A Framework for Clout

One of the more understandable aspects of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, a notoriously nonunderstandable work, is that it begins as it ends with “Finnegan begin again,” a memorable and melodic device. In much more prosaic terms, this book too starts with an ending. I have been in search of a richer, more accurate examination of power in the workplace. That examination included an Internet-based survey of over 700 staff and supervisory personnel, the incorporation of other survey research on power in different industries, interviews with seven executives, and other ways of learning about power. Together with about 30 years of “field work” as an observer and participant in the process of organizations and power, an experience without much nobility (since it was observational not participatory) but an exercise of bountiful diligence, I have woven a multicolored carpet from the subject. I will not claim to be a power figure, but I am a power observer and analyst. The analysis that derived from the research and personal participation helped complete the depiction of power. And the depiction becomes a model of power, developed over the course of the book and described in basic terms at its close. That is how our Finnegan begins again.