Term Paper Question: How does social networking increase a person’s power? What social networking strategies could one initiate to potentially enhance career success?

Term Paper Content:

Power is the capacity of a person, team or organization to influence others. Power can be derived from five sources:

• Legitimate Power: An agreement among organizational members that people in certain roles can request certain behaviors of others
• Reward: The ability to control the allocation of rewards valued by others
• Coercive: Authority or power that is dependent on fear, suppression of free will, and/or use of punishment or threat, for its existence.
• Expert: The capacity to influence others by possessing knowledge or skills that they value
• Referent: The capacity to influence others on the basis on a high level of identification with, admiration of, or respect for the powerholder/ leader

The amount of power derived from these sources can be determined by the following Contingencies of Power:

• Substitutability: Power decreases with the ability to substitute the valued resource
• Centrality: The degree and nature of interdependence the power holder and others
• Discretion: The freedom to exercise judgment rather than following specific rules or asking for permission
• Visibility: People gain power by being seen as possessing valued resources, valued knowledge or higher authority

Individuals with well connected social networks increase their centrality and visibility as networkers are better known, so their achievements and talents are more likely to be recognized. They enhance their referent power as people tend to indentify more with those within their social network. These and other effects are considered an individuals stock of social capital, a difficult to define term that refers to the value of ones social network.

Information flows