Research Within the Political Perspective

Research in the political perspective regards workgroups as “contested terrain” in which individuals and subgroups vie for control of the group. This perspective focuses on power in workgroups and traces how group processes both enact and are influenced by power and the struggle for power.

While it acknowledges that power is often exerted openly in workgroups, the political perspective also focuses on more subtle and hidden dimensions of power. One of these is issue control, a process through which certain issues are defined as “off-limits” (Folger et al., 2011). In most workgroups, for example, the legitimate right of the leader to give orders is never questioned. That this issue is never raised reinforces the leader’s power base. In turn, the leader’s power gives him or her the ability to engage in issue control, setting up a self-reinforcing cycle that sustains the leader’s dominance. Another aspect of hidden power is discipline, the establishment of shared goals and premises among members that channel their behavior in the direction of the interests of the dominant members (or of managers outside the workgroup; Barker & Cheney, 1994; Sewell, 1998; Tompkins & Cheney, 1985). Members’ identification with the orga­nization leads them to follow its premises, and in so doing, members exert self-control over themselves, thus channeling their behav­ior in ways consistent with the organization’s interests.

According to the political perspective, con­flicts of interest between different groups are the primary source of workgroup conflict. In many cases, these conflicts are played out through negotiation and alliance building among indi­viduals and subgroups in a pluralistic political process. However, many political conflicts do not surface explicitly due to the operation of hidden power. Indeed, a hallmark of the politi­cal perspective is that it highlights the avoidance or lack of conflict as a common response to conflicts of interest. Hidden power functions to suppress or avoid conflict by defining conflicts of interest as off-limits or by inculcating prem­ises in group members that prevent conflicts or resolve them in ways consistent with dominant interests. Ironically, the political perspective argues that when conflict surfaces openly, it represents a failure of the dominant individual or subgroup, because only when the power structures that normally suppress conflict have broken down or been undermined does conflict come out into the open. The remainder of this section examines control in work groups, plu­ralistic examinations of political processes, and the political perspective in health care teams.