achievement (Elliot & Dweck, 1988), employee goal orientation
(Katz, Block, & Pearsall, 1997), leadership assessment (Offermann, Kennedy, &
Wirtz, 1994), and social judgment and decision making (Gervey, Chiu, Hong, &
Dweck, 1999). However, the link between managers’ implicit theories of power
in organizations and their decisions to share power with subordinates has yet to
be investigated.
A study is presented that introduces the idea of implicit power theories and
examines the effects of managers’ implicit theories of power in organizations on
their willingness to share power with subordinates. The study proposes that
chronic differences in implicit power theories (the degree of competitive vs.
cooperative beliefs and ideals regarding organizational power relations) will
affect managers’ decisions to share or withhold power. Based on previous
research, subliminal priming (cooperative vs. competitive) is predicted to temporarily enhance the accessibility of these differences in implicit power theories,
thereby fostering or inhibiting spontaneous decisions to share power.
Power Sharing
The decision by leaders of whether to share or withhold power from their followers has been a problem debated in the social sciences since the early philosophical deliberations of Plato and Aristotle over the benefits and consequences
of elite rule versus democratic participation in society (Allport, 1969). Today,
various forms of participation, delegation, and other power-sharing arrangements
continue to be of considerable interest to leaders and followers of groups, organizations, and nations (Hogan et al., 1994; O’Toole, 1995; Siske, 1997). In fact,
organizational scholars have found power-sharing behaviors to be the most
researched category of leadership behavior after initiating-structure and consideration behaviors (Yukl, 1994).
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299
Working from a general definition of power, proposed by Salancik and
Pfeffer (1977) as “the ability to bring about desired outcomes” (p. 3), I define
power sharing as the act of enhancing, supporting, or not obstructing another’s
ability to bring about the outcomes he or she seeks. In organizations, power sharing can be manifested in various acts, such as through sharing leadership,
resources, rewards, and outcomes; encouraging participation in decision making,
goal setting, problem solving, and change; delegation of authority; increased
worker autonomy; and structural decentralization (Burke, 1986; Yukl, 1994).
Under the right conditions, power sharing in organizations can result in a
variety of benefits. These include an increase in decision acceptance, commitment, and quality; as well as enhanced employee development, satisfaction, and
commitment (Organ & Bateman, 1991). Power-sharing practices also have been
linked to overall managerial success (Hall, 1976; McClelland & Burnham, 1976)
and to organizational success in the marketplace (Deming, 1993; Kirkman &
Rosen, 1999; Lorsch, 1995). Additionally, Shashkin (1984) has argued that
because of the adverse psychological and physiological effects on employees of
feeling powerless in organizations, managerial power sharing should be viewed
as an ethical imperative.
Implicit Theories
According to Kelly’s (1955) theory of personality and Heider’s (1958) theory
of social perception, a major aspect of personality involves the naïve models or
assumptions that individuals hold about the self and their social reality. These
implicit theories function much like our scientific models in that they focus our
attention and guide the way we process and comprehend information about the
self, other people, and social situations. These theories are considered to be
domain-specific (Dweck, Chiu, & Hong, 1995) and to be derived from a person’s
own personal history of social interaction and frequent experience with certain
types of social behavior within that domain (Offermann et al., 1994). Ultimately,
they contribute to the development of a meaning system that orients people
toward particular goals, strategies, attributions, evaluations, reactions, and a particular interpretation of events (Dweck, 1996).
The exact composition of these theories can differ. For example, research
on differences in implicit beliefs of intelligence (incremental theories vs.
entity theories) has accounted for differences in goal orientations and major
patterns of adaptive (mastery oriented) and maladaptive (helpless) behavior
(Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Dweck et al., 1995; Henderson & Dweck, 1990). Other
research on implicit beliefs includes people’s conceptions of personality and
moral character (Dweck, 1996; Dweck, Hong, & Chiu, 1993), creativity and
wisdom (Sternberg, 1985), and ability (Gervey et al., 1999; Levy, Plaks, &
Dweck, 1999). Chronic and induced differences in implicit beliefs have been
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demonstrated to affect such processes as task goal orientation (Dweck & Leggett,
1988), stereotype formation and endorsement (Levy, Stroessner, & Dweck, 1998),
attributions and coping strategies (Hong, Chiu, Dweck, Lin, & Wan, 1999), and
social judgment and decision making (Gervey et al., 1999; Levy et al., 1999).
In contrast, research on implicit leadership theories has demonstrated that followers’ unarticulated standards or implicit ideals for optimal leadership traits and
behaviors (e.g., competence and consideration) can influence their perceptions of
leaders and the attributions they make concerning leader behavior (Calder, 1977;
Eden & Leviathan, 1975; Lord, Foti, & DeVader, 1984; Offerman et al., 1994;
Rush, Thomas, & Lord, 1977). Similar claims have been made about implicit
theories of subordinate performance held by superiors (Borman, 1987).
Thus, the research indicates that people’s implicit theories are comprised of
both implicit beliefs about and implicit ideals regarding social phenomena, and
that both can affect information processing and behavior. Little work has been
done, however, in investigating either implicit beliefs or implicit ideals in the
realm of organizational power (for an exception, see Aguinis, Nesler, Quigley, &
Tedeschi, 1994).
Implicit Theories of Organizational Power
Managers’ core assumptions about organizational power remain unstated and
untested (Hollander & Offermann, 1990). And given the vast, abstract nature of
the construct, it is difficult to know which of the many possible dimensions of
power relations would be consequential to managerial decision making.
In their research on the fundamental dimensions of interpersonal relations,
Wish, Deutsch, and Kaplan (1976) identified two of the primary dimensions
people consider when in relation with others. The first dimension was corporation-competition. Deutsch (1985) posited that a cooperative psychological
orientation would incline one to emphasize egalitarianism (in an equal power
relationship) or an obligation to employ power in such a way as to benefit the less
powerful as well as oneself (in an unequal power relationship). In contrast, a
competitive psychological orientation would authorize inequality and emphasize
a win–lose struggle for superiority (Deutsch, 1985).
Burke (1986), in an article on leadership and empowerment, found support
for the prevalence of the cooperative–competitive dimension of power in organizations. He wrote, “Many, perhaps most, people believe that power is a zero-sum
quantity; to share power, to empower others, is to lose a certain amount of it”
(p. 63). Others (Bennis & Nanus, 1985; Organ & Bateman, 1991; Tjosvold,
1981) have echoed this competitive conception of organizational power. As
Deutsch (1973) argued, the implicit assumption in this view of power is that
power relations between people are intrinsically competitive; the more power A
has, the less power is available for B.
IMPLICIT POWER THEORIES
301
Mary Parker Follett, writing in the 1920s about organizational life, offered a
different perspective on power. Follett proposed that even though power was usually conceived of as power over others (the power of A over B), it would be possible to develop the conception of power with others. She envisioned this type of
power as a jointly developed, coactive, noncoercive power (Follett, 1973). Follett
(1924) wrote, “Our task is not to learn where to place power; it is how to develop
power . . . Coercive power is the curse of the universe; co-active power, the
enrichment and advancement of every human soul” (p. xii).
These contrasting views of power in organizations highlight an important
dimension on which managers may differ in their implicit theories. One theory
presents organizational power as a fixed pie that, because scarce, sets up a win–
lose competitive struggle over power with employees. The other theory views
power as a process that can be developed and enhanced in cooperation with
employees. Past research in organizations has demonstrated the critical role of
perceived cooperative interdependence in fostering constructive power dynamics
between managers and their employees (Tjosvold, 1981, 1985a, 1985b, Tjosvold,
Johnson, & Johnson, 1984). Thus, managers may differ in the degree of competitiveness–cooperativeness of their implicit beliefs and ideals regarding organizational power: differences that would likely affect their decisions to share power.
The second fundamental dimension of relationships identified by Wish et al.
(1976) is power distribution. People’s beliefs and ideals regarding the equality or
inequality of how power is distributed in organizations (e.g., between labor and
management, men and women, minorities and a majority) have been identified as
a critical component of their understanding of organizational power (Organ &
Bateman, 1991). Despite empirical findings suggesting that power relations
tend to be reciprocal, mutual, and ongoing, rather than unilateral (Campbell,
Dunnette, Lawler, & Weick, 1970), and that power is often broadly distributed
throughout the middle layers of organizations (Galbraith, 1967), many people
believe that power resides primarily at the top of the hierarchy in organizations
and that power is of a one-way (i.e., top–down) nature (Organ & Bateman, 1991).
Therefore, managers also may differ in the degree to which they believe power to
be equally distributed, and the degree to which they ideally prefer power to be
distributed in organizations.
The question remains, however, of how these differences in implicit ideals
and beliefs regarding organizational power might affect the power-sharing decisions of managers. First, for theoretical purposes, Deutsch (1973) traditionally
operationalized cooperation and competition as polar ends of one continuum of
interdependence in relations. For purposes of consistency, I will also operationalize implicit theories along this same dimension from very competitive to very
cooperative. Second, as Deutsch (1985) proposed, we could expect correspondence between competitive and autocratic orientations so that more competitive
ideals would correlate positively with autocratic ideals and more competitive
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PETER T. COLEMAN
beliefs would correlate positively with more autocratic beliefs. Therefore, for
parsimony, these two dimensions (cooperation–competition and power distribution) will be collapsed into single measures of cooperative–competitive implicit
power ideals and implicit power beliefs (Appendix A). Third, as Dweck (1996)
outlined, differences in managers’ implicit theories will contribute to the development of a meaning system that orients them toward particular goals and strategies. Thus, we could expect managers who hold more competitive implicit ideals
for organizational power relations to be more motivated to hold onto power and
to compete with their employees for more power.
Hypothesis 1. Managers with more competitive implicit ideals
regarding power in organizations will decide to share power less
than will managers with more cooperative implicit ideals.
Implicit beliefs, however, are likely to operate differently. Given the prevailing cooperative and democratic climate that operates in American companies
these days and champions teamwork, decentralization, delegation, and empowering the workforce (Burke, 1986; Peters & Waterman, 1982; Stewart & Barrick,
2000), holding the view that organizations tend to be places where one must compete for power may in fact have the paradoxical affect of motivating corrective
action. According to cognitive consistency theory, this discrepancy between cooperative organizational ideals and the reality of competitive organizations would
motivate change (Deutsch, 1985; Festinger, 1957; Heider, 1958). Thus, a more
competitive implicit belief regarding typical organizational power relations could
move managers to share power more in an attempt to redress these tendencies.
Hypothesis 2. Managers with more competitive implicit beliefs
regarding power in organizations will decide to share power more
than will managers with more cooperative implicit beliefs.
Priming
The cognitive accessibility of knowledge structures (e.g., implicit theories)
has been shown to be temporarily affected by priming stimuli in the immediate
environment (Bargh, Barndollar, & Gollwitzer, 1995; Levy et al., 1998). The
term priming is used generally to describe the effects of one’s prior context on his
or her interpretation of new information (Fiske & Taylor, 1991), but also may
refer to any procedures that stimulate or activate some stored knowledge unit
(Higgins, 1996). Priming can vary in terms of the relative recency or frequency
of activation of the stored knowledge unit (Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Higgins, 1996),
which has implications for the duration of priming effects and the chronic activation and use of cognitive structures.
IMPLICIT POWER THEORIES
303
Priming was demonstrated previously to affect interpersonal orientations and
related social behaviors. In one study, Herr (1986) primed subjects by exposing
them to pictures of moderately hostile, famous individuals (Alice Cooper,
Bobby Knight), which led to the subjects rating and treating an ambiguous
partner in a more hostile, competitive manner. Similar results were found in a
series of studies on the effects of social information on the competitive and cooperative behavior of males (Holloway, Tucker, & Hornstein, 1977; Hornstein,
LaKind, Frankel, & Mann, 1975). In another study, either competitive or affiliative goals were primed by exposing subjects to goal-related words, which
resulted in the competitively primed subjects performing better on a task (at
the expense of their partner’s feelings) than the affiliatively primed subjects
(Bargh, 1994).
Given the predicted effects of chronic implicit power theories on the one hand
and the support for priming effects on the other, how might we expect these factors to work in concert to affect decision making?
The Heuristic–Systematic Model of Information Processing
The heuristic–systematic model of information processing (Chaiken, GinerSorolla, & Chen, 1996; Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1989; Chen & Chaiken,
1999) is one of a set of influential dual-process models in contemporary social
psychology (Chaiken & Trope, 1999). This model proposes that people process
information on two distinct levels. Heuristic information processing is quick,
superficial, and requires little effort, time, or attention. It involves focusing on
salient cues in the context, which activates familiar decision rules (heuristics)
allowing judgments, attitudes, intentions, and decisions to be formed quickly and
efficiently. In contrast, systematic processing is more complete, careful, and
intensive and involves attempts to form more thorough and well-reasoned judgments, attitudes, and decisions. Such processing entails much mental effort,
attention, and the allocation of additional mental resources.
The heuristic–systematic model predicts that recent priming would supply the
contextual cues that would activate those implicit theories of power that are consistent with the prime. However, these knowledge structures would only be
expected to affect superficial or quick, spontaneous responses to ambiguous questioning. More explicit, specific questioning, on the other hand, which requires
more careful thought, would shift the decision maker into a more systematic
mode of information processing that, particularly in the absence of sufficient
contextual information, would encourage deeper reflection on their more chronic
ideals and beliefs regarding organizational power. In other words, it follows that
managers have different types of implicit theories of power (competitive and
cooperative) available to them as cognitive structures and that even though they
may be chronically predisposed to one type of theory, the recent priming of
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PETER T. COLEMAN
another type will temporarily make the primed theory more accessible for the
heuristic-level processing of information.
Hypothesis 3. Competitively primed individuals will decide to
share power less on the ambiguous, heuristic-level measures in the
study than will neutrally or cooperatively primed individuals.
The effects of priming would be expected to be overridden when explicit
questioning of participants is introduced, requiring more careful reasoning and
more systematic decision making. At this point, the individuals’ more chronic
implicit theories regarding power would be predicted to affect their decisions.
The Present Study
The present study proposes that chronic differences in implicit power theories
will affect managers’ decisions to share or withhold power in organizations. It is
predicted that managers with more competitive implicit ideals regarding power in
organizations will share power less than will managers with more cooperative
implicit ideals, and that managers with more competitive implicit beliefs regarding power in organizations will share power more than will managers with more
cooperative implicit beliefs. Based on previous research, subliminal priming (of
cooperative vs. competitive ideals) is predicted to enhance the accessibility of
these differences in implicit power theories, thereby momentarily fostering or
inhibiting heuristic-level decisions to share power.
Method
The present research is an experimental study that involved 39 male and 59
female participants who completed the implicit power theory questionnaire 2 to 4
weeks prior to the laboratory study. The experimental design of the laboratory
study is a 3 2 (Prime Type: Cooperative, Neutral, Competitive Gender)
between-subjects design. Participants were matched on gender and then randomly assigned to prime type conditions.3
Participants
The participants were 98 Masters of Business Administration or Organizational Psychology Masters of Arts students whose native language was
English and who had normal or corrected-to-normal vision. Participants were
solicited from courses by offering one chance at a $1,000 lottery for their
participation. The sample ranged in age from 22 to 61 years (M = 29 years); and
ranged in work experience from 0 to 30 years (M = 7 years). An older sample of
3 The findings regarding gender differences
in this study are available from the author.
IMPLICIT POWER THEORIES
305
business-oriented graduate students was targeted in order to assure the degree of
organizational experience necessary to allow participants to be familiar with
management and with actual power dynamics in organizations.
Procedure
The Implicit Power Theory Questionnaire was developed for this study and
was administered in several courses 2 to 4 weeks prior to the laboratory study,
either by the instructors of the courses or by an experimenter other than the principal investigator. Participants were informed that their responses to the survey
would be anonymous and that all information would be kept strictly confidential.
No association was made between the questionnaire and the laboratory study, and
post-study inquiries with participants in a pilot study indicated no awareness of
the association between the two.
All participants in the laboratory study were recruited to participate in two
presumably unrelated tasks: one concerning “perception” and the other concerning “managerial problem solving.” Participants were first instructed to respond to
a “perceptual reaction task” on a computer monitor. This task was the method
employed in priming the participants. Following this, participants were asked to
read a vignette regarding a managerial predicament that was provided separately
on printed paper, and then to respond to a series of questions that followed the
vignette and included the various measures of the dependent variables. Participants were given a participant identification number to preserve confidentiality.
For the “first task,” participants were instructed to react to the stimuli presented on the computer screen. In front of the screen was a keyboard with two
buttons marked “Z” and “M.” Participants were told that there would be quick
flashes of light appearing on the screen, and that their task was to press the button
on the keyboard corresponding with the side of the fixation point on which the
flash appeared (“Z” for the left side, and “M” for the right side). Participants
were informed that the flashes were made up of a random series of letters, numbers, and symbols. After the participants were administered the priming induction, they were instructed to move directly to the second research task. They were
then presented with a managerial vignette and then after a distraction exercise,
the instrument that contained the power-sharing measures.
Implicit power theories. Scales for competitive versus cooperative implicit
ideals and beliefs were constructed for this study on the basis of previous
research on implicit theories (Dweck et al., 1995; Offermann et al., 1994) and on
interpersonal relations (Wish et al., 1976). Appendix A presents the items for the
implicit beliefs and the implicit ideals scales. Sample items for implicit competitive beliefs (9 items) are “It is necessary to compete for power in organizations”
and “Those at the top have all the power.” Sample items for implicit competitive
ideals (7 items) are “In an ideal organization, interpersonal relations would be
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PETER T. COLEMAN
extremely competitive” and “Most of the power should be at the top in organizations.” Participants were asked to rate their responses on a 9-point scale ranging
from 1 (agree) to 9 (disagree). Both scales demonstrated acceptable reliability.
Coefficient alphas for competitive implicit beliefs and ideals were .82 and .72,
respectively. At the conclusion of the questionnaire, participants were asked for
demographic information and for the last four digits of their Social Security numbers (for the purpose of matching the questionnaire responses with the laboratory
responses).
Pilot study. The pilot study had 30 subjects who participated to explore the
psychometric qualities of the survey instrument. Participants were interviewed
and debriefed on the measure. The results of the pilot study were essentially as
predicted. Some minor revisions were made on the instrument prior to the onset
of the study.
Stimulus words. Two 100-word stimulus lists were composed, consisting of
either competitive (e.g., winner, loser, opponent, rival, victor) or cooperative
(e.g., mutual, shared, collaborator, coworker) words. Each word list contained
25 words that were each presented four times. The word presentation order was
randomized, but it was the same for all participants. These word lists were
piloted to determine their intended effects. The prime for the neutral condition
consisted of a string of asterisks, followed by a letter mask.
Parafoveal subliminal priming. The stimuli were presented on a PC microcomputer, using parafoveal subliminal priming, in a manner found by others to
prevent awareness of stimulus priming (Bargh, Bond, Lombardi, & Tota, 1986;
Bargh & Pietromonaco, 1982; Neuberg, 1988). At the beginning of each trial,
participants were instructed to focus on a fixation point that appeared in the center of the computer monitor. In 2 to 7 s (randomly determined) after the appearance of the fixation point, a stimulus word was flashed for 60 ms at one of four
positions equidistant from the fixation point: two to the right and two to the left.
All letters of the words appeared between 2.5 and 6 degrees of visual angle from
the fixation point with respect to the eyes of the participant (within the parafoveal
field, when the participant is seated 70 to 75 cm from the monitor).
The location of each word was determined randomly, with the constraint that
each of the 25 stimulus words appeared at each location once and that across
the 100 trials, each location was represented 25 times. Immediately following
the presentation of the stimulus word, a mask (XKHGRQWBMSWUX) was
presented in the same location that the stimulus word had appeared, also for 60
ms. The sequence then repeated itself. Altogether, there were 110 trials: 10 practice trials and 100 experimental trials. The experimenter randomly assigned
participants to one of the three priming conditions. The word lists were coded,
and the experimenter was blind to the condition of each participant.
Managerial vignette. Upon completion of the priming (perception-reaction
task), participants were asked to read a managerial vignette requesting that they
IMPLICIT POWER THEORIES
307
place themselves in the position of the decision maker in the organization. The
vignette (adapted from Vroom & Jago, 1988; Appendix B) was selected from a
set of 30 participative decision-making vignettes based on the criteria that (a) it
had the potential to be viewed as ambiguous in terms of cooperative–competitive
content; (b) it fit the situational criteria for near-optimal participative decision
making (decision acceptance, decision quality, subordinate development, and
concern for time; Vroom & Jago, 1988); and (c) the decision had potential consequences for the manager’s power (in terms of his or her reputation, social identity, and valued resources).
Power-sharing decision measures (heuristic–systematic). Managerial power
sharing was operationalized for the purposes of this study in some of its
more common organizational forms as resource sharing, participatory decision
making, and delegation of decision-making authority. The heuristic–systematic
response distinction was operationalized through the use of two separate measures. The heuristic-level measure asked participants to respond immediately to
the open-ended question, “How would you respond to this situation?” in response
to the vignette (coded for spontaneous inclusion of subordinates in decision making and spontaneous sharing of resources). The systematic-level measure asked
participants to respond to two Likert-type items that inquired explicitly about
involving subordinates in the decision-making process (1 = unilateral decision,
7 = consensual decision) and delegating the decision to subordinates (1 = very
definitely yes, 9 = absolutely not).
Results
Several analyses were used to test the hypotheses. Descriptive statistics for
all variables in the study are presented in Table 1. Correlations among the two
implicit theory variables and the four power-sharing variables are shown in
Table 2.
Hypothesis 1 proposed that managers with more competitive implicit ideals
regarding organizational power would decide to share power less than would
managers with more cooperative implicit ideals. A MANCOVA was run for
implicit ideals and beliefs on the four measures of power sharing: resource sharing, participative decision making (spontaneous), delegation of authority, and
participative decision making (systematic), controlling for the effects of the
prime condition (Table 3). No significant interactions were found between prime
type and implicit ideals. Results from this analysis supported Hypothesis 1.
Participants with more competitive implicit ideals regarding organizational
power reported that they were significantly less likely to involve their subordinates in the decision-making process than did those with more cooperative
implicit power ideals, F(1, 97) = 6.05, p < .05; and said they were less likely to
delegate the decision as well, at a level near significance, F(1, 97) = 3.09, p < .08.
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PETER T. COLEMAN
Table 1
Descriptive Statistics for All Study Measures
IPT beliefs
IPT ideals
Participation–heuristic
Resource sharing
Participation–systematic
Delegation
N
Minimum
Maximum
M
SD
96
96
97
98
93
98
1.89
3.86
1.00
1.00
1.00
1.00
8.33
9.00
3.00
5.00
7.00
9.00
5.33
6.73
1.59
3.70
4.19
4.65
1.43
1.23
0.75
1.46
1.95
2.79
Note. IPT = implicit power theory.
Table 2
Study Variable Intercorrelations
Variable
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
IPT beliefs
IPT ideals
Resource sharing
Participation–heuristic
Participation–systematic
Delegation
2
3
4
.004
—
-.005
-.051
—
.145
.089
.271*
—
5
.092
.262*
-.078
.326**
—
6
.205*
.248*
-.120
.052
.280**
—
Note. IPT = implicit power theory.
*p < .05. **p < .01.
As predicted, implicit ideals did not affect the heuristic-level measures of power
sharing.
In contrast to implicit ideals, Hypothesis 2 stated that managers with more
competitive implicit beliefs regarding power in organizations would decide to
share power more than would individuals with more cooperative implicit beliefs.
This hypothesis was also supported by the MANCOVA. Participants who held
more competitive implicit beliefs about organizational power reported that they
would delegate decision-making authority to their subordinates significantly
more than did participants who held more cooperative beliefs, F(1, 97) = 6.80,
p < .01. In other words, it appears that believing power relations to be typically
competitive in organizations leads to an increase in power sharing by managers
IMPLICIT POWER THEORIES
309
Table 3
MANCOVA of Implicit Power Theory Ideals and Beliefs on Power-Sharing
Variables
Dependent variable
F(1, 97)
Resource sharing
Participation–heuristic
Participation–systematic
Delegation
Resource sharing
Participation–heuristic
Participation–systematic
Delegation
Resource sharing
Participation–heuristic
Participation–systematic
Delegation
Resource sharing
Participation–heuristic
Participation–systematic
10.74**
3.01
0.02
0.00
0.41
0.52
6.05*
3.09
1.41
0.25
0.05
6.80*
0.05
1.36
0.00
Source
Prime type
IPT ideals
IPT beliefs
IPT Ideals × IPT Beliefs
Delegation
0.05
Note. IPT = implicit power theory.
through delegation. This is an important finding because it supports the idea that
although implicit theories are composed of beliefs and ideals, these components
may act independently to hinder or enhance power sharing. Implicit beliefs were
not found to significantly affect participative decision making. This finding will
be addressed in the Discussion.
Based on a dual-process model of information processing, Hypothesis 3
proposed that competitively primed individuals would share power less on the
spontaneous, heuristic-level measures in the study than would neutrally or cooperatively primed individuals. To test this hypothesis, the open-ended question for
power sharing was content-coded by independent raters for the spontaneous
inclusion of subordinates in the decision-making process (participative decision
making, heuristic: 3-point scale ranging from autocratic to benign autocratic to
participative), and for spontaneous sharing of personal resources (resource
sharing: 5-point scale ranging from explicit retention of resources to explicit
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PETER T. COLEMAN
Table 4
Differences on Heuristic Measures of Power Sharing Among the Three Priming
Conditions
Prime type/power sharing
Participative decision making
Resource sharing
Competitive vs.
cooperativea
M
Competitive vs.
neutral
M
1.32-1.69*
3.00-4.34***
1.32-1.80**
3.00-3.70*
aA
comparison of the means for the two prime conditions.
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
sharing of resources). Three independent raters content-coded the open-ended
question. Interrater reliability was .93 for participative decision making, and .87
for resource sharing.
A MANCOVA was conducted for prime condition (competitive/neutral/
cooperative) on the four measures of power sharing, controlling for the effects of
the implicit theory variables. No significant interactions were found between
implicit theories and prime type for these measures. Furthermore, the implicit
theory variables were not found to be significantly related to the heuristic-level
measures of power sharing, and therefore were dropped from the model. A
MANOVA was run for prime on the heuristic-level measures, which indicated
that there were significant differences on the set of measures among the three
priming conditions (p < .001; Table 4). The univariate F tests indicated significant differences between the competitive versus cooperative prime conditions on
participative decisions (p < .05) and resource sharing (p < .001); and between the
competitive versus neutral primes on participation (p < .01) and resource sharing
(p < .05); but not between the cooperative versus neutral primes on the initial
measures of power sharing.
To summarize, all three hypotheses were supported. Managers who held more
competitive implicit power ideals were significantly less likely to involve their
subordinates in the decision-making process than were those with more cooperative ideals, while managers who believed organizational power relations to be
typically more competitive displayed increased power sharing through delegation. Also, competitively primed participants were found to share power less on
both heuristic-level measures—spontaneously involving subordinates less in the
decision-making process and spontaneously offering to share their own resources
less—than neutrally and cooperatively primed participants. As predicted, priming did not impact the systematic-level measures of power sharing.
IMPLICIT POWER THEORIES
311
Discussion
The theme of this research was straightforward: Despite the numerous advantages of sharing power in management–employee relationships, many managers
resist it. This study offered a pioneering investigation of the role that implicit
power theories play in fostering such resistance in organizational life. The results
indicate that the priming of competitive theories of organizational power negatively influenced managers’ immediate, spontaneous decisions to share power,
whereas chronic differences in their implicit theories measured weeks before
affected their more systematic decisions to share power.
However, an important difference between chronic ideals and beliefs was
identified at the systematic processing level. Managers who held more competitive implicit power ideals were significantly less likely to involve subordinates in
decision making than were those with more cooperative ideals, while managers
who viewed organizational power relations as typically more competitive shared
more power through delegation than did those who believed them to be typically
more cooperative. This study has a variety of theoretical and applied implications.
Implicit Power Theories
The findings from this research regarding the content and consequences of
people’s implicit theories of power in organizations are noteworthy, although preliminary. The variance on the implicit theory measures and the distribution of the
scores from the study (Table 1) indicate that individuals do differ substantially in
their implicit ideals and beliefs of power in organizations along the competitive
to cooperative dimension, and the findings from the study indicate that these differences can affect their systematic decisions regarding power sharing.
Participants with more competitive implicit power ideals were found to be less
willing to involve subordinates in decision making, while individuals with more
competitive implicit power beliefs were more willing to delegate authority. This
suggests that while people use implicit ideals as goals to move toward in organizational life, they also may be motivated to correct discrepancies when they view
organizations as tending in a direction (either competitive or cooperative) that
diverges from their ideals. The motivational influence of such ideal–actual discrepancies is consistent with current research in this area (Higgins, 1987, 1997).
Therefore, it is important that we develop a fuller understanding of the core elements of managers’ implicit beliefs and ideals regarding organizational power, as
well as a better understanding of the relationship between these beliefs and ideals.
The study found that managers with more competitive implicit beliefs were
more willing to delegate authority, but were not significantly more willing to
involve their subordinates in the decision-making process. This disparity is consistent with Leana’s (1987) depiction of delegation as not merely an extension of
312
PETER T. COLEMAN
participation, but as a conceptually distinct and more complete form of power
sharing. Leana proposed a separate theoretical rationale for delegation of authority that focuses on the development of individual autonomy in subordinates, as
opposed to the more common objective of engendering democratic processes
through participation. Perhaps more competitive implicit beliefs motivated a
willingness to delegate alone because it was uniquely motivated to reduce discrepancy (between how things are in organizations and how things should be)
and because managers experience delegation as an altogether different type of
power sharing than participation.
Situational Priming
The priming effects found in the study offer support to the proposition that
individuals have both cooperative and competitive theories of power relations
available to them as cognitive structures, but that the recent priming of one or the
other of these theories makes the primed theory more accessible for heuristiclevel decisions. When more explicit, systematic processing was required, the
priming effects were overridden and the effects of the more chronic implicit
theories appeared to prevail. These effects may have been a result of differences
in the type of measure utilized (open-ended vs. closed-ended questions) or to the
slight time delay between the spontaneous and systematic measures (although
they were presented sequentially). Future research must control for these alternative explanations.
It is important to note, however, that the character of chronic implicit theories
is thought to be shaped by exposure to consistent behavioral patterns (priming
stimuli) over time (Offermann et al., 1994). In this manner, consistent situational
priming may have long-term consequences. It is important to investigate this
hypothesized relationship between people’s exposure to recurrent behaviors in a
given organizational environment (e.g., exclusivity and power hoarding by superiors) and their subsequent chronic theories regarding power relations in that
environment.
The results also indicate that the relative effects of the competitive and cooperative primes in the study were not diametrically opposed, as might have been
expected. There are several alternative explanations for these differences. One
possibility is simply that competitive orientations to power are easier to induce in
people than are cooperative orientations (particularly in a business context).
Another possibility is that there may be a leniency bias when responding to
others in a study of this nature, which could translate into a general cooperative
bias. And finally, we should consider the possibility that the primed dimension of
cooperative–competitive orientations might be better conceptualized as two separate but related dimensions; a cooperative-to-uncooperative dimension and a
competitive-to-uncompetitive dimension.
IMPLICIT POWER THEORIES
313
Limitations
The dependent variables this study involved reported hypothetical behavior in
response to a managerial vignette. In addition, the sample for this study was
limited to business and organizational psychology graduate students (although
with an average of 7 years’ work experience). Therefore, the findings are currently limited in their generalizability to actual behavior in organizations until
replicated by other laboratory and field studies.
Applied Implications
Although preliminary, the study’s findings have implications for the design of
training programs for managers and leaders in organizations. The results indicate
that how managers think about power (their implicit ideals and beliefs regarding
power) may, under certain conditions, significantly affect their decisions with
regard to power-sharing initiatives. The more competitive a manager’s implicit
ideals of organizational power, the less likely he or she will be to see the sharing
of power as a worthwhile opportunity; whereas the less competitive a manager
believes organizational power relations to be, the less likely he or she will be
motivated to share power (when this is consistent with his or her preferences).
Therefore, it may be useful for training interventions to be devised that aid in
raising the level of awareness of these implicit theories: their sources, their content, and the repercussions of relying on them. These interventions should explicitly address differences between managers’ beliefs regarding organizational
tendencies and managers’ implicit ideals of how organizations should operate.
Providing managers with an awareness of their own chronic theories and with
alternative methods of conceptualizing and approaching power and authority
relations could begin to address the limitations that result from relying primarily
on more competitive theories.
The results also indicate that the immediate organizational environment can
moderate people’s use of implicit theories when interpreting social information
by priming and thereby making different theories of power more or less accessible. Therefore, it is reasonable to think of organizations as key sources of continuous priming. If competition is emphasized consistently in a system, tasks are
structured competitively, outcomes are distributed accordingly, command-andcontrol leadership is modeled from above, and the general climate stresses suspicion and territorialism, then competitive theories will be most accessible. These
primes may come to be institutionalized within a system, automatically triggering relevant power theories and shaping the chronic content of these theories
over time. This would imply that interventions directed toward the task, reward,
outcome structure, and climate of groups and organizations are also necessary to
better facilitate power-sharing initiatives.
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PETER T. COLEMAN
The realm of social power is vast, and the potential factors that may influence
the distribution of power in organizations are innumerable. Yet amid this complex web of variables, perhaps there are a few core components. This study
explored the interplay of two such variables—implicit power theories and contextual priming—and examined their impact on power-sharing decisions in organizations. It is hoped that such research will lead to more effective power-sharing
processes and to their well-documented benefits to organizational life.
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Appendix A
Implicit Power Theory Scales
Implicit Power Theory Ideals
Ideally, an organization should encourage considerable employee empowerment,
and delegation of authority at all levels. (Reverse scored)
In an ideal organization, interpersonal relations would be extremely competitive.
In an ideal organization, interpersonal relations would be extremely cooperative.
(Reverse scored)
People should always be willing to share power in organizations. (Reverse scored)
Most of the power should be at the top in organizations.
Given my current skills, I would feel most comfortable and most effective working in a cooperative environment. (Reverse scored)
Given my current skills, I would feel most comfortable and most effective working in a competitive environment.
Implicit Power Theory Beliefs
Those at the top have all the power.
Interpersonal relations tend to be very cooperative in organizations. (Reverse
scored)
Interpersonal relations tend to be very competitive in organizations.
Power flows in one direction, from the top down.
In organizations, managers and their employees tend to have incompatible goals
and desires.
In order for you to gain power in an organization, someone else must lose power.
Power relations in organizations tend to be autocratic.
It is necessary to compete for power in organizations.
Empowering your employees could undermine your authority.
IMPLICIT POWER THEORIES
321
Appendix B
Power-Sharing Vignette
You have recently been promoted to a high-level position in a large organization, where you have been given the responsibility of heading up a new start-up
operation. Your offices will be located at a new site, which is presently under
construction. Your staff of five department heads has been selected, and they are
now working on selecting their own staff, purchasing equipment, and generally
anticipating the problems that are likely to arise when you move into the site in 3
months. You are all working very hard, and are under some pressure to open the
site on time.
Yesterday you received from the architect a final set of plans for the building,
and for the first time you examined the parking facilities that are available. There
is a large lot across the road from the site intended primarily for hourly workers
and lower level supervisory personnel. In addition, there are five spaces immediately adjacent to the administration offices intended for visitor and reserved parking. Your organization’s policy requires that a minimum of one space be made
available for visitor parking, leaving you only four spaces to allocate among
yourself and your five department heads. There is no way of increasing the total
number of such spaces without changing the structure of the building.
Up to now there have been no obvious status differences among your staff.
Each has recently been promoted to a new position, drives to work, and expects
reserved parking privileges as a consequence of their new status. From past experience, you know that people feel strongly about things that would be indicative
of their status.
A decision needs to be made on this issue. This is the first high-profile decision that you have been faced with in your short tenure as leader of the new site,
and you need to consider the long-term repercussions and precedence of such a
decision and how it is made.