French & Raven’s five-fold typology is the most widely used depiction of social power. However, research suggests that there are several holes in French & Raven’s model of social power.
As previously described, the five bases of power are divided into two categories: formal power and personal power. Legitimate, reward, and coercive power are the subcategories of formal power, and expert and referent power make up personal power.
Quick descriptions of the five bases of power are as follows:
- Reward power: a person’s ability to compensate another for compliance
- Coercive power: a person’s ability to punish another for noncompliance
- Legitimate power: a person’s belief that someone has the ability to influence, make demands, and expect compliance and obedience from others
- Expert power: power based on a person’s superior skill and knowledge
- Referent power: power as a result of a person’s perceived attractiveness, worthiness, and right to respect from others
One of the leading challenges to French & Raven’s description of the five bases of power is the scale of measurement used to draw conclusions about how each power base relates to outcome variables such as: supervisory satisfaction, subordinate performance, and job satisfaction.
French & Raven used a rank-order scale to measure why employees comply with supervisors’ requests. Research suggests that French & Raven’s scale of measurement was too narrow to define such broad topics.
As an example, French & Raven’s description of coercive power does not specify whether the power base is used for legitimate reasons (such as poor performance) or for illegitimate reasons (such as a supervisor trying to get someone to do something against company policy). This example shows that there is too much room for interpretation of this power base.
A second example is with expert power. French & Raven’s scale of measurement assesses expert power based on experience and judgment. The model neglects to acknowledge other aspects that may affect expert power, such as training or access to knowledge.
Research also suggests that French & Raven’s data is tainted because they used an attributional referent instead of a behavioral referent when measuring why respondents comply with supervisors. To eliminate this issue, they should have asked “How does your supervisor behave?” instead of “Why do you comply with your supervisors requests?” so the data is interpreted as perceptions of supervisor behavior, rather than respondent behavior.
A second issue regarding the five power bases is the existence of a social desirability response bias. Generally, people don’t want to admit that they do what is asked of them because of bribes, payoffs, or to avoid punishment. This bias could have substantial effects on the conclusions drawn from French & Raven’s study.
Lastly, interdependency is an issue related to the five bases of power. For example, someone in an organization with reward power may also have the ability to punish (coercive power). This makes it difficult to draw conclusions about the independent effects of each power base.
In conclusion, French & Raven’s description of the five bases of power has much room for further research. Scales of measurement and the existence of a social desirability response bias are two of the major concerns regarding the validity of French & Raven’s model.
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