Power Struggles in Groups
... Power struggles are a thing that most people would gladly enjoy avoiding, but there are times when one must confront a struggle and to successfully deal with the ordeal they must have a plan of action. ... There are many concepts that define and make up a power struggle, but to really understand what a power struggle is someone must first define what power is and what it consists of. For a person to have power there must be people for that person to have power over. And for that person to remain in power they must retain the support of their followers. ... There are cases of power in which the classes are clearly split into the powerful and the powerless. In these cases when the powerful comes into more power they acquire it from the powerless. ... When one looks at groups in that way every group member has power, it just comes down to the idea of how much power a person has. There are three forms of power, (Hollander and Offermann, 1990) from which a person can decipher how much power each group member possesses. ... Dominance is when a person has power over another person. This is when a person’s gain in power is another person’s loss in power. And when this happens power struggles often follow suit. ... The second form of power is known as prevention. Prevention happens when the dominant character tries to overwhelm another group member with power and the other group member resists the dominance.