Organizational scholars tend to operate under the assumption that power is domination. This assumption may spring from the fact that domination is the primary form of power used in U.S. organizations. Given the pervasiveness of the power-as-domination assumption guiding both researchers and practitioners, it is important to understand how power-as-domination works in organizations. This interpretive study explores how domination was created, enacted, and maintained in the acquisition of Ozark Airlines by TWA. Results of the analysis reveal how communication practices were used by TWA to effectively dominate Ozark employees. These results are discussed in terms of theoretical and practical implications.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Aguinis, H. , Simonsen, M. M., & Pierce, C. A. (1998). Effects of nonverbal behavior on perceptions of power bases. The Journal of Social Psychology, 138, 455-469.
2.
Air Line Pilots Association. (2001). Retrieved from the World Wide Web: http://www.alpa.org
3.
Aktouf, O. (1992). Management and theories of organizations in the 1990s: Toward a critical radical humanism?Academy of Management Review, 17, 407-431.
4.
Althusser, L. (1990). Theory, theoretical practice and theoretical formation: Ideology and ideological struggle. In G. Elliott (Ed.), Philosophy and the spontaneous philosophy of the scientists and other essays (pp. 1-42). London: Verso.
5.
Ashforth, B. E. , & Mael, F. A. (1998). The power of resistance: Sustaining valued identities. In R. M. Kramer & M. A. Neale (Eds.), Power and influence in organizations (pp. 89-120). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
6.
Baitsell, J. M. (1966). Airline industrial relations: Pilots and flight engineers. Boston: Harvard Press.
7.
Buono, A. F. , & Bowditch, J. L. (1989). The human side of mergers and acquisitions: Managing collisions between people, cultures, and organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
8.
Cheney, G. , & Tompkins, P. K. (1987). Coming to terms with organizational identification and commitment. Central States Speech Journal, 38, 1-15.
9.
Clair, R. P. (1998). Organizing silence: A world of possibilities. Albany: State University of New York Press.
10.
Clegg, S. (1976). Power, theorizing, and nihilism. Theory and Society, 3, 45-64.
11.
Clemente, M. N. , & Greenspan, D. S. (1998). Winning at mergers and acquisitions: A guide to market-focused planning and integration. New York: John Wiley.
12.
Cloud, D. L. (1994). The materiality of discourse as oxymoron: A challenge to critical rhetoric. Western Journal of Communication, 58, 141-163.
13.
Cloud, D. L. (2001). Laboring under the sign of the new: Cultural studies, organizational communication, and the fallacy of the new economy. Management Communication Quarterly, 15, 268-278.
14.
Conger, J. A. , & Kanungo, R. N. (1988). The empowerment process: Integrating theory and practice. Academy of Management Review, 13, 471-482.
15.
Cooper, C. L. , & Robertson, I. T. (1994). International review of industrial and organizational psychology. New York: John Wiley.
16.
Creswell, J. W. (1997). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five traditions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
17.
Dougherty, D. S. (1999). Dialogue through standpoint: Understanding women’s and men’s standpoints of sexual harassment. Management Communication Quarterly, 12, 436-468.
18.
Dougherty, D. S., & Pierce, T. (2001). [Second study examining the long-term implications of the Ozark merger by TWA]. Unpublished raw data.
19.
Eagleton, T. (1997). Where do postmodernists come from? In E. M. Wood & J. B. Foster (Eds.), In defense of history: Marxism and the postmodern agenda (pp. 17-25). New York: Monthly Review Press.
20.
Emerson, R. M. , Fretz, R. I., & Shaw, L. L. (1995). Writing ethnographic fieldnotes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
21.
Feazel, M. (1980, October 20). September local traffic gains. Aviation Week & Space Technology, 113(6), 34-34.
22.
Ferguson, K. E. (1984). The feminist case against bureaucracy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
23.
Foucault, M. (1984a). The body of the condemned. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault reader (pp. 170-178). New York: Pantheon Books.
24.
Foucault, M. (1984b). The means of correct training. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault reader (pp. 188-205). New York: Pantheon Books.
25.
Foucault, M. (1984c). Truth and power. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault reader (pp. 51-75). New York: Pantheon Books.
26.
French, J. R. P. , & Raven, B. H. (1959). The bases of social power. In D. Cartwright (Ed.), Studies in social power (pp. 150-167). Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research.
27.
Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
28.
Gimlin, D. (1996). Pamela’s Place: Power and negotiation in the hair salon. Gender & Society, 10, 505-526.
29.
Hambrick, D. C. , & Cannella, A. A. (1993). Relative standing: A framework for understanding departures of acquired executives. Academy of Management Journal, 36, 733-762.
30.
Hamilton, M. M. (1986, November 30). Icahn drove TWA turnaround but critics still question his long-term intentions. The Washington Post, p. H1-H1.
31.
Hammond, Atkin, Baldwin, Dohrn, Kloeppel, Smith, on their own behalf and on behalf of a class of all other person similarly situated v. ALPA & TWA, 87C2792 (N.D. II, 1991).
32.
Harrison, J. S. , O’Neill, H. M., & Hoskisson, R. E. (2000). Acquisition strategy and target resistance: A theory of countervailing effects of pre-merger bidding and post-merger integration. In C. Cooper & A. Gregory, (Eds.), Advances in mergers and acquisitions (pp. 157-182). London: JAI.
33.
Hopkins, G. E. (1982). Flying the line: The first half century of the Air Line Pilots Association. Washington, DC: Air Line Pilots Association.
34.
Kaplan, S. N. (2000). Mergers and productivity. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
35.
Knights, D. , & Vurdubakis, T. (1994). Foucault, power, resistance and all that. In J. M. Jermier, D. Knights, & W. R. Nord (Eds.), Resistance and power in organizations (pp. 167-198). London: Routledge.
36.
Krippendorff, K. (1989). The power of communication and the communication of power: Toward an emancipatory theory of communication. Communication, 12, 175-196.
37.
Lindlof, R. T. (1995). Qualitative communication research methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
38.
Lohrum, C. (1996). Post-acquisition integration: Towards an understanding of employee reactions. Helsinki, Sweden: Helsingfors.
39.
Martin, J. , & Meyerson, D. (1998). Women and power: Conformity, resistance, and disorganized coaction. In R. M. Kramer & M. A. Neale (Eds.), Power and influence in organizations (pp. 1-20). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
40.
McKelvey, J. T. (1988). Cleared for takeoff: Airline labor relations since deregulation. New York: ILR Press.
41.
Morgan, R. (2001). History of Ozark airlines. Retrieved from the World Wide Web: http://www.inlink.com/~dougm/ozark.htm.
42.
Mottola, G. R. , Bachman, B. A., Gaertner, S. L., & Dovidio, J. F. (1997). How groups merge: The effects of merger integration patterns on anticipated commitment to the merged organization. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 27, 1335-1358.
43.
Mumby, D. K. (1988). Communication and power in organizations: Discourse, ideology, and domination. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
44.
Mumby, D. K. (1997). The problem of hegemony: Rereading Gramsci for organizational communication studies. Western Journal of Communication, 61, 343-375.
45.
Mumby, D. K. (2001). Power and politics. In F. M. Jablin & L. L. Putnam (Eds.), The new handbook of organizational communication (pp. 585-623). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
46.
Napier, N. K. (1989). Mergers and acquisitions, human resource issues and outcomes: A review and suggested typology. Journal of Management Studies, 26, 271-289.
47.
Organ, D. W. (1988) Organizational citizenship behavior. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
48.
Pfeffer, J. (1992). Managing with power: Politics and influence in organizations. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
49.
Pfeffer, J. , & Cialdini, R. B. (1998). Illusions of influence. In R. M. Kramer & M. A. Neale (Eds.), Power and influence in organizations (pp. 1-20). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
50.
Pierce, J. (1996). Rambo litigators: Emotional labor in a male-dominated occupation. In C. Cheng (Ed.), Masculinities or organizations (pp. 1-28). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
51.
Preble, C. (1986, September 22). Transportation department approves TWA acquisition of Ozark. Aviation Week & Space Technology, p. 34-34.
52.
Pritchett, P. (1985). After the merger: Managing the shockwaves. Homewood, IL: Dow Jones-Irwin.
53.
Rabinow, P. (1984). Introduction. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault reader (pp. 3-29). New York: Pantheon Books.
54.
Schein, E. H. (1985). Organizational culture and leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
55.
Shifrin, C. A. (1985). Major airlines report mixed results in third quarter. Aviation Week & Space Technology, 123(9), 29-29.
56.
Strauss, A. , & Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory, (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
57.
Tracy, S. J. (2000). Becoming a character for commerce: Emotion labor, self-subordination, and discursive construction of identity in a total institution. Management Communication Quarterly, 14, 90-128.
58.
Valley, K. L. , & Thompson, T. A. (1998). Sticky ties and bad attitudes: Relational and individual bases of resistance to change in organizational structure. In R. M. Kramer & M. A. Neale (Eds.), Power and influence in organizations (pp. 39-66). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
59.
Van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. New York: State University of New York Press.
60.
Vredenburgh, D. , & Brender, Y. (1998). The hierarchical abuse of power in work organizations. Journal of Business Ethics, 17, 1337-1347.
61.
Walsh, D. J. (1994). On different planes: An organizational analysis of cooperation and conflict among airline unions. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press.
62.
Williams, W. (1986, June 22). Carl Icahn’s wild ride. The New York Times, pp. 3:1-3:1.
