Using Power to Install Strategy: The Relationships between Expert Power, Position Power, Influence Tactics and Implementation Success

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between two change agent power bases (amounts of expert power and position power) and success at implementing strategic change. Drawing on research on social power and influence, hypotheses are developed that relate power to influence tactics and implementation success. Based on a review of the strategic management literature, two influence tactics, participation and sensemaking/sensegiving, emerged as relevant for this setting. Implementation success is operationalized as change goal achievement, level of resistance to change and change in organizational commitment. The hypotheses are tested using data drawn from the transformation of a large, divisionalized telecommunications company facing deregulation and global competition. Change agent power was found to predict the use of influence tactics and some direct relationships were found between power and implementation success. Findings also indicate that the relationship between power and implementation success is partly mediated by differential use of influence tactics.

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