Chapter 4 Who Gets Power – and How They Hold on to It Thesis The thesis of the article is that traditional political power helps organizations become aligned with their realities, while other institutionalized forms of power buffer the organization from reality (Salancik&Pfeffer, 2011). Evidence Salancik and Pfeffer discuss the thesis in the opening of their article and go on explaining it. Power resolves around scarce and critical activities (Salancik&Pfeffer, 2011) and the strategic-contingencies theory corroborates this belief. The strategic-contingencies theory implies that whatever the critical problems of a company are then the power and influence over organizational decisions will be gained by the person or department most affected by the problems. As in the words of Salancik and Pfeffer “power facilitates the organization’s adaption to its environment- or its problems”. In the article a study conducted looked at different departments within a university to determine if those departments that brought in more resources that are critical, were more powerful than those that brought in fewer resources. After the 18-month study it was determined that yes, the departments that did bring in more of the critical resources had more power. Critical resource criteria are argued for by the most powerful departments, thus those departments are able to name “their functions as critical to the organization” (Salancik&Pfeffer, 2011) even when they might not be critical. Thoughts and Reflections Salancik and Pfeffer make good points regarding power. I agree with their views that “it is the environment that needs managing, not power.” They say this since different critical situations (either internal or external) can have an influence on power, which managers and leaders need to be aware of the “realities” of their environment and be able to change to deal with them (Salancik&Pfeffer, 2011). When the authors discuss the strategic contingencies theory, I like how they give an example of how lawsuits make way for the legal department handling the critical problems of the organization, which gives them status/power. In addition, how the head of the legal department might make it to the head of the company, just as if the critical problem was marketing them the marketing director would make it to the head of the company. This just goes to show how they believe how “power derives from activities rather than individuals” and how it “derives from the context of the situation” (Salancik&Pfeffer, 2011). This describes how power can be gained by the changing of critical problems within an organization.