Real organizational power flows from career influence, not from directive-and-dismissal authority

Evidence

While formal organizational power rests on the competence to give official directives, whose recognition is a condition of membership and which can then be sanctioned by dismissal, actual power in organizations depends far more on influence on careers. Thus, it does not depend so much on the arrangement regarding membership as on the arrangement regarding appointments to positions – on those decisional faculties which the (German) civil service calls ‘Personalhoheit’ (exclusive competence in the area of human resources). In order to be able to use short and concise terms we will speak of organizational power and personnel power. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 790

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core definitional distinction between ‘organizational power’ (formal directives, dismissal sanctions) and ‘personnel power’ (influence over appointments/careers) — the operative source of actual power.
• XREF: This distinguishes formal from actual power — useful against Giddens’s faceless commitments where obedience is to positions/offices rather than people. — connects to: Modern organizations shift management’s role from supervision to cultivating employee self-leadership — Thomas Davenport & John Beck, The Attention Economy: Understanding…, 30; Adenauer’s isolated decision-making excluded expellee organizations from real power — Pertti Ahonen, Domestic Constraints on West German…, 177; Promotion-based career judiciaries trade selection bias for conformity pressure — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 552