Decision-Making and Power

Based on the content of On Power, “In the process of managing rights within an organization, some individuals possess the right to configure rights, and this configuration right is not fully constrained by organizational rules (allowing for non-singular paths), enabling these individuals to exercise initiative, thus generating power.” It follows that the source of power is the configuration right that is not fully constrained by rules. This unconstrained configuration results in non-singular behavioral path choices, and the process of moving from multiple paths to a single path is decision-making. This leads to the conclusion that decision-making stems from power, and decision-making is the process of exercising power.

For example, a restaurant’s purchasing manager tasked with buying crabs at the market can choose from five vendors, indicating non-singular path choices. The purchasing plan is not fully constrained by organizational rules, which may only require the manager to devise a plan to purchase crabs at or below a specified price. Thus, the manager must decide to determine a singular path and execute it either personally or through another individual. In this case, the purchasing manager holds power and exercises it through decision-making. Here, the restaurant is the organization, the purchasing manager is the individual, and the purchasing action is a rights exchange between the restaurant and seafood wholesalers. The restaurant typically sets a baseline (the worst tolerable scenario) for the rights exchange, allowing the manager to make decisions above this baseline. The manager aims to maximize their own rights transformation efficiency within this framework, such as choosing a vendor with non-lowest prices but better service to reduce future workload (achieving the same monetary gain with less effort, thus improving rights transformation efficiency) or selecting a vendor with familial ties (not necessarily the best cost-performance).

In a design company, a designer, as an organizational individual, also faces non-singular paths when designing a project, indicating they hold power. Their design may require specific materials sourced from a particular supplier, potentially reducing their workload through additional services or enabling extra rights exchanges (e.g., monetary or other benefits). Alternatively, the designer may aim to create superior work to gain promotions or accolades.

In both cases— the purchasing manager and the designer— their power exhibits exclusivity (as defined in the power section of On Power). For instance, the decision to purchase crabs lies solely with the purchasing manager, and the design proposal originates from the designer.

As an organization’s power concentration increases, decision-making rights consolidate to fewer individuals, leaving others with more execution tasks. As mentioned, execution generates information, while decision-making only applies it. Power concentration means fewer individuals handle more information, some from natural environmental changes (unrelated to individuals) and some from execution behaviors and feedback, leading to greater data processing demands for decision-makers.

Greater power and decision-making space allow decision-makers to select paths that maximize their rights transformation efficiency, enabling further rights and power expansion. Thus, organizational individuals tend to make decisions that create more opportunities for future decision-making, driving the evolution of organizational power expansion.