Organizations can differentiate power bases but not power’s subject matter, blocking negotiated balance.

Evidence

This result seems to be conditioned by the simple fact that power sources, but not the subject content of power, can be sharply differentiated in organizations; that, in other words, power is formed on different power bases, but cannot be satisfactorily separated out by subject-matter. The power of a superior, whether organizational power, personnel power or ultimately personnel evaluation power, finds itself confronted with the power of inferiors, which is based on quite different avoidance alternatives. … In the face of the diversity of types of organizations one cannot formulate an indisputably true statement about them. Rather a power increase within an organization would tend to come up against the dilemma that the differentiation of power sources cannot be matched by a differentiation of the subject-matter of power, so that there is no leeway for balancing the power out. Interdependency within the system is too high merely for an accumulation of different types of power. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 804

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies Luhmann’s distinction between power sources (bases) and the subject content of power — superiors’ organizational/personnel power vs. subordinates’ avoidance-based leverage.
• XREF: Directly relevant to Stevens: Darlington’s organizational power can’t be balanced by subject-matter zones, so obedience routinizes rather than negotiates.