Status and Power: The Principal Inputs to Influence for Public Managers

• Published date: 01 May 2014
• Author: Joe C. Magee,Clifford W. Frasier
• Date: 01 May 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12203

Theory to Practice

Joe C. Magee is associate professor

of management in the Robert F. Wagner

Graduate School of Public Service at New

York University. His primary area of research

is the roles of hierarchy in organizations

and society, with secondary interests in

social neuroscience and the social functions

of emotion. He is author of several journal

articles and book chapters on these topics

published in the f‌i elds of management and

social psychology.

E-mail: joe.magee@nyu.edu

Clifford W. Frasier is a doctoral student

in public administration and management

in the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of

Public Service at New York University. His

research focuses on trust relations among

uneasy coalition partners and the involve-

ment of interest groups in politics.

E-mail: cliff.frasier@nyu.edu

Status and Power: The Principal Inputs to Inf‌l uence for Public Managers 307

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 74, Iss. 3, pp. 307–317. © 2014 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12203.

Donald P. Moynihan, Editor

Joe C. Magee

Clifford W. Frasier

New York University

 e authors identify status and power as the principal

bases of inf‌l uence for public managers and describe how

managers can use this conceptual distinction to increase

their inf‌l uence. Status is def‌i ned as the degree to which

one is respected by one’s colleagues, and power is def‌i ned

as asymmetric control over valued resources. Dif‌f erent

social and relational processes govern (1) how people

determine who is, and who ought to be, high status versus

powerful and (2) how status and power af‌f ect individual

psychology and behavior. To illustrate key points, the

authors provide examples of individuals from the public

sector and public service organizations.  e framework

of interpersonal inf‌l uence gives practitioners behavioral

strategies for increasing their status and power as well as

a way to assess and diagnose interpersonal dimensions of

their own performance in their jobs and careers.

Whether preparing for the approach of the

next hurricane or turning around failing

schools, public managers must f‌i nd ways

to inf‌l uence others. In such extreme circumstances,

inf‌l uence is not only necessary to develop adequate

responses but also expected of managers by their

constituents. By virtue of their roles, and others’

expectations of what someone is able to do in those

roles, managers must make decisions with far-reaching

impact. Even under normal, everyday circumstances,

inf‌l uence is required to ef‌f ect administrative outcomes

(Falbe and Yukl 1992; Yukl, Seifert, and Chavez

2008). How, then, do public managers cultivate and

maintain the necessary sway to meet expectations and

achieve organizational goals?

 ough inf‌l uence is exercised

every day in the public sector,

and the consequences for the

sector’s employees and for the

public more broadly can be

high, research on inf‌l uence in

public organizations is surpris-

ingly scarce.  ere are excep-

tions, of course. For example, one stream of research

explores how elected executives exert control over the

activities of public managers (e.g., Abney and Lauth

1982; Miller 1987; Stehr 1997). Notwithstanding this

kind of punctuated advance, a cumulative research

agenda on inf‌l uence in public administration has yet

to take shape (Jensen 2007). On its face, this claim

might appear unable to bear its own weight. After all,

since the dawn of public administration scholarship,

both researchers and practitioners have pursued lines

of inquiry into why some individuals and organiza-

tions are more inf‌l uential than others (e.g., Carpenter

and Krause 2012; Riccucci 1995; Selznick 1957;

Weber 1922) and how managers induce employees to

cooperate and perform ef‌f ectively (e.g., Barnard 1938;

Roethlisberger and Dickson 1939; Wright, Moynihan,

and Pandey 2012). However, as Jensen (2007) notes in

his analysis of inf‌l uence tactics used by policy makers,

the topic of interpersonal inf‌l uence has been subsumed

under the much murkier topics of leadership and

organizational politics. We argue that this trend has

come at the expense of precision in understanding

what is meant by inf‌l uence and how it comes about.

Like Jensen (2007), we highlight an often-neglected

aspect of inf‌l uence in public administration by focus-

ing on its microbehavioral processes. Specif‌i cally, we

propose that most cases of interpersonal inf‌l uence are

generated from two properties of social relations: social

status and power.

Overview of Our Contribution

We propose that social status (referred to simply as

status hereafter) and power are the most signif‌i cant

determinants of inf‌l uence within

organizations. Both status and

power are needed for ef‌f ective

inf‌l uence in the long term, and

individuals who occupy admin-

istrative positions must keep an

eye on developing each one. We

argue that managers can expand

their scope of inf‌l uence by shap-

ing the extent to which their

colleagues perceive them as powerful and of high status

based on some systematic rules of person perception.

Status and Power:  e Principal Inputs

to Inf‌l uence for Public Managers

Both status and power are

needed for ef‌f ective inf‌l uence

in the long term, and individu-

als who occupy administrative

positions must keep an eye on

developing each one.