Book Tip No. 33 (2019): HARVARD BUSINESS MANAGER SPECIAL ON POWER
Hamburg 2018.
The book presentations that have appeared here so far (and also the reviews I have published in magazines in recent years) have one thing in common: they ultimately lead to the recommendation to buy, read, and enjoy the respective work. What about this special issue of the Harvard Business Manager?
It is very commendable to put the topic of power at the center of a special issue, because questions of power are regularly neglected in management studies and in management training, in my estimation (the question of whether psychopaths find it easier to make a career is also neglected, by the way. But that’s another topic). During my time as a manager in corporations, no one sent me to a seminar where I should learn to deal with power.
If Helene Endres, who was editorially responsible for this issue, claims in her essay that no one needs an office or a fortune to exercise power anymore, this assessment can only be described as naive. She says: “Often a Twitter account, enough followers, and a clever hashtag are enough.” Well then, one can only recommend. Perhaps the world of social media (as well as social institutions) is a bit more complicated.
Elsewhere, Helene Endres says: “Digitization means a huge redistribution of power.” Indeed, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon have built up enormous power today, there is no question about that. Ms. Endres continues: “In many areas, this means: merciless democracy.” Does she mean the internal structures at Uber, Amazon, or Facebook? Or the monopolistic market power of the Big Four? We need a more differentiated analysis here.
The supposed advantage of the magazine, namely that many authors have their say, is probably also its biggest disadvantage. Should my students deal with what Ms. Poletto has to say about power? And the fact that the time of the big egos is over, as Constanze Buchheim states in her comment, can be questioned in view of figures like Trump, Erdogan, and Putin. I will spare myself the corresponding names of German politicians here.
Unfortunately, international experts like Scott Galloway are given very little space. But his concern seems justified: “The people who would be responsible for controlling the digital corporations don’t even understand what they should actually regulate.” This is about the most important power shifts of the present, which affects us all and which we should understand much better. Instead of Wolfgang Kubicki, Margrethe Vestager should be heard.
The 7-point program by Dorothea Assig and Dorothea Echter deserves attention: a concise, very readable summary for dealing with power. And Jeffrey Pfeffer is also one of those whose works I recommend on the subject of power. The interview with him is very worth reading. But what I miss: I would have liked to read a case study on current power strategies, such as how Angela Merkel and Horst Seehofer deal with power.
To take up the thought expressed at the beginning, whether this issue belongs in a manager’s reference library: one must be able to read very selectively.
Dr. Hans-Christian Riekhof