INTERORGANIZATIONAL DIMENSIONS
OF PARTICIPATION AND POWER I'N
COMMUNITY PLANNING

Dissertation for the Degree of Ph. D.
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
PET ER CRAIG BISHOP
1974

 

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ABSTRACT

INTERORGANIZATIONAL DIMENSIONS OF
PARTICIPATION AND POWER IN
COMMUNITY PLANNING

BY

Peter Craig Bishop

Social participation and power have been of long-
standing interest in the sociological literature. Social
status and attraction to a group have been validated as
important determinants of participation in group activi-
ties. Likewise, a subject's power within the group has
been correlated with participation, information, and
. identification of other members with the subject. Another
source of participation and power, however, forms the
central place in this research, namely determinants
derived from interorganizational ties outside the group.

A population survey was administered to 111
volunteer members of a community planning agency to
measure the above variables. Behavioral measures indi-
cated various types of participation rates, and the
measures of individual power were included in the survey.
Results showed that the organization's influence on its

representative was the strongest correlate of attendance

.;5 Peter Craig Bishop

rate in these planning groups. The power of the represen—
tative's organization showed little relationship with

the individual's power. The implications of the former
findings and the reasons for the failure of the latter

are discussed in terms of interorganizational theory and
influence.

Individual committees within the agency were then
analyzed separately. A task-oriented working group of
committees emerged which displayed markedly different
individual characteristics and participation patterns
from the other groups. The remaining groups more closely
approximated the classic voluntary organizational model.
Such community planning groups, therefore, may well fill
a double role--that of a voluntary organization along
with the coordination of interorganizational relations
between organizations within the same institutional
sector of the community. The members of those inter-
organizational working groups respond more from their
structural role as representatives of various organi-
zations than as individual voluntary participants.

Social participation and voluntary associations must

allow for this unique interorganizational form.

 

inp

 

 

 

 

 

INTERORGANIZATIONAL DIMENSIONS OF
PARTICIPATION AND POWER IN

COMMUNITY PLANNING

BY

Peter Craig Bishop

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Sociology

1974

 

Who are a par

of sh

 

 

 

DEDICATED TO

Amanda Beck, my colleague
and

Charlene Bishop, my wife

who are a part of this accomplishment in the untold ways
of sharing both their knowledge and their

care throughout.

ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This document represents the result of a com-
bined faith shared by many individuals and groups in my
ability to bring it to completion. My parents, Mr. and
Mrs. G. W. Bishop, and the Missouri Province of the
Society of Jesus, in the person of Fr. Robert Doyle,
S.J., originally instilled in me a desire for learning
and provided me every opportunity to pursue that goal.
Along the way, Red and Fr. Jack helped me sort out what
I wanted and made this experience a personal as well as
a professional achievement. At the end, a new chairman,
Dr. Philip Marcus, and a reorganized committee, Dr. George
Fairweather, Dr. Harry Perlstadt, and Dr. William Ewens,
applied a miraculous amount of motivation at the crucial
time to move me to this final goal. Finally, the sub-
jects of this research and the Training and Studies
Division, 314c of Health Services and Mental Health
Administration, DHEW (Grant no. CS-P (D01) 552005-01-72)
contributed both personal and financial support through-
out for the accomplishment of this and related ends.
Gratitude may be only one small word, but better than

any other it describes my feelings for these gifts.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter
I. INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . .

Social Participation . . . . . .
Social Power . . . . . . . . .
Correlates of Voluntary Participation

and Community Power. . . . . .
The Interorganizational Perspective .
Correlates of Community Power . . .
Hypothesis . . . . . . . . .

II. METHOD . . . . . . . . . . . .

Participation: Dependent Measures. .
Participation: Independent Measures .
Formal and Informal Representation
Items . . . . . . . . . .
Strength of Representation Scale . .
Attraction Scale. . . . . . . .
Status Scale . . . . . . . . .
Social Participation Scale . . . .
Social Power: Dependent Measures . .
Powerlessness Scale. . . . . . .
Social Power: Independent Measures .
Information Scale . . . . . . .
Measure of Association. . . . . .

III. HYPOTHESIZED RESULTS . . . . . . .

Correlates of Social Participation. .
Correlates of Power. . . . . . .

IV. EFFECTS OF ALTERNATIVE GROUP STRUCTURE .

Group Level Effects. . . . . . .
Social Participation Within Different

Groups . . . . . . . . . .
Social Power Within Different Groups .
Structural Effects . . . . . . .

V. DISCUSSION 0 O O O O O C O O O

BIBLIOGRAPHY 0 O O O O O O O O O O O

Page

19
26
28
39

48

54
59

60
62
67
72
76
77
81
86
95
102

106

107
121

132
133
144
151
155
163

176

LIST OF TABLES

Table Page
2-1. Q-Correlations of Participation Measures . . 58

2-2. Percentage of Responses in Each Category
of Representation Scale. . . . . . . 63

2—3. Q-Correlations of Representation Items. . . 65

2-4. Percentage of Responses in Each Category of

Attraction Scale . . . . . . . . . 68
2-5. Q-Correlations of Attraction Scale . . . . 70
2-6. Q-Correlations of Status Scale . . . . . 74

2-7. Percentage of Powerless Response for Each

Item 0 C O I O O O I O O O O O 84
2-8. Q-Correlations for Power Measures . . . . 86
2-9. Ranking of Community Organizations . . . . 88

2-10. Percentage of Correct Response to Infor—
mation Scale Items . . . . . . . . 97

3-1. Q-Correlations of Representation and Par-
ticipation . . . . . . . . . . . 108

3-2. Q-Correlations of Alternative Factors and
Participation . . . . . . . . . . 114

3-3. Q-Correlations of Representation and Alter-
native Independent Measures . . . . . 117

3-4. Q‘Correlations of Organizational Dominance
and Individual Influence . . . . . . 123

3-5. Q-Correlations of Alternative Factors and
Power 0 O I O I O O O O O O O 128

F??? .

 

Page

Q-Correlations of Organizational and Alter—

native Factors . . . . . . . . . 130
Group Level Variables for Each Committee . 135
Spearman Rank-Order Correlations of Group

Level Variables. . . . . . . . . 136
Q-Correlations of Individual Variables and

Meeting Frequency . . . . . . . . 141
Partial Q-Correlations of Participation

Hypotheses Controlled for Meeting

Frequency. . . . . . . . . . . 145
Q-Correlations of Participation Hypotheses

for Low Activity Committees. . . . . 147
Q-Correlations of Participation Hypotheses

for High Activity Committees . . . . 149
Q-Correlations of Power Hypotheses for High

Activity Committees . . . . . . . 151
Q-Correlations of Power Hypotheses for Low

Activity Committees . . . . . . . 154
Percentage of High Meeting Attendance for

Individual and Group Organizational

Activity . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Percentage of High Attendance Rate for

Individual and Group Organizational

ACtiVity O O O O O O O O O O O 157
Percentage of High Attendance Rate for

Individual and Group Status. . . . . 158
Percentage of High Meeting Attendance for

Individual and Group Status. . . . . 158
Group Status and Attendance Rate . . . . 161

vi

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Social Participation

 

Two of the most important concepts of sociology
are social participation and power. Participation is of
course at the root of all social interaction. Rarely,
however, is participation considered problematical in
the study of social relations because it is almost
always present. In other words, without participation
in social relations, social relations themselves exist
in only the most theoretical sense. In this study, how-
ever, participation in community decision-making is a
distinct dependent variable to be discussed and explained.

Unfortunately little can be said about social
participation in general theoretical terms since its
global nature is taken for granted in most situations.
On the empirical level, numerous studies have produced
some of the firmest sociological conclusions in deter-
mining the factors which contribute to participation in
voluntary organizations. By the same token, little
has been done to delineate the various forms and impli-
cations of participation in the whole range of social

relations.

Participation has been theoretically treated
most often in connection with the political aspects of
behavior. One of the earliest sociological treatments
by Alexis de Toqueville (1945) credited social partici-
pation with the maintenance of American democracy. In
his travels, Toqueville was amazed at the associations
which Americans created and sustained. As opposed to
the aristocratic society, Toqueville postulated that
the move to associational participation was concomitant
with the development of egalitarian social organization
since each individual in such a society was individually
powerless. In modern terminology such a theory would
read that since society was no longer organized accord-
ing to ascribed status characteristics, voluntary associ-
ations of an economic and welfare nature must assume the
role of uniting the individuals in a common effort. From
this conception has followed the normative prescriptions
of upper status groups to participate in "community
affairs," in essence to take up the task of their
aristocratic predecessors.

Toqueville also pointed to the complementary
effect of associations, that of increasing the power
of the individual when acting in concert with others.
Thus organizing for political effect has been one of
the major determinants in the popularity of voluntary

associations. In fact, Toqueville felt so strongly '

.‘u-~,\‘
'-

about the American propensity to move in this direction,

he commented
The English often perform great things singly,
whereas the Americans form associations for the
smallest undertakings. It is evident that the
former peOple consider association as a powerful
means of action, but the latter seem to regard it
as the only means they have of acting.

Thus from the earliest days of the Republic, social par-

ticipation has been an important aspect of the social

interaction, one which deserves perhaps more attention

than it has received.

, Another theoretical treatment of participation
discusses the implications of participation for the
society as a whole. Speculating on the unusual cases
of community decision-making in which community leaders
by any measurement were resoundingly defeated, William
Kornhauser (1959) set about to describe a type of
society unheard of in the days of Toqueville, one in
which the participation in voluntary associations was
reduced to near zero. Without the aristocratic or
secondary forms of association, rulers are in direct
contact with the mass of the population. Such contact,
unfiltered by a multitude of associations, leads to
more rigid enforcement and apathetic acceptance of
societal norms and standards. Legitimate and nonviolent

means of affecting group decisions are unusable, opening

greater possibilities for violent social change. Thus

I

the effect of social participation for Kornhauser was

to create reciprocal exchanges between the individual and
the group. The association wanted a commitment from the
individual to "stay within the system" in return for
which the individual's own power was augmented by the
organization's power. He saw the role of social par-
ticipation as an essential integrative force in society
which, by dividing men on relatively inconsequential
matters, prevented their ultimate division on issues
which would destroy the society. By the same token,

the rulers of the society were held accountable by each
of these associations which acted as protectors of the
individual's interests. The importance of the benefits
of such integration cannot be overstated; neither can
we discount the role of participation in achieving such
benefits. This study will, therefore, concentrate on

the factors associated with participation.

Social Power

 

A concomitant and equally important variable in
community studies is, of course, that of power. Before
discussing the complexities of this subject, its
inclusion and importance for this study must be explained.
Without proof, we shall accept as an assumption that all
social relations leave the participants changed in some
way. These alterations take place either in the cognitive

or affective structures or the behavior of the individual

which in turn may affect participants of other social
relations. The ability that one participant has in
affecting another is considered the power that the first
participant possesses. Since all social relations pro-
duce such effects and since power is defined as the
ability to produce such effects, then all social relations
contain the dimension of power. Thus with the inclusion
of power we are dealing with two of the most fundamental
aspects of human behavior.

In explicating the term power, we can begin with
its meaning in the physical sciences, i.e., the ability
to do work. The same conception can be retained in
adapting the term for sociology by changing the object
of the work to the effects upon human cognition,
affections, and behavior. Power in this context, how-
ever, is only a construct because the quantity itself
can only be approached indirectly through its effects.
Thus the definition which we shall use is not a direct
but rather a probability statement. The power of actor A
is the probability that A can produce effects in the cog-
nitive, affective, or behavioral set of actor B. We
shall elaborate on this definition through the work and
writings of others.

As with almost every sociological topic, we begin
with the conceptions of Max Weber (1946), the first to

rationally organize this subject. In this case, Weber's

definition of power has not been significantly altered
since it was originally proposed: "In general, we
understand by 'power' the chance of a man or a number
of men to realize their own will in a communal action
even against the resistance of others who are partici-
pating in the action."

Three important considerations have followed
from Weber's original discussion of this topic. The
first is that power is generally expressed as a proba-
bility statement. As stated above, power is not a
quantity which we measure directly, but rather through
its effects (Gamson, 1968). Its existence is, therefore,
conceptual, much as the concepts of intelligence, atti-
tude, organizations, etc. which have no reality of their
own except to explain facts which we have documented.
This probabilistic quality of power is addressed more
directly by Dahl (1957) and used by Harsanyi (1962) and
March (1966) in their fundamental discussions of power.
Dahl uses the conception of probability even more
explicitly by positing two courses of action for the
individual being influenced (actor B). B has a proba-
bility to perform an action without any interference
from A. On the other hand, he may have a different
probability for that action given that A attempts to
influence B's action. Dahl defines A's power as the

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A's intervention. This conception is only marginally
different from the initial view that power affects the
cognitive, affective, or behavioral set of B.

Another concern about the amount of power is the
necessity of having resistance for a genuine use of
power. It will be our position that such resistance is
not necessary. First of all, Weber says that A imposes
his will gzgn_against another's will--in other words, as
the limiting case. His definition does not exclude the
possibility of imposition of will without such resistance.
A clear case of power without resistance would be Erich
Fromm's (1965) position that the alienated members of
society require explicit direction. As opposed to
resisting such control, the authoritarian personality
described welcomes directives from another. One can
still speak of power, however, because the probability
of B's behavior changes once the will of A is made known.

The research setting for this study will also
provide a case of power without resistance. The setting
will be a power vacuum in which no one individual is
inclined to take control. The individual who eventually
directs the actions of the group changes the probability
of behavior for all other members without encountering
any resistance. Examples of extreme socialization to
accept control or extreme powerlessness would also be

indistinguishable from the no resistance category.

Thus the disposition to accept direction may range from
c00peration to resistance without destroying the concept
of power in any case.

Another concern raised by Weber's definition is
the possibility of power being an institutional as well
as an individual quantity. By stipulating that a number
of men could impose their will as well as one man, Weber
left open the possibility that power may be attributed
to organizations as well as to individuals. we shall
make use of this conception later in this analysis since
a great deal of time will be spent investigating the
organizational dimensions of power in contrast to the
individual, interpersonal dimensions.

In sum, then, the three concerns which Weber
raised in his definition were that power was the change
in the probability of certain behavior, that power could
be attributed to an organization, and that power did
not necessarily have to overcome resistance to be called
power. Another theoretical issue is the generally
agreed upon asymmetrical nature of power. This aspect
of power relations has in fact often achieved definitional
status. Unfortunately, we must again disagree with the
accepted tradition and admit the possibility of a sym-
metrical power relation, in which the change in the
probabilities of behavior is equal and reciprocal.

The existence of such a state rarely affects research

results nor is it often the case, but one cannot discount
the theoretical possibility.

The issue of the basic measurement of power is
one fraught with increasing concern among social scien-
tists. We have already seen that Dahl treats the change
in probability of behavior as the amount of power in
a relationship. Cartwright (1960) approaches the amount
of power differently by identifying two quantities which
determine the amount of power: the degree of incom-
patibility between the uninfluenced and the influenced
behavior and the strength of the pre-existing behavior.
The amount of power necessary to change B's behavior is
directly proportional to both of these quantities. Such
an approach is describing power by its constituent roots
as opposed to Dahl's phenomenological outcome description.

Another issue regarding the total amount of powerfl

I
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is the total quantity of power available in any social
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system. As mentioned above, most others consider only
the asymmetrical influence of A on B. In all but the
most extreme social relations, however, there is a
reciprocal relation of power from B on A. Admitting
this possibility opens up the question of the total
amount of power in the system and how that power is
relatively distributed between the actors in the system.
One conception, that which seems to have the insight of

common sense, is that the total amount of power in a

10

system is a fixed quantity which must be shared by the
actors. This conception goes under the rubric of "zero-
sum" since any change of power with respect to any actor
in the system must be balanced by an equal and opposite
change in the combined amount of the other actors. Thus,
the sum of all changes is zero. The nonzero-sum con-
ception, of more recent origin, was introduced by the
functionalist school to explain certain phenomena.
Arnold Tannenbaum (1968) discussed this conception and
developed a measuring instrument, called the control
graph, to show empirically that power differs in dif-
ferent situations. Even though various groups in work
organizations hold different relative power positions,
Tannenbaum was able to show that the total amount of
power, as perceived by members of the organization,
differs for different organizations. Rossi (1972) has
spoken in terms of creating power in much the same
categories as the economic system creates money as a
result of the multiplier effect. Another part of this
research project (Bishop & Beck, 1973) has shown that
the two measures of power both conform to the zero-sum
conception in that respondents classify power according
to a zero-sum perspective. The subject of this study,
however, will make little use of either the zero-sum or
nonzero-sum conceptions since it principally refers to
changes in power distribution as opposed to cross-

sectional analysis.

11

Thus far, the term "power" has been the major
focus of attention. We have defined the term, shown
some of the practical cases which are included under
the conceptual definition, and discussed the concern
over the total amount of power available in the system.
We could proceed to discuss more of the dimensions of
power as outlined by Dahl, such as its scope, means,
base, extension, etc.; but little would be gained by
such an extensive discussion. The base or resources
for power will be of great concern to us at a later time,
but it would benefit us little to include it in a long
list of other attributes at this time.

Rather let us proceed to distinguish power from
other terms which are often related, namely the concepts
of influence, authority, and dominance. Although power
has been well researched, the conceptual clarity of
terms has not been the most precise. For example,
Laswell and Kaplan (1950), although writing in Power and
Society, speak largely of influence and the use of
influence. Likewise, Gamson (1968) refers to potential
influence and active influence while leaving the term
"power" out of any analytic discussion of the subject.
Collins and Gutzkow (1964) speak of the difference
between states of power and acts of power. In sum, one
of the major differentiations to be made is that between

the possession of power and its use. For this distinction,

12

we shall follow Cartwright's (1960) terminology and
speak of power as the passive possession of the ability
and influence as the potential put to use in a concrete
situation.
The usefulness of this distinction is found when

the activation of power is at issue.

In summary, it is evident that the decision whether

to engage in an act of influence is complexly

determined and is governed by at least four con-

siderations: (a) the net advantage to the indi-

vidual in performing the act, (b) the consequences

of the act for the group, (c) the subjective

probability that the act will be successful, which

depends in part upon the individual's assessment

of his own power, and (d) the prospect of being

rewarded for fulfilling role expectations.

(Cartwright, 1960)
Since this study will be largely cross—sectional in
nature, actual influence attempts will not be analyzed.
The distinction remains important, however, in deter-
mining when those in power will use their power. Studies
have found the correlation between power.and influence
is between .8 and .9 in one study and .35 and .65 in
another. Further work needs to be done concerning
when the correlation will be high and when it will be
low.

Another concept often confused with power is

that of dominance. Although not generally used as
often as influence, dominance is employed regularly

in discussions of power structures. Thus the concept

of dominance implies a continued patterned response to

13

power over time and can best be understood in terms of
one of the six models of power proposed by March (1966).
In attempting to compile an exhaustive list of power sys-
tems, March outlines a basic six: chance, basic force,
force activation, force conditioning, force depletion,
and process. Without outlining each of these explicitly,
the force conditioning model is the closest to the state
of power dominance. Within this conception, actor B

is conditioned to respond positively to the influence
attempts by actor A over time. Thus a stimulus response
model is underlying this conception. It no longer
becomes necessary for A to convince and coerce compliance
from B in each attempt. The measurement of continuing
structures of community power rely on the concept of
dominance since, in such a complex interactive system,
only the large-scale power structures can be determined
with any accuracy. Such large-scale structures tend to
be the dominants in a community--hence the reliance on
this term.

A final concept often associated with power is
that of authority. As opposed to the concepts of
influence and dominance, the concept of authority was
elaborated by Weber (1946) along with the basic concept
of power. The additional element implied in the term
"authority" is the legitimacy of the command or attempt

at influence. Legitimacy is variously defined as the

l4

rightness, correctness, or normativeness of the command.
Although legitimacy is ordinarily based on a normative
system beyond the actors in the system, it is essen-
tially the shared agreement between the actors that A
has a basic right to command B at certain times to per-
form certain acts. This shared system can be used as
the sole resource for power without the necessity to
continually reinforce the compliance of B in the situ-
ation (Freund, 1968). Because of the continued and
patterned nature of authority, such systems tend to
create dominants; and dominants, through their ability
to maintain themselves in power, tend to create legiti-
macy systems surrounding their power. Often it is dif-
ficult to distinguish the two concepts except that

2 initially dominance is a time-dependent phenomenon

: where authority is a result of the support of those
being influenced because of election, appointment, or
some other agreed-upon method of selecting those with
power.

One final distinction in the elaboration of
power has been proposed by Gamson (1968). He sees an
essential difference in the use of power by those in
authoritative positions versus those not in such a
position. He refers to the latter as partisans, and
their use of power is termed influence. 0n the other

hand, authorities are those who have the capacity to

15

make binding decisions on the group, and their exercise
of power is termed social control. Again, in this
research, these distinctions will not contribute
directly to our use of power and influence, but men-
tioning these distinctions will limit the area which

this study is intended to encompass. As we have reviewed

rfl'

these studies, we are going to be speaking of power I'JL'
rather than influence. Power will be treated for the
most part in its dominant aspects as part of a continuing
structure of power. The individuals to use this power
will be partisans as opposed to authorities since no
regulatory or binding decisions can be made in the
research setting under investigation.

One final general consideration of power must
be discussed before moving to the specific hypotheses
relating this discussion to the research at hand. Pre-
viously we said that the bases or resources for power
were the only dimension, other than its total amount,
proposed by Dahl (1957) which had relevance to the sub-
ject at hand. Two basic perspectives emerge from the
two preceding forms of power structure, namely authority
and dominance. The first perspective is the functionalist
school previously identified with the nonzero-sum con-
ception of power. The basic assumption of the func- j
tionalist perspective is that power is a force within I

a social system used to attain scarce and valuable

 

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16

resources for the system as a whole. Thus the power
distribution is marked by consensus and legitimacy as
necessary and good for the maintenance of the system.
Power is accorded certain individuals since they will
use the power most wisely for the good of the whole
group, and the consensus is that, since those in power
should be in power, they confer the legitimacy of command
upon them. The functionalist argument for stratifi-
cation, the Davis-Moore (1945) hypothesis, is an argu-
ment along similar lines.

In direct contrast to the functionalist school
is the conflict school which holds exactly opposite
assumptions about the nature of power. In opposition
to the assumptions of consensus and legitimacy stand
the assumptions of conflict and dominance. When conflict
is taken as the basic process in society, the motivating
force for social action is the distribution of scarce
resources. Those who have a disproportionate share of
such possessions also maintain a dominant power position.
Simon (1953) expresses this view in a unique analytic
insight while attempting to define power. Though his
analysis may be open to question, he states that during
stable periods power can be operationally defined by
the respective value position of individuals or groups.
In unstable periods, power is equivalent to the value

potential of those same individuals. Thus he assumes a

17

high correlation between power and the values of the
system, equating control of the system with economic
and social dominance irrespective of authoritative
position. Thus the overall conception of power is one
of despotic self-interest with little or no normative
restraints on the use of power. Dahrendorf (1959),
Mills (1962), and Domhoff (1967) would be archetypes
of this school with property, authority, and prestige
as the respective bases of social power.

The perspective in this study will differ from
the preceding positions and utilize the exchange prin-
ciples of Homans (1961) and Blau (1964) in arriving at
power hypotheses. Thus the essential thesis will be as
stated by Homans

Social behavior is an exchange of goods, material
goods, but also non-material ones, such as symbols
of approval or prestige. Persons that give much

to others try to get much from them, and persons
that get much from others are under pressure to
give much to them. This process of influence tends
to work out at an equilibrium to a balance of the
exchanges. (Homans, 1961)

Thus, it is an open question whether the actors
share common goals or conflict over scarce resources.
The extent of their exchanging resources in harmony
or conflict is totally dependent on the situation.
Certain amounts of force conditioning and with it

legitimacy and dominance remain to stabilize and pro-

vide continuity to the system. These latter variables,

 

18

however, can be treated as variables along with the
other resources of wealth, honor, and status rather
than as the essential bedrocks of power. The exchange
concept utilizes the principles of rational economy,
remembering full well that individuals are far from
rational in many cases. In most cases as a guiding
principle, however, the concept of rationality should
stand in good stead throughout this analysis.

In conjunction with this conception, the resources
of power tend to fall into a three-way categorization.
Gamson's (1968) terminology of inducements, constraints,
and persuasion almost exactly parallels that of Etzioni's
(1961) remunerative, coercive, and normative resources.
This breakdown actually encompasses only two types of
resources, material and nonmaterial. Reward and coercion
are simply the positive-negative application of similar
resources depending on the resource position of the
person being influenced. The promise (or threat) of
an annual salary of $10,000 is dependent on an indi-
vidual's present salary and would be a reward or a
coercion dependent on that initial position. Persuasion
or normative resources, on the other hand, refer to the
manipulation of nonmaterial resources. For instance,
French and Raven (1959) outline three types of resources
for power other than reward and coercion. Their concept

Of legitimate power is authority as specified previously

19

where legitimacy is the prime basis for the influence
attempt. Expert power is the belief that the individual
making the influence attempt knows more so that his
commands should be heeded. Therefore, the individual
being influenced will acceed to his wishes in the
interest of performing the task correctly. A final
resource is referent power or that based on the identifi-
cation of B with A. In order to distinguish this type

of power from the reward or coercion one allows himself
to be directed simply on the desire to be like the indi-
vidual identified with. The individual making the
influence attempt promises no rewards or praise. The
attempt is successful based on the desire of B to be

like A in his behavior. Thus we have two types of
material resources, reward and coercion, and three types
of nonmaterial resources, legitimate, expert, and referent.
In this ensuing study, we will be able to test the
effects of all but one of these types of power.
Correlates of Voluntary Par-

tiCipation and'Community
Power

 

 

Up to this point, the discussion has been largely
definitional and typological, attempting to discover the
complexities and intricacies of the two areas of par-
ticipation and power. More time was obviously devoted
to the study of power because it is often the more

Variable and therefore the more interesting quantity

20

in research projects. We must now begin to pin these
concepts down by investigating the empirical record that
has been gathered in determining the factors associated
with increased social participation and social power.
In order to capsulize the discussion, we shall, perhaps
at some violence to the complexity of the subject matter,
restrict review to these most recent studies which sum-
marize past literature and perhaps contribute a new
awareness. The amount of material ignored in this
reduction is, of course, many times that included, but
we shall see that such archetypal studies provide suf-
ficient light to illuminate the direction we must take.

The participation studies that have developed
this theoretical area can be represented by the most
recent comprehensive treatment of social participation //
(Babchuk, 1969). Without intentionally slighting the
pioneering work of Chapin (1939) and Kamarovsky (1946)
and the follow-up studies of Hatt and Reiss (1951),
Rose (1954), Axelrod (1956), Maccoby (1958), and Rose
(1962), each of these early researchers have contributed
to a field which is contained in the cumulative work of
the latest studies.

Babchuk (1969) begins by outlining the many
functions which voluntary associations serve in this
society. Ranging from expressive activities and

personal interest to distributing power and supporting

the normati
uultiple re
zations as
participati
organizati<
agencies.
rakes the a
bility. p;
range of de
zations is
In
as the bes-
generally ,
residence,
eqUal rmmb
related.
the effECt
such part1
(1969) Con
these 91165
dimension

much needs

21

the normative order, these organizations offer individuals
multiple reasons for membership. The types of organi-
zations as well which are considered part of the social
participation scene range from churches and service
organizations to professional associations and community
agencies. The variety which such organizations present
makes the application of unified theory a near impossi-
bility. Perhaps because of such complexity, however, the
range of determinants for participation in such organi-
zations is equally varied.

In all studies, social class invariably emerges
as the best predictor of social participation. Other
generally accepted predictors are length of community
residence, marital status, home ownership, and sex. An
(equal number of areas remain that are not so clearly
related. The total time devoted to such participation,
the effect of community size, and the overall extent of
such participation are still much in doubt. Babchuk
(1969) contributes some well-documented findings to
these question areas and also adds a longitudinal
dimension to the question of participation which is
much needed.

The quality and findings of such research
endeavors is indeed high. We would be mistaken, how-
ever, to assume that such studies have relevance to the

subject at hand, namely participation in community

 

decision-naki
participation
tested which
renting the p
cornunity ass
the process c
Toqueville (l
the effects c
process itsel
Validity COIlC
ticipation,

t0 the oft-re
that its Cit:
“rough thei
The area. fo

 

 

the reStilts

 

CEIt

zational Phe
dieting out;I

g.

(1963). He I

aw .
C‘lvlty or-

I

 

mmailers a

yersonnel s

 

22

decision-making. Along with some minor lacunae in the
participation research, a major hypothesis needs to be
tested which has received scant attention. While docu-
menting the participation of individuals in the varied
community associations, little has been done to complete
the process of political accountability proposed by
Toqueville (1945) and Kornhauser (1959) and to evaluate
the effects of these organizations on the political
process itself. Although we have great predictive
validity concerning the extent of an individual's par-
ticipation, we have little empirical evidence to add
to the oft-repeated thesis of the pluralist society
that its citizens participate in the political process
through their voluntary organizational memberships.
The area, formally called interorganizational relations,
has only recently begun to attract exploratory research.
A great deal needs to be done before this area can claim
the results of participation at the individual level.
Certain macrological studies of interorgani-
zational phenomena have shown considerable power in pre-
dicting outcomes of community decision-making. The
fiirst.attempt in this area was made by Amos Hawley
(11’63). He developed a measure of interorganizational
aCtivity on the community level through a ratio of
managers and professional personnel to working class

personnel in a community (MPG ratio). Hawley's

If]

 

hypothesis in
the concenti
the greater
could be mat
efficiency ;
Hawley's del
Nevertheles:
lower the M
in the urba
inss that p
SYStEmiC pr
t0 indiVidu
A re-
the 1ev91 c
detel’mines
around a ne
extra local

of POVerty

Turk COnClL

both Withir
conditiOn V
on Such a I
intErOrganj
aside from

through hi

23

hypothesis was that the lower the MPO ratio, the higher
the concentration of power in the community, and hence
the greater efficiency with which community decisions
could be made. The link between the decision-making
efficiency and the acceptance of urban renewal programs,
Hawley's dependent indicator, may be open to question.
Nevertheless, he found that across 197 communities the
lower the MPO ratio, the further the community proceeded
in the urban renewal process. [He argues from these find-
ings that participation and power in the community are
systemic properties which are not necessarily reducible
to individual relations.]

A more direct approach (Turk, 1970) discusses
the level of local and extra-community integration which
determines the establishment of an organizational network
around a new poverty effort. The extent of local and
extra local integration, in fact, controlled the effects
of poverty demand in the establishment of such an agency.
[Turk concludes that the interorganizational network,
both within and outside the community, is a pre-existing
condition which is necessary for community c00peration
on such a topic. Turk also concludes that the use of
interorganizational phenomena as independent predictors
aside from individual sources of variation was established

through his and the research of others.

 

AS E
relations cc
comunity ir
interaction
vidual.

In 1
interorgani:

making, the:

(They suggest

with each 01
comunity mg
nunity decis
outline the
Pation is C;
direction 0;
making.

0th
the actual

I’IUCI’) mOre t

 

24

As a result, some analyses of interorganizational
relations concentrate on the internal structures of one
community in attempts to distinguish the levels of
interaction and mechanisms which interact on the indi-
vidual.

In response to the question of the effects of
interorganizational relations on community decision-
making, these studies are perhaps the most instructive.

[They suggest that the interpenetration of organizations
with each other is a precondition for cooperation on
community matters and, hence, a precondition for com-
munity decision-making. Although such studies do not
outline the specific mechanisms by which such partici-
pation is carried out, they at least point in the
direction of organizational influences on decision-
making.

Other studies of a more intensive nature into
the actual workings of a community, however, do not add
much more to the question of organizations participating
in community decisions. (For instance, Aiken and Hage
(1968) have outlined the type of organizations most
likely to engage in joint programming. By the same
token, Levine and White (1961) postulated, but did not
rigorously test, the exchange conception as a pre-
dictor of interorganizational cooperation. Their

analysis included the resources of clients, personnel,

 

and funds whi
zations to re
(1962) lookec
as a type of
sith no impli
a cornunity I
to the power
rated too 0:
OPposed to u1
Organizatione

Parti
should perha;
section With
”‘3 receive 1'
forms 0f con:
study. This

(1953), Seek

munity which

techniqUe is

 

 

25

and funds which must be shared and exchanged for organi-
zations to remain viable. Finally, Litwak and Hylton
(1962) looked at the role of cooperative funding ventures
as a type of interorganizational cooperation, but again
with no implications for organizations participating on

a community problem area. As we shall see with respect
to the power studies, all participation behavior concen-
trated too often on the individual level of behavior as
opposed to utilizing these insights in the design of
organizationally based research.

Participation on the community decision level
should perhaps be more appropriately treated in con-
nection with the community power studies. Unfortunately,
we receive little aid from one of the most prevalent
forms of community studies, the reputational power
study. This methodology, pioneered by Floyd Hunter
(1953), seeks to determine those individuals in a com-
munity which possess the greatest amount of power. The
technique is essentially cross-sectional and singularly
uninterested in the actual use of such power in concrete
decision-making situations. Therefore, such studies
have little or nothing to say about the participation
rates of any sector of the community within an actual
decision.

The other major methodology of measuring com-

munity power, the decision method, pays explicit

'5

”"7

7.,- -

 

attention to
decisions.
variable in
the populati
have partici
decisions be
are on the w
powerful and
ilong with o
(hnon, 1963
determine wh
who do not p
tact the lat
would be up
:59 Interorr;
0f t
0f community
mlthe Part1
mine the for
Odtim is Sr

in ,
““9 Circuit

 

ldted fOr t
information
9t 31- (196

metIlOd wi ti.

26

attention to the participation of individuals in various
decisions. Such participation is, however, less a
variable in the study than a precondition which defines
the population to be investigated. All individuals who
have participated in a pre-selected set of community
decisions become the subjects in the study. Those who
are on the winning side of the decision are rated as
powerful and those on the losing side as not as powerful.
Along with other problems associated with this method
(Anton, 1963), this technique does not allow us to
determine who the participants are relative to those

who do not participate since no attempt is made to con-
tact the latter or to test any hypothesis concerning who
would be expected to participate.

The Interorganizational
Perspective

 

 

Of these two common techniques in the measurement
of community decision-making, none offers any information
on the participants in the actual decisions which deter-
mine the form and shape of the community. Such infor-
mation is sorely needed, however, in order to complete
the circuit of accountability and representation postu-
lated for the pluralist society. The most pertinent
information has been provided in a study by Freeman
et a1. (1963) which attempted to compare the decision

method with the reputational method in the same

27

community. He found that the two methods agreed only
33% of the time when choosing 32 top community leaders.
Increasing this percentage of agreement is a major factor
when we turn to the measurement of power; but for the
present the only significance of finding is that, for
the most part, those reputed to have the most power in
the community either do not participate in its decisions
or do not emerge victorious from such participation.
Since most community studies allude to a two—tier model
of community participants, such as policy makers and
policy executors (Hunter, 1953), professionals and citi—
zens (Dahl, 1960), and institutional leaders and
effectors (Freeman, 1963), this lack of agreement is

not surprising. The problem is, however, that the model
does not explain the characteristics of the individuals
in each category,namely who will participate in com-
munity decisions and who will not. The most important
point missing is, in fact, the relationship between
these two groups. One group appears to set policy

while another appears to carry out that policy through
actual community participation. The exact relation
between these groups has heretofore eluded researchers.
These questions remain deSpite the large number of par-
ticipation studies carried on in the community. Perhaps
the question must be answered with another question,

namely who has the power in the community? The

 

participati

by the powe

Correlates
Res
opposite pr
glut of stL
answers. ’1
measuring c
the power 5
Correlatior
been too st
Such disag;
Studies see
power Stru<
In
attEnpted .
two InEthod
from their
while not
were gerier
did Partic
tested the
with Ithe F
the Parti,

 

28

participation of individuals could well be determined

by the power and influence structure of the community.

Correlates of Community Power

 

Research on this question suffers from the
opposite problem of participation research, namely a
glut of studies which purport to provide definitive
answers. The reputational and decision methods of
measuring community power produced different models of
the power structure in the communities studied. The
correlation between method and outcome, in fact, has
been too strong to be ignored (Walton, 1966). With
such disagreement over the results, neither of these
studies seems to be able to accurately describe the
power structure in a community.

In Freeman's (1963) study, however, the researchers
attempted to increase the level of agreement between the
two methods by capitalizing on one finding which emerged
from their study. It seemed that reputational leaders,
while not participating themselves in the decisions,
were generally the leaders of those organizations which
did participate. With this lead, Freeman formulated and
tested the hypothesis "that reputation should correspond l,fi
with the participation rate of organizations rather than
the participation rates of individuals." Thus the {yJ

measures of participation in decisions were recalculated

 

by includin<
organizatim
zation. Th;
pent betwee:
of all poss.
Suc‘
these two g.
lock to the
the resolut
methods but
types of C0:
greater Wei
In
Power measu
an lndePQndl
0f interOrg
COImunity I“
pOSltions I;
Extracted 2

in three 01

 

as intel-Or,
were Patch
dram frOr
measureS C
were Cons:

One Exp 1 an

29

by including the participation of all members of an
organization in the score for the leader of that organi-
zation. This changed doubled the percentage of agree-
ment between reputational and decision methods to 65%

of all possible agreements.

Such a dramatic increase in the similarity of
these two generally contradictory measures leads one to
look to the organizational base of power as not only
the resolution of the discrepancy between these two
methods but also the possible link between these two
types of community leaders. Another study lends even
greater weight to this developing hypothesis.

In an attempt to avoid the pitfalls of these
power measures, Perucci and Pilisuk (1970) developed
an independent measure of power based on the structure
of interorganizational interaction. From a list of all
community members who held executive or policy-making
positions with any organization in the community, they
extracted 26 individuals (2%) who held such positions
in three or more organizations and whom they identified
as interorganizational leaders (IOL). These leaders
were matched with a comparable set of leaders (OL)
drawn from the remaining 98% and compared on all
measures of power. The interorganizational leaders
were consistently more powerful than the matched set.

One explanation for this difference, however, may simply

 

1F»?
il

have been
organizati
study shox
leaders f:
through t
respectiv
organizat
resource
with eacl
other im
mmmer 0:
Consiste
Socially
imply th
Viduals
fUlfill
individ‘
on any
nuprr
netwOrk
on the
is One
much me
QEnQral
Angther

carriEH

30

have been exposure because of participation in more
organizations. In testing such a possibility, this
study showed that a subset of interorganizational
leaders formed a closed sociometric resource network
through the interlocking positions which they held on
respective boards. This last group of eleven inter-
organizational leaders were called interorganizational
resource leaders (IORL) because of their close contact
with each other on these boards. In comparison with
other interorganizational leaders, all with the same
number of organizational memberships, the IORL was again
consistently higher on reputed power and were even more
socially homogeneous. From these findings, the authors
imply that power is not attributable as much to indi-
viduals as it is to the roles which those individuals
fulfill in their respective organizations. Since these
individuals could command considerable more resources

on any community decision than any other comparable
number of individuals and since the closed nature of the
network suggested that those resources would be utilized
on the same side of any issue, the distinct impression
is one of organizational resources determining power
much more than the various personal characteristics
generally hypothesized as determinants of power.

Another benefit of this method is that it can be

carried on without interference in the community or

 

relying on
nonreactive
the respond

Wha
to the prob
previously?
studies dep
power study
similar con
ation expla
butions, is
completely
another for
we Shall as
Affiliatior
and power 3

The

dSsUming t

 

Sis Speaks
OppOSed t( I

I
Simply ut:_|
ceptiOn 0'

‘ relations

' Contains

‘.
I ~ A
’2‘...

 

/"

31

relying on the possible biases of informants. Such
nonreactive measures are always a welcome relief in
the respondent-dependent measures of sociology.

What is the point of these studies in relation
to the problems of participation and power alluded to
previously? Both Freeman's (1963) and Perrucci's (1970)
studies depart from the usual type of participation and
power study. Therefore, that they both arrive at
similar conclusions, namely that organizational affili-
ation explains participation rates and power distri-
butigns, is remarkable in that their methodologies are
completely different and they do not depend upon one
another for support. With such evidence, therefore,
we shall assume as our major focus that organizational i_§-
affiliation will have measurable effects on participationfi‘
and power in community decision making.

The implications of these assumptions for the

problems raised earlier are many. First of all,

assuming the organization as the primary unit of analy-

,1 AAHLfl-..\..——x_-_.m.. a.“ "M“

sis speaks more to the structure of the community as
opposed to conceiving of the community as a set of
face-to-face interactions, the organizational approach
simply utilizes the next level of analysis. The con- '>

ception of the community as a set of interorganizationai
relations, though not well researched to this point, f

I

contains more rational appeal.

A s
approach is
participat:
cormunity :
both volun'
When an is:
or at leas
sentatives
zations. I
to be a re.
not do jus

A
SPeCtive i
CorrelateS
ing a rati
(which is
behavior) '
more predi
a“tempted
zational k

f SubSYs1
uncertaim
are fifiled
individua

Date, as

whether 0

Ships, T

I

 

32

A second advantage of the organizational
approach is that it obviates the problem of limiting
participation to voluntary organizations. When the
community is conceived of in terms of all organizations,
both voluntary and work organizations are included.

When an issue is raised for decision, all organizations,
or at least those affected, will include their repre-
sentatives whether they be work or voluntary organi-
zations. Confining the analysis to either group seems
to be a reduction in the field of inquiry which does
not do justice to the subject matter.

A third advantage to the organizational per—
spective is that it lays a better foundation for the
correlates on participation in decision-making. Assum-
ing a rational economic model for organizational behavior
(which is more accurate that it would be for individual
behavior), participation for organizations is made much
more predictable. Among others, Hickson (1971) has
attempted to justify the open systems model of organi-
zational behavior in which the organization is composed
of subsystems, each coping with its designated area of
uncertainty. Participation rates in such a conception
are fixed, according to Hickson, "for subunits, unlike
individuals, are not free to make a decision to partici-
pate, as March and Simon (1958) put it, nor to decide
whether or not to come together in political relation-

ships. They must. They exist to do so."

 

Let
spective. C
Therefore, a
that communi
the individi
accurately,
their organ:
families, f]
The organize
tary; yet i‘
individual
BY the same
Vehicle by
of the com
a commit}
to affect 1
affect the
tatives as
of POWBr t

ACCOIding

 

leaders Wl
mandate S;
SEntativecl
zatior1 Wit
dSpect Of I

aCCOrd anc.

 

33

Let us examine a community through the same per-
spective. Organizations are the subunits of a community.
Therefore, a collective community decision will affect
that community's organizations more than it will affect
the individual community residents. Or to put it more
accurately, community decisions affect individuals in
their organizational roles much more than in their
families, friendships, or self-determined behaviors.

The organizational roles may be work-related or volun-
tary; yet it will be through the organization that the
individual feels the impact of a particular decision.

By the same token, the organization will provide the
vehicle by which the individual can affect the decisions
of the community. Therefore, organizations affected by
a community decision cannot do otherwise than attempt

to affect that decision. Such an impulse will in turn
affect the behavior of that organization's represen-
tatives as to the extent of participation and the amount
of power they are able to exert on the decisions.
According to the previous discussion, organizational
leaders will set general policy and in critical cases,
mandate specific actions, while organizational repre-
sentatives, those individuals attached to the organi-
zation with the specific task of dealing with that
aspect of the organization's environment, will act in

accordance with that policy or mandate.

Ano
organizatio
of particip
vidual's ro
referred to
At the same
viduals att
and even so
to fulfill
vation or s
€Xperience.

The
zational p4
the elitis.
Each has b
mine 213 c
the Power
power, how
the temir
the baSic
the OUT-co:

have bGen I

 

I
(201185.3th

some OIde

as the ac

 

34

Another equally important advantage of the
organizational perspective is that it reduces the variety
of participatory behavior to some function of the indi-
vidual's role specifications. We have previously
referred to the voluntary bias in participation studies.
At the same time, we are well aware that certain indi-
viduals attend committee meetings, community discussions,
and even social gatherings more out of the necessity
to fulfill role prescriptions than any internal moti-
vation or satisfaction derived from the participation
experience.

The fifth and final advantage of the organi-
zational perspective is the long-awaited resolution of
the elitist and pluralist conceptions of community power.
Each has been,for these many years, attempting to deter-
mine thg community power structure, if any, or at least
the power distribution. The preliminary discussion on
power, however, identified the confusion which surrounds
the terminology associated with this issue. Along with
the basic concept of power as the probability to affect
the outcomes of cognition, affection, and behavior, we
have been able to identify three other terms which have
consistently been used in its place, some with justifi-
cation, some without. In the interest of establishing
some order in this field, we have identified influence

as the active use of power, authority as the legitimate

35

use of power, and dominance as the continued use of
power. If we have three separate concepts, however,

it would be entirely possible to posit three variables
operative in a community depending on the emphasis on
activity, legitimacy, or continuity. Three methods of
measuring power structure, including the positional
which has been considered the least valid of the three
for sociological analysis, actually chart the community
according to these three concepts. The reputational
measure, which claims to describe an elitist structure
which influences all community decisions, is actually
measuring those individuals who tend to be dominant or
which are part of a dominance structure. Secondly, the
decision method concentrates on the actual decisions
made and the participation in those decisions--in other
words, those actively using influence. The decisions
method often, therefore, describes the pluralistic
influence structure of the community. Finally, the
positional method, generally the method of political
science studies, investigates those with popular support
in the community through legitimate elections or appoint-
ments. A third structure is therefore delineated,
namely the authority structure or the use of legitimate
power. We thus have three methods, reputational,
decisional, and positional, which, far from being in

contradiction, are simply measuring different variables

36

in community decision making; dominance, influence, and
authority respectively. They can all claim to measuring
power, but in its various forms and aspects.

This insight is also consistent with the organi-
zational perspective of the community proposed above.
If we assume that community decisions have their major
effect on organizations and on individuals in their
organizational roles, then it will be the organizations
and their actions which will determine the three types
of power structures in the community. The positional
structure will be determined by the authority of organi-
zational leaders over the members in the organization.
The extent of authority and its relevance to the complete
community structure will be a function of the number of
individuals affected by such authority and the scope of
actions covered. For instance, a mayor affects a large
number of community residents but the scope of behavior
which he controls is circumscribed by the legal system
and the community budget. Conversely, the top manage-
ment of a corporation may control only a few individuals
but their livelihood depends directly on that corporation.

A similar structure can be developed for the use
of power in the community, namely the influence structure.
Those organizations most affected by community decisions
will participate more consistently in the formation of

community policy. The more open an organization is to

37

such an environment, the more likely it will be to

support full-time individuals to deal with that environ-
ment. Such individuals will form the influence structure
as continuous participants and active power users in
community decision-making. My

The dominance structure of the community will be
made up of those individuals who have great authority ‘J
in the community and are simultaneously affected by
and therefore motivated to participate in community
decisions. Such leaders may also form themselves into
a closed resource network as discovered by Perucci
(1970), but such a network does not follow deductively
from the theory.

With a further elaboration of this analysis, the
relationships between these separate power structures
could be further specified and operationalized. Unfor-
tunately, this study cannot purport to test this con-
ception. Because of its limited sc0pe, we must confine
ourselves to testing only corrolaries of this theory
in a limited setting. Since the interdependency of
organizations and the extent to which organizations
are affected by community decisions has been increasing
(Litwak & Hylton, 1962), a new organizational form
has been found appropriate in some communities to handle
certain continuing issue areas. This form of inter-

organizational exchange is called the coordinating

 

council, an
focus. Altl
are often 5'
skeletal. '
is simply t
organizatio:
decision-ma
zational di‘
proposed ab

To
Classical :2
individual
making. ,4,
Organizatir
Participat:
in such de
a ”iCrocos:
ind'iVidUal I
should ref

organiZati

 

Of the Far
required '

Study. Gr

. F
Zdthnal C

 

I
of that S'

38

council, an organization with an interorganizational
focus. Although the budgets afforded such agencies
are often substantial, the permanent staff is often
skeletal. The overriding purpose of the organization
is simply to provide a forum for community or inter—
organizational exchange of information and community
decision-making. Such an agency with its interorgani-
zational dimension may partially validate the theory
pr0posed above.

To briefly summarize the previous argument:
Classical participation and power studies focused on
individual behavior and power in community decision—
making. More recent studies have pointed to the inter-
organizational network as the prime determinant of
participation in decisions and the influence exercised
in such decisions. If coordinating agencies are in fact
a microcosm or open forum for this process, then the
individual behavior and power in such organizations
should reflect the role of a representative of an
organization rather than the individual characteristics
of the participant. Although further specification is
required, this statement is the overall intent of this
study. Granted it does not test the complete organi-
zational character of community decision-making, it does
attempt to assess the impact of a deductive corrolary

of that system.

39

Hypothesis

 

In order to distinguish the respective depen-
dent variables in this overall hypothesis, we would
look first to the importance which the organization
places on an individual representative's participation.
{&hus we are conceiving of the individual participant as
essentially a representative attending because of the
organization's interest in the proceedings and outcomesli
The exact degree of importance, however, may not be
communicated to the representative. Perhaps a more
suitable measure would be the importance which the
individual himself attached to his participation as a
representative of the organization. Although this
variable is more social-psychological and therefore less
a structural role prescription, we should discover a
closer relationship because the perceptions of the
representative would have direct effects on his behavior.
The major hypothesis of participation would therefore

read as follows:

Hypothesis A-l:

 

An individual's participation in the coordinating
agency will be associated with the extent to which
he perceives his participation as important to

the organization he represents.

In order to compare the relative strength of

this factor with the more traditional factors of social

40

participation, we shall construct three more hypotheses
which will cover some of the more common individual
explanations.

The first of these alternative hypotheses will
be the attraction hypothesis based upon Homan's (1961)
hypothesized relationship between liking and social
interaction. In other words, an individual's attraction
to the agency would be expected to strongly correlate
with his participation. Because of the relatively
isolated units and hence reduced organizational inter-
action within this agency, individuals have little
knowledge or feeling for the agency as a whole. There-
fore, the basis for this hypothesis will be the committee

which the individual is more intimately associated with.

Hypothesis A-Z:

 

An individual's participation in the coordinating

agency will be associated with the extent to which

he is attracted to the committee on which he serves.

The final two comparative hypotheses for par-

ticipation depend on the accumulated research on par-
ticipation in voluntary associations (Babchuk, 1969).
The popular conception of participation in such coordi-
nating agencies is quite close to the ideal typical
voluntary participation. In other words, such par-

ticipation contains all the emotional connotations of

charity, volunteerism, good of the community, generally

41

associated with more traditional types of volunteer
participation. Therefore, we shall use the prime pre—
dictor of such participation as the independent variable

in the second alternate hypothesis, namely social status.

Hypothesis A-3:

 

An individual's participation in the coordinating
agency will be associated with his social status.
Although social status is the best predictor of

such behavior, it is by no means the only determinant.
The extensive list of the generally agreed upon factors
was presented above. Rather than test each one of those
factors, however, we shall determine how similar par-
ticipation in the coordinating agency is to other forms
of social participation. Therefore, the final compara-
tive hypothesis will relate participation in this agency

to all other forms of participation.

Hypothesis A-4:

 

An individual's participation in the coordinating

agency will be associated with his participation

in other non work—related organizations.
Through this hypothesis, whatever the factors for volun-
tary participation may be, they will be compared with
the organizational hypothesis through their predication
of participation in voluntary associations.

LThus the major hypothesis to be tested in this

study is the relation between participation in a

42

coordinating agency and the importance an individual
attaches to his role as a representative of an organi-
zation.] The remaining three hypotheses are meant to
encompass, in a general way, related theories of social
participation in order to gauge the relative strength
of the organizational hypothesis.

This study also contains another important
dependent variable in the form of power. As before,
it would be impossible to test the complete concept of
related power structures presented above. Another cor-
rollary follows from the theory, however, that the power
of the organization has significant effects on the power
of the individual within the coordinating agency. We
must be clear, however, what type of power we are
measuring. we would expect that those who participate
in the activities of the coordinating agency and have
power in that organization to be part of the community-
wide structure, were we to test the complete community.
This hypothesis is developed from that theory, however,
since the organizational component should offer the indi-
vidual his main power resource. The concept closest to
that which we can measure will be influence, even though
individual decisions are not analyzed. In fact, the
members of each individual's committee will rate each
other member on the value of his contribution. Since

the judgments are based upon actual input and simply

43

not reputations for power, the influence concept of
power is the most appropriate. We shall therefore

report the major power hypothesis accordingly.

Hypothesis B-l:

 

An individual's influence in the coordinating

agency will be directly related to the influence

of the organizations he represents.

Alternative hypotheses will again be related to
this major hypothesis to test its relative strength.
The first type of alternative hypothesis will relate
interpersonal resources for power, as discussed above,
to an individual's influence in the coordinating agency.
French and Raven (1959) propose five such bases of
influence. Reward power and coercive power are the
first two of their resources. Such resources, however,
cannot be applied in this situation since individuals
are involved in resource exchange primarily through
their respective organizations. Rarely does anyone on
the committee meet with or speak with other members
outside committee meetings. Therefore, the reward and
coercive aspects of power are contained in the major
hypothesis.
A second resource for power is legitimacy. Much

research (Raven & French, 1959; Torrance, 1955; French &
Snyder, 1959; Bass & Wurster, 1953) has supported the

position that the formal conferral of leadership on

44

individuals in small groups acts as a power resource
which can be used in successful influence attempts.
Unfortunately, this source of influence cannot be
evaluated in this research because of the small number
of individuals with authority in the agency. The govern-
ing Board has such power, but rarely do board members
interact with other members of the agency. Likewise,
each committee has a chairman, but that is only one
individual among 20 or 30, hardly a sufficient number
to test hypotheses. Therefore, we must exclude legiti-
mate power from this analysis.

A fourth resource identified by French and Raven
(1959) was expert power. Classic experiments by Haimon
(1949) and Levinger (1959) have shown the powerful
effects of perceived competence on individual influence.
The coordinating aSpect of the agency makes the possession
and use of information a particularly appropriate resourCe
for influence. Thus the amount of expertise possessed
by each individual will be used as an interpersonal

resource for influence.

Hypothesis B-2:

 

An individual's influence in the coordinating agency
is directly related to his task-specific expertise.
A final interpersonal resource identified by
French and Raven was the extent to which individual B

identified with individual A. Other than the rewards

45

that are to be derived from such identification in terms
of positive affect and regard, an individual will accede
to another's influence if that person perceived the
individual attempting the influence as like himself.
Such a condition is akin to the studies which have shown
that liking can also be a means of influence (Lippit,
1952; Hurwitz et al., 1953; Borgatta & Bales, 1956;
Hollander & Webb, 1955). Therefore, we shall include
this resource as well among the relative interpersonal

resources 0

Hypothesis B-3:

 

An individual's influence in the coordinating agency

will be directly related to the extent to which

members of the agency identify with the individual.

One final resource for influence in such a group

is the consistent relationship between extent of partici-
pation and power in small groups. A number of studies
have supported the strong positive relationship (Collins,
1960; Caudill, 1958; Blau & Scott, 1962). Most studies,
however, report only the number of communications
initiated (Collins & Geutzkow, 1964) since attendance
at such meetings is assumed. Because of the large
variance in attendance in this type of agency, the whole
range of participation will be included in this hypothe-

sis.

46

Hypothesis B-4:

 

An individual's influence in the coordinating agency
will be directly related to the extent to which he
participates in the meetings of the agency.

Thus the major hypotheses for this study are
related to the two dependent variables, participation
and power. Each dependent variable is related to a
major organizational variable. Thus we expect that the
organizational environment of a coordinating agency,
in particular, will have distinct effects on the behavior
of individual participants. Specifically, the importance
which the participant places on his participation will
be expected to increase that participation. Likewise,
the reward and coercive types of power are expressed in
terms of organizational power outside the coordinating
agency. Both hypotheses are compared to the classical
correlates of voluntary participation and interpersonal
power. With these types of hypotheses included, not
only can the significance of the major hypotheses be
tested, but their relative strength of explanation can
be analyzed.

The following chapter will attempt to oper-
ationalize these variables so that the hypotheses can
be empirically tested. Throughout this analysis, which
may become confused because of the different dependent

variables and different types of hypotheses, we shall

47

retain the order begun in this chapter, namely dealing
completely with the participation hypotheses before
moving on to the power hypothesis in each chapter.

Within each section, likewise, we shall treat the
organizational hypotheses first before reviewing the
comparative hypotheses in each section. Hopefully, the
logic of the analysis will then be evident with a minimum

of difficulty.

CHAPTER II

METHOD

Data for this study were collected in conjunction
with a demonstration project designed to increase consumer
participation in comprehensive health planning. The par-
ticular agency under study is responsible for a three-
county region surrounding a medium-size city in the Mid-
west. Comprehensive health planning in this region is
largely an attempt to bring some type of order and
coordination into the health delivery system. Some of
its major programs have been to design an experimental
health delivery system, establish a family health center
for Model Cities residents, and implement a priority
ranking system for capital budgeting decisions. However,
these major programs had little community impact since
the experimental health delivery system was not funded,
the family health center closed after the design grant
expired, and the need for a capital budgeting manual was
usurped by the State Certificate of Need regulations

for capital expenditures.

48

49

Aside from devising new programs, this agency
provides review and comment functions for Federally
funded health programs in its region. The pressure of
funding deadlines is generally so strong, however, that
the review process is either shortened to meet the dead-
lines or completed following the funding decisions. One
major impact of review and comment was to assist in pre-
venting a major University from establishing a clinical
facility in conjunction with its new medical school.
This decision resulted in the University's establishing
a closer working relationship with the community facili-
ties for advanced training of medical students. Gen-
erally, however, the agency simply approves a program
and lends some community support to its implementation.

Another major outcome of the review and comment
process is to keep interested individuals and the organi-
zations they represent informed of recent developments
in the health care system. The measurable outcomes of
this function are few, but the supporters claim that
increased exposure also increases the coordination of
these programs. Even though the assumption that aware-
ness is a sufficient condition of coordination would be
open to question, the trademark of the health planning
effort is continuing discussion of recent events and
programs. For this reason, the classic organizational

model of goal-directed behavior and rational means-ends

50

logic fails to describe this agency. Given that its
focus is the coordination of existing organizations
without the legislative reserves of a governmental body,
this agency acts largely as a clearinghouse for infor-
mation and an arena for the public negotiations between
health groups. Thus the interorganizational model pro-
posed by Litwak and Hylton (1962) has been adopted as a
more descriptive of this agency's activities.

The membership of the agency is drawn from the
full range of organizations and community groups which
could benefit from this on-going discussion. The only
two restrictions for membership is that consumers, those
not engaged in health as an occupation, constitute at
least 51% of the membership and that they reflect the
demographic and organizational characteristics of the
community.

The organization is administered by a Board of
Trustees with 45 members which has final authority in
all matters. Fifteen members of the Board also serve
as an Executive Committee which meets monthly in place
of the Board and which can take actions in its place.
Five standing committees perform the preliminary
functions of program design, review, and comment before
recommending action to the Board. Each committee is
ideally to meet monthly but only two even approximate

that goal. Any member who wishes may serve on more than

51

one committee and Board members frequently hold con—
current membership on planning committees. Committee
chairmen, in fact, are automatically Board members.

In all, 23 members belong to more than one group in the
agency.

The consumer participation project, the overall
grant for this paper, proceeded through many stages of
approval at the local level prior to final approval by
the agency on 15 July 1971. Prior to the approval date,
work had begun on constructing a pre-experimental survey
to be administered to all agency members. This instru-
ment was designed to test many factors related to par-
ticipation and influence in the agency and will be used
as the primary source of data for this study. A draft
of this survey was pre-tested in the South Central
Michigan Planning Council serving Battle Creek, Kalama-
zoo, and surrounding counties on 5 and 6 August 1971.
Volunteers from the Board of Trustees in this agency
consented to be interviewed by members of the research
team. The purpose of the pre-test was to evaluate the
clarity of the items and the best method of administer-
ing the instrument. As a result of this pre-test and
with the consultation of many professors at Michigan
State University, the final survey format was completed
on 13 August 1971.

The survey consisted of three main sections and

took approximately one hour to complete. In the first

52

section, the interviewer asked the respondent questions
concerning the influence of various groups in the agency,
his level of information and knowledge about CHP, the
organization he represented and other organizational
affiliations. The respondent was then asked to complete
a self-administered portion of the survey which included
general attitudes about comprehensive health planning
and this particular agency, a powerlessness scale, a
rating of organizational influence in the community,
an identification of problem areas, an assignment of
various tasks to groups within the agency, and demographic
information. The third section consisted of the respondent
identifying individuals from a list of agency members and
describing the frequency of communication with each.
For the individual members of his own committee, the
respondent was asked to agree or disagree with statements
concerning the member's activity in the committee and
also to identify the organization which each member
represented. In all, 169 separate variables were included
in this survey, some of which were re-coded and scaled
for further analysis.

The final survey was administered to 98 indi-
viduals (78% of 125 possible) from 17 August through 30
September 1971. The complete agency list was randomly
divided between the two principal researchers who con-

ducted all the interviews. The interviewers operated

53

independently with frequent meetings to discuss problems
with the survey during this period. At the annual meet-
ing of the agency on 30 September 1971, 16 new members
were added to the agency. One of the researchers inter-
viewed 13 of these recent arrivals during the month of
October bringing the total number of respondents to 111
(78% of 141 possible).

The bulk of this chapter is designed to provide
a detailed analysis of the operational measures for the
hypothesized variables along with a discussion of the
research design and the instrumentation in general.
Since the list of measures is long and since the analy-
sis of each one's characteristics could well be tedious,
let us first discuss the general outline of the review of
this material. We have already established that this
study concerns two major dependent variables: par-
ticipation and influence in a coordinating agency.
Therefore the remaining part of this chapter will be
divided according to these two major topic areas.

Because the dependent variables (participation
and influence) form the basic division of this study,
they will be treated first in each section. An expla-
nation of the operational definition for each dependent
variable will be given along with a description of the
variable's range and measures of central tendency.

When two or more operational definitions are used to

54

measure the abstract concept, the correlations between
the different measures will be presented to conclude
each treatment.

Following each dependent variable to be explained,
each hypothesis will be presented containing the inde-
pendent variable to be discussed. Each measure for the
independent variables will then be discussed in the same
manner, explaining the origin of the measure and an
analysis of the distribution. Within each section, those
measures derived from the organizational perspective
will be presented first.

After each variable has been operationalized,
the measures of association and tests of significance
for the analysis of the results will then be treated.
Correlations will be reported throughout this chapter
relating the dependent and independent measures among
themselves. The meaning of these correlations will be
explained in the section following their use. Although
such a presentation is out of order, it will more clearly
follow the logical order of the methods chapter.

Participation: Dependent
Measures

 

 

One of the two major concepts analyzed in this
study is that of social participation. Generally such
studies are carried on throughout the whole community

or social strata so that simple membership or general

55

measures of involvement are standard measurement tech-
niques. Since this study is focused on only one organi-
zation, however, much sharper and more precise measures
are both necessary and possible. Thus the measures of
social participation used in this study concentrate on
actual meeting attendance and the verbal interaction
which takes place within such meetings.

Since the survey was administered between 13
August and 30 September 1971, attendance figures were
calculated to include the time period from six months
before the inception of the survey to six months follow-
ing its completion. The dates for attendance would be
therefore 1 February 1971 through 31 March 1972, a
14-month period. Again because of the centrality of
the participation variable, the operationalizing of this
variable cannot be left to only one operational definition.

The first of these measures is the simple raw
total of meetings attended. Although most committees
were nominally expected to meet once a month, the median
attendance during this period was only two meetings.
Such a figure, however, does not accurately reflect the
complete attendance pattern of the agency since it is
highly skewed toward the 22% who never attended a meeting
during that period and the 16% who only attended once.
Therefore, although more than half the members attended

two meetings or less, this figure simply represents the

56

fact that a significant portion of the members were
chronic nonattenders. The range of high attenders, of
course, is much broader, ranging to a maximum of 24
meetings.

Although all committees had similar meeting
schedules in theory, the actual rates of committee
meeting varied considerably. The least active com-
mittee, in fact, only met three times during the 14
months. The Executive Committee, on the other hand,
which made policy decisions in place of the Board of
Trustees, met 16 times during the same period. There-
fore, some of the differences in total number of meetings
attended was a direct result of the individual committee
schedules. A second measure of participation, percent
of meetings attended or attendance rate, was therefore
developed to account for this variation. The overall
attendance rate also documented low meeting attendance
with a median rate of 28%. Such a figure is again
weighted by the considerable number, 22%, who had zero
attendance rate. With over half of the agency members
attending meetings only one-fourth of the time, the
choice of participation as a problematic condition is
certainly warranted. Such rates also suggest that
broader studies in social participation cannot adequately

operationalize the concept through simple membership in

57

organizations without having the actual participation
overreported since many individuals may be members in
name only.

Even though attendance is a more accurate measure
of participation than simple membership, many small
group studies have shown that participation varies
even within the group which actually attends (Bales
§£_gl., 1951; Stephens, 1952). Thus the actual verbal
participation within meetings was included as the third
measure of participation. Although these measures are
accurate only for the minority of members who did attend,
differentiating within that minority is also important
for the consequences of participation. In order to
collect this data, one of the project researchers
attended all agency meetings except two for the period
of one year following the completion of the pre-
experimental survey, 52 meetings in all. Among other
interaction measures, the observer recorded each person
speaking. Since the data collection for this measure
did not begin until after the administration of the
survey, only the six months following the survey was
available, specifically from 1 October 1971 through
31 March 1972. The number of times an individual spoke
during this period was divided by the number of meetings
attended to arrive at the interaction rate per meeting.

These data showed that half of the members who attended

58

spoke more than eight times per meeting, a considerable
interaction rate. The range of interaction, as before,
was quite extensive from a minimum with zero frequency
to one committee chairman with an average of 81 inter-
actions per meeting.

Because of the skewed nature of all of these
participation measures, each measure was dichotomized
at the median value in order to create categories of
high and low participators for each variable. Thus the
substantial proportion of members at the zero and one
levels of each of these measures will not spuriously
inflate subsequent correlations. These different
measures are also interrelated among themselves. The
following correlation matrix shows that those variables
of nearly equal precision relate more strongly than

those of more widely disparate meaning.

Table 2-1

Q-Correlations of Participation Measures

 

 

Attendance Rate Times Speaking/mtg
Number Meetings
Attended .97 .40
Attendance Rate .60

 

For example, the two attendance measures are near per-
fectly correlated while the number of meetings attended

is only moderately correlated with the other end of the

59

precision continuum, the times speaking per meeting.
Had simple membership been included as a variable in
this analysis, which in this case is a measure with no
variance, one would expect it to correlate more strongly
with the attendance measures. Another emergent pattern
is the stronger relationship between the two attendance
measures as opposed to either attendance measure with
communication. Aside from the fact that the attendance
measures are derived from the same figures, the dif-
ferences may also speak to different types of behavior
in attending meetings versus taking part in those meet-
ings. These correlations are strong enough to allow
the use of these measures as dimensions of the one con-
cept of participation. We may find, however, different
determinants for these two distinct aspects of par-
ticipatory behavior.

Participation: Independent
Measures

 

The major hypothesis for this section on par-
ticipation tests the influence of an individual's

organizational backing for his participation behavior.

Hypothesis A-l:

 

An individual's participation in the coordinating
agency will be associated with the extent to which
he perceives his participation as important to the
organization he represents.

60

As with participation, however, the importance of the
variable of representation suggests that the various
dimensions contained in this concept should be explored
through the use of distinct measures. Therefore, we have
developed three measures of representative status which
is intended to tap the major variations in this variable.

The first measure of representative status
verifies the nature of the represented organization or
group. Two possible groups could be important for the
individual's participation behavior, those groups which
the individual formally represents and other groups,
generally of a more unorganized nature, whose interests
the individual feels he represents. These two types of
representation, called formal and informal representation
respectively, were determined through the following series
of items on the survey.

Formal and Informal Represen—
tation Items

 

 

1. Were you selected to formally represent any

group in this agency?
2. If so, which group was this?

3. Quite often, individuals feel they represent
groups which they were not formally selected to
represent. Do you feel you represent any of

these groups?

4. If so, which groups are these?

61

Of the 102 individuals who responded to these questions,
74% reported that they formally represented some group.
Such a high figure for formal representation is an indi—
cation of the selection processes of the staff of this
agency in originally organizing the self-perpetuating
Board and committees. The By-Laws for the agency stipu-
late that a number of different organizations and
demographic groups be represented. This method of
selecting individuals, however, may contribute to the
low participation rates since formal representatives
may not be interested or motivated to participate if
their organizations or groups have no interest to pursue
in health planning. Without organizational or personal
interest, a large number of nonattenders would be expected.
Of the same 102 individuals, 50% reported that
they felt that they informally represented some group.
The effects of such informal representation may be mixed.
As a perception, informal representation may lead to
higher participation rates. By the same token, the lack
of formal sanction limits the extent to which that group
may affect the representative's behavior. The analysis
of the relationship between these types of representation
and participation will be interesting in the next chapter.
Because of the incomplete overlap of these two
types of representation, only 10 of the 102 respondents

reported that they did not represent any group either

62

formally or informally. The 92 respondents who did

report some type of representation were asked the follow-

ing items to determine the second and third dimension

of representative status, namely the strength of the

representative link.

Strength of Representation

 

 

How likely is it that the people you mentioned
would find out what you do at the agency?

(Very likely, Probably, Maybe, Unlikely, Very

Do you feel that the pe0ple you mentioned

expect you to do anything particular at the

(A great deal, Quite a bit, Some, Little, None)

How much do these people influence what you do?

(A great deal, Quite a bit, Some, Little, None)

How important is it that you have these people

(Very important, Somewhat important, Fairly

important, Not too important, Not important

Scale
1.
unlikely)
2.
agency?
3.
4.
to back you up?
at all)
5.

Are you more likely to Speak up at meetings with
these people backing you up?
(Very likely, Probably, Maybe, Unlikely, Very

unlikely)

These Si-
distrib‘

sibilit}

Item

#1
#2
#3
#4
#5

#6

Alth.
iron
the
car

in:

63

6. Do you feel that your contribution will carry
more weight with these people backing you up?
(Very likely, Probably, Maybe, Unlikely, Very

unlikely)

These six items were intended to form a scale, but their
distributions present initial misgivings about the pos-

sibility of combining these items into one scale.

Table 2-2

Percentage of Responses in Each Category of
Representation Scale

 

 

5 4 3 2 1
Item Very High Medium Low Very
ngh ‘ Low
#1 90 47 l9 14 ll 9 Find out
#2 89 24 33 10 l7 l7 Expectation
#3 89 20 25 16 18 21 Influence
#4 88 47 25 13 5 11 Importance
#5 89 30 21 7 25 17 Speak up
#6 90 39 39 9 6 8 Contribution

 

Although relational conclusions cannot be strictly drawn
from distributions, the respondents seemed to answer
these questions more positively when the question con-
cerned an area other than their own behavior. For
instance, when asked about their organization finding out

about them (#1), being important (#4), and adding weight

64

to what was said (#6), the responses were skewed with
two-thirds or more giving positive responses. For those
items which inquired about the effects of the organi-
zation on individual behavior, particularly whether the
organization influenced the representative (#2) or induced
him to speak (#5), half or more of the responses were
neutral or negative. Thus these items seemed to tap an
independent streak such that respondents were correctly
reporting the lack of influence, unaware of that influence
or unwilling to admit to the influence. The analysis of
these questions with respect to their actual behavior
will show which of these possibilities is, in fact, the
case.

The actual test for scaling items of this type is
the correlation between the individual items. If all
the items correlate positively, we can be assured that
each item is testing the concept of strength of repre-
sentation. The correlation matrix, however, offers
little encouragement for combining these items into an
overall scale of strength of representation. Some of
the relationships between these items are quite strong.
For instance the triad relating #1, 2, and 3 have cor-
relations, all of which are significant at the .025
level. Likewise, the last three items, #4, 5, and 6,
produce correlations even more significant at the .01

level. A middle triad (#3, 4, and 5) also produces

65

correlations at the .01 level. Empirically, it would
seem that three separate scales are called for based

on the significant correlations produced. The items,
however, must be rationally similar to determine if the
combination of each of these groups has any meaning

beyond the empirical clustering.

Table 2-3

Q-Correlations of Representation Items

 

 

2 3 4 5 6

Expec- Impor- Speak Contri-

tation Influence tance Up bution
Find Out 1 .27 .25 .07 .13 -.10
Expectation 2 .34 .10 .14 .21
Influence 3 .36 .42 .13
Speak Up 4 .59 .37
Contribution 5 .37

 

The first group contains the first three items
which seems to measure the strength of the relationship
between the represented organization and the individual.
Thus the organization's finding out about the indi-
vidual's behavior, the organization's expectations for
the individual, and its subsequent influence could well
produce a meaningful scale based on that link in the
theory. The last three items also contain a unification

principle which is complementary to the first, namely

66

the implications of the previous relationship on the
individual's behavior and effect in the agency. For
instance, the importance of the relationship, the verbal
behavior, and the effect of such behavior is contained

in these questions. Finding a link for the middle triad
is, unfortunately, more difficult. Neither the positive-
negative response items nor the individual-organization
meaning of the items differentiates this group from the
rest. This trend might also reflect the influence of

the organization on the individual with the importance
(#4) and the tendency to speak up (#5) as components of
that influence. This index, therefore, would only dupli—
cate the individual dimension and will not be pursued
further.

As well as testing the significance of the
implications of organizational background for partici-
pation, the representative status of the individual is
also to be compared with other, more traditional expla-
nations of participation in such an agency. For this
reason, three auxiliary hypotheses were constructed
with which to compare the strength of association between
participation and representation. Such hypotheses will
play the role of a baseline association with which we
can establish the quality of data and the congruence of
this naturalistic setting with other agencies and

organizations previously tested. With such a baseline,

67

we can draw conclusions concerning the generalizability
of these findings to other studies and organizations.
The first comparative hypothesis is drawn from
the social-psychological applications of exchange theory
via Homans (1961) and uses attraction to the working
group as the independent variable associated with par-

ticipation.

Hypothesis A-2:

 

An individual's participation in the coordinating

agency will be associated with the extent to which

he is attracted to the committee on which he serves.
The measure used for this attraction variable is a six-

item scale which was included as part of the interview

schedule.

Attraction Scale
RESPONSE: Strongly agree, Moderately agree, Neutral,

Moderately disagree, Strongly disagree
1. You enjoy attending meetings of the committee.

2. The committee makes a valuable contribution to

planning in the field of health services.

3. In general, you try to do what the committee

expects a member to do.

4. The committee is dealing with the same things

you are interested in.

68

5. You benefit from working with the committee.

6. You usually go along with the committee's

decision on issues.

The scale is an adaptation of a similar approach by
Jackson (1959) who used similar items to describe the
parameters of a member liking the group. Plainly the
dimensions of interest, normative behavior, agreement,
worthwhileness, and benefit are reflected in these items.

Likewise, the respondents were generally favorable
to the committee as reflected in the distribution of

responses.

Table 2-4

Percentage of Responses in Each Category of
Attraction Scale

 

 

Item N 5 4 3 2 1

SA MA N MD SD

Enjoyment #1 93 33 4O 8 11 9
Contribution #2 93 14 40 25 13 9
Expectation #3 94 32 45 7 10 4
Interest #4 92 35 39 7 16 3
Benefit #5 94 35 44 11 6 4
Agreement #6 94 15 53 17 9 6

 

SA--Strong1y agree; MA--Moderately agree; N--
Neutral; MD—-Moderate1y disagree; SD--Strongly disagree

69

Each item has a median and mode equal to four, a mildly
positive reSponse. Likewise, the means range from 3.6
for the last item to 4.0 for the next to last item.
Thus the homogeneity of response lends a great deal of
support to the fact that these items are tapping the same
variable of attraction. Although some individuals did
not agree that the committee was dealing with the same
things they were interested in (#4) and others, almost
exactly one in four, were neutral about the contribution
their committee was making, the responses are uniformly
favorable. Whether such an attitude is an actual
reflection of the individual opinion of the group or
simply a "nice" response to give the interviewer, of
course, one can never tell. Although some indication
was given that some respondents were answering on the
basis of the latter motivation since their responses
came so fast, we can only assume that the number is not
a significant deviation from the actual attitude.

As before, the real test of the scale is in
the correlational results among its items. In this
case, all correlations are uniformly high which makes
the formation of valid scale almost a certainty. Each
of these correlations is significant at least at the .025
level which rules out chance variation in all but the
most extreme cases. The highest correlations in this

matrix also show some subtle internal clustering which

70

further supports the validity of the attraction scale.
For instance, the correlations over .5 are between items
1 and 5 and between items 3 and 6. The first pair (Q =
.55) speaks to the similarity of enjoyment and benefit
which the members of the committee derive from attendance.
The prevalence of and rewards derived from the expec-
tations of the committee for the individual is also
reflected in the second largest correlation (Q = .54).

In this case, doing what the committee expects and going
along with its decisions are both tests of the normative
prescriptions of group membership. Thus even though
these relationships are by no means monumental, they lend
credence to the rational validity of the scale to comple-
ment its empirical validity as expressed in the c0mplete
correlation matrix. Such a scale will, therefore, be
used to compare the strength of the representative base

as a major correlate of participation.

Table 2-5

Q-Correlations of Attraction Scale

 

 

2 3 4 5 6
Contri- Expec- . Agree-
bution tation Interest Benefit ment
Enjoyment 1 .41 .36 .29 .55 .31
Contribution 2 .31 .27 .44 .29
Expectation 3 .25 .33 .54
Interest 4 .31 .40
Benefit 5 .29

 

71

The second comparative hypothesis is based on
the more sociological findings that social status is

the best single predictor of social participation.

Hypothesis A-3:

 

An individual's participation in the coordinating

agency will be associated with his social status.
Though little theory has developed to explain this
relationship, we could hypothesize increased leisure
time, occupational role prescriptions, or class interests
as the link between status and participation. For what-
ever reason, though, research has documented the relation-
ship time and again (Babchuk, 1969). Our purposes are
simply to accept this research and use status as a
second comparison with the organizational variables as
correlates of participation.

The measures for social status in this study
will vary from the traditional because of the select
occupational classifications which are attracted to
health planning. Of the three classic components of
socioeconomic status, education, income, and occupation,
the last has always been the most difficult to measure
(Centers, 1949; Warner, 1963; Duncan, 1961). The
problem in this case is compounded since the occu-
pational range in this agency is normal except for a
large segment in the medical professional classification.

The combination of these two conditions makes the use of

a ‘4. m“ ;

 

72

any extant occupational scale impractical since over half
the frequency would be in one category. The very real
status differences within this area, therefore, would
be excluded as a variance to the overall index.

For these reasons, the extent of health-related

education was substituted for occupation as the third

._-d
n «L “

measure included in the overall status scale. The items

used to measure status were, therefore, the following.

Status Scale

 

 

1. Of these educational categories, which one best

11”“! -.

describes your educational background?
(Grammar school, High school, Para-professional
degree, Bachelor's degree, Master's degree,

Ph.D. degree, Professional degree)

2. How much formal educational training have you
had in any health-related field?

(A great deal, Quite a bit, Some, Little, None)

3. Of these categories of annual family income,
please indicate which category your family falls
into?

(Under $7,000, $7,000 to $12,000, $12,000 to

$20,000, $20,000 to $30,000, Over $30,000)

The distribution of these measures is approximately
normal. The only major deviation from normality was

the large number of nonprofessional representatives

73

with no health-related education. Even with such a
loading at the zero end of the scale, the median health-
related education was still “Some." Thus the agency
comprises two large groups, some with no health education
and others with a great deal. The median general edu-
cational level was a Bachelor's degree, no doubt higher
than a general random sample, but still seemingly

inadequate for the type of technical planning decisions

“‘1' ‘1";l—4- '. A. -
'.

required of the agency participants. The half of the

membership with less than the Bachelor's could very well

 

have been lacking in the necessary skills to continue k
informed participation.

The median income for the group was the middle
category of $12,000 to $20,000 with an approximately
normal distribution. Thus the overall description of
the population of this agency was higher than average
education and income. The major internal differentiation
was the extent of health-related education which formed
a bi-modal distribution. These three variables will be
included in one scale since the correlation matrix indi-
cates that the measures are sampling the same conceptual
domain. As would be expected, the two educational
measures related most strongly (Q = .50) since health
education would have been included in the general edu-
cation category. The second strongest correlation is

also the classic education-income relation (Q = .39).

74

The extent to which health education relates to income

may have been reduced somewhat by the subjective judgment
and implied comparison included in the health-education
measure as opposed to the objective categories provided
for the general education measure. The decreased relation
may be an artifact of the measuring instrument, but it

is not small enough to invalidate the possibility of
forming a status scale from these variables. This scale

will be used as the second comparative base for the

. -m_ (TUM- .‘P’. . .- .

organizational correlates of participation.

 

Table 2-6

Q-Correlations of Status Scale

 

 

Health Education Income
General Education .50 .39
Health Education .26

 

A final comparative hypothesis will be tested,
closely akin to the previous socioeconomic predictor
of participation. As Babchuk (1969) has pointed out,
social status, as the best predictor of participation,
is by no means the only correlate. Other correlates
were examined in the previous chapter along with some
effects which are still disputed. As with the status
variable, all of these independent measures could be

evaluated as predictors of participation and evaluated

75

against the organizational explanation. Such a process,
however, may suffer from the depths of tedium.

Another possibility would be to combine all
other predictors of social participation into a scale.
With the trouble of reaching a significant correlation
and normal distribution in scales, however, one might

seriously doubt the wisdom of attempting to form such

_. —_.-L- 2.1-

a scale. A final alternative is to have all other pre—
dictors of social participation represented by the outcome

of the process, the participation itself. Since this

 

alternative was considered the most feasible, we must g
now present the hypothesis which forms the final com-

parative base.

Hypothesis A-4:

An individual's participation in the coordinating
agency will be associated with his participation
in other nonwork-related organizations.

In attempting to measure social participation,
we shall take the most well-worn scale available, the
Chapin scale (1948), and use it without modification.
Little need be said regarding this scale except that
certain levels of participation are tested for each
reported organization up to five organizations. The
levels of participation are contained in the following

four items.

76
Social Participation Scale
RESPONSE: Yes, No

1. Do you regularly attend meetings at any of

these organizations?

2. Do you make financial contributions to any of

these organizations? #-

3. Do you serve on any committees for these organi-

zations?

4. Have you ever held office in any of these

 

organizations? 4

With the items weighted such that the first item has a
weight of "l," the second item with "2," and so on, the
possible scores range from 10 to 100. The median score
for such external participation was 70. Unfortunately,
few other studies report the raw figures in their use
of this scale so that they provide no indication of the
representativeness of this agency. The use of the scale,
however, is primarily intended as a third comparative
base with respect to the organizational correlates of
participation. A higher correlation with this variable
will indicate that participation in this agency is akin
to the general stream of social participation. Low
relations with the dependent variable will indicate the

opposite, namely that participation in planning and

77

coordination is a distinct type of participation for
which different correlates would be expected.

Thus the four hypotheses concerned with par~
ticipation in this agency have been reduced to levels
of measurement. The crucial variables of participation
and representative status were operationalized using
three distinct measures in order to tap different
dimensions of the concepts involved. The comparative
variables, used to establish baseline values for measures

of association, were operationalized with a number of

measures combined into one scale. Thus one value of e

association with each dependent measure can be calcu-
lated. Through this technique, both the significance
of the participation-representation correlation can be
determined as well as the strength of the correlation
relative to other correlates of participation. Essen-
tially, the same procedure will be used with respect to
the other major subject of this inquiry, power in a
coordinating agency.
Social Power: Dependent
Measures

The second major section of this chapter will
concern itself with the power aspects of behavior in
this agency. As opposed to most community studies, the
question of participation could not be taken for granted.

Thus the last section attempted to deal with the

Int".

 

78

determinants in the planning and coordination that was
carried on with this agency. Participation itself, how-
ever, does not determine the outcome of issues. Indi-
viduals will take sides and exert influence to have
issues resolved in particular ways. Therefore, the
power distributions in these issue areas are equally
problematic and require just as much investigation. 3
For this section, therefore, we shall follow the same
format, initially analyzing the multiple measures of

the dependent variable of power, after which the inde-

 

 

‘le. ...-.rs

pendent variables associated with power will be analyzed
and interrelated.

Since power is such a crucial concept in this
set of hypotheses, three measures are again used to
reflect different dimensions in the power variable.

The first two measures are based on the influence which
an individual member exercises in the agency. The first
is an external measure of such influence, rated by
fellow committee members; the second is an internal
measure which is provided by the perception of the
respondent himself. A final measure of power is also
internally perceptual but includes a wider subject area
than what is considered as part of the responsibilities
of the coordinating agency.

The first measure of power will be referred to

as attributed influence since it is a collective rating

79

provided by an individual's fellow members in the agency.
Since direct rating of individual's influence among naive
subjects would be quite reactive, a more indirect method
was chosen, namely constructing an artificial situation
which the respondent could identify with. The item used
to measure the extent of attributed influence was as

follows: F

When you are undecided on an issue, he can usually

persuade you to accept his viewpoint.

2".“- n-_.- 1-x- _

(Strongly agree, Moderately agree, Neutral, Mod-

 

erately disagree, Strongly disagree)

When the scores for all respondents who served on com—
mittees with the individual were summed and averaged,
the result was the attributed influence score for each
member of the agency. The average score was used in
order to control for the number of individuals who
rated each subject.

The median score for attributed influence was
3.2, indicating relatively balanced response categories
in the one—through—five range. Such a measure of central
tendency, however, also points up the reactivity of
this measure since respondents were reluctant to answer
such questions concerning fellow committee members.
Such a measure was previously used on experimental
laboratory subjects (Jackson, 1959) and mental patients

in an experimental program (Fairweather, 1969). The

80

reluctance of community representatives participating
in the normal processes of community decision making
would be understandably higher than either of the two
preceding cases. Therefore, the generally noncommital
nature of the reSponses resulted. Such a bias, however,
simply reduces the variance of the responses since the
extremes are not freely reported. Finding significant
relationships with this dependent measure may be par-
ticularly difficult.

Another measure of individual influence within

 

1'-

the agency was the respondent's own rating of his

influence according to the following measure:

How much influence do you think you have on planning
decisions in the agency?

(A great deal, Quite a bit, Some, Little, None)

The median response of "Little" reflects two facts, one
concerning the respondent, the other concerning the item
itself. In reSponding to this item, subjects were
reacting to a generally powerless state within this
organization. Such a state was the result of the
inability of the agency as a whole to accomplish tan-
gible results and the added problem of one individual
being simply one among many and the consequent diffi-
culties of producing measurable effect. Reports of such

powerlessness are common even among the most powerful

81

groups (Green et al., 1972). Thus those individuals
who did respond that they had little or no influence
were reflecting a genuine feeling about their positions.
The item itself, however, skews responses to the
low categories because of the number of individuals in
the agency. Apart from the feelings of powerlessness,
actual power decreases with increasing size of the group
(Coleman, 1973). Therefore, in an agency of over 100
individuals, little or no influence is the lot of all
but a select few in the group. Asking the respondent
for an estimate of his power in comparison with other
members would have presented a more balanced and hence
more variable measure of an individual's own influence.
The final measure of influence within the
coordinating agency is also perceptual in nature, but
the focus of the influence is more diffuse than the
simple actions of the agency. A medical adaptation
of the Neal-Seeman powerlessness scale offers an overall
measure of an individual's attitude toward the problems
of medical care and his role in overcoming these problems.

The actual adaptation of the scale is presented below.

Powerlessness Scale
The following statements are grouped into pairs. Would
you check one statement from each pair which best

describes your feelings?

Y“: Wm . '-!

 

82

l. *A. Persons like myself have little chance of pro-
tecting our personal interests when they conflict
with those of strong pressure groups.

B. I feel that we have adequate ways of coping
with pressure groups.

2. A. I think we have adequate means for preventing
run-away medical costs.
*B. There's very little we can do to keep medical
expenses from going higher.

3. A. High quality medical care can be achieved by r
those of us who work toward it.
*B. There's very little we can do to bring about
high quality medical care.

4. *A. There's very little persons like myself can do
to improve the community's knowledge about
medical services.
B. I think each of us can do a great deal to improve
the community's knowledge of medical services.

 

5. *A. This world is run by the few people in power,
and there is not much the little guy can do
about it.

B. The average citizen can have an influence on
important decisions affecting his life.

6. *A. It is only wishful thinking to believe that one
can really influence what happens in medical
services today.

B. People like me can change the course of medical
services if we make ourselves heard.

*Indicates powerless response
The forced choice technique, of course, created quite a
bit of consternation among those respondents who did
not wish to take such a stand. Most complied in the
end, however, and the distributions of their responses
are presented in Table 2-7.

As is immediately obvious, only the first two
items showed a balanced distribution approaching 50% in

each response category. The consistently low powerless

83

response for items 3 through 6 is largely the result
of the strength of ideological factors in responding.
High quality medical care, community knowledge, the
influence of the average citizen, and the possibility
of affecting medical care are all generally assumed to
be achievable goals through this agency. In fact, the
existence and continued operation of such an agency would F
be difficult without such ideological agreement. The
problematic nature of interest groups and the disagreement

over the inevitability of rising medical costs led to

 

111'}

the split response on items 1 and 2. The genuine dis-
agreement over these items throughout the agency led

to certain individuals feeling they could control these
two factors and others feeling powerless with respect

to them. For this reason, only these first two items
referring to powerlessness with respect to interest
groups and medical cost will be included in the power-
lessness scale. The remaining items could be included
with no trouble other than reducing the variability

and sensitivity of the scale by adding such constant
powerful response categories. The correlation among the
first two items (Q = .26) is also high enough to warrant
inclusion as a two-item scale. The distributions of

the remaining items are so skewed that testing for cor-

.Ielational coincidence would be invalid. Those four

84

highly skewed items, therefore, will be discarded and

the two first items will be included in the powerlessness

measure of individual influence.

Table 2-7

Percentage of Powerless ReSponse for Each Item

 

 

Item N
Interest Group #1 95 41
Medical Cost #2 95 48
Medical Quality #3 102
Community Knowledge #4 105
Power Elite #5 105 13
Average Influence #6 105

 

Thus the three measures for the dependent
variable of power are attributed influence, perceived
influence, and powerlessness. These three measures con-
tain both externally and internally ascribed measures
of power along with power which relates specifically
‘to health planning and that which contains a broader
fOCus. These differences notwithstanding, the cor-
:relation matrix presented in Table 2-8 shows that they
iare all measuring one aspect of a consistent power
(dimension. Had the two perceptual measures of self-
Jrated influence displayed the strongest correlation in

1ihis matrix, the explanation of these relationships

85

would have been routine. With that correlation in fact
the lowest, we must search in areas other than the
internal-external distinction of rating for the strength
of these relationships. The consistent high relationship
of attributed influence with each of the other two
measures indicates that attributed influence must contain
common elements with each of the other measures which they,
in turn, do not share with each other. That common
element may be the focus of the influence measured in
each case. The perceived influence measure is strongly
directed to influence within the agency itself where

the powerlessness specifically relates to problems,
regardless of its relation to problems which the agency
is handling. Finally the ability to persuade, the basis
for the attributed measure, is not specific to either
frame of reference. Therefore, attributed influence is
most like perceived influence and powerlessness because
its focus encompasses both of the areas covered. The

two latter measures, however, do not correlate as
strongly to each other because of their exclusive

spheres of influence. We shall see the effects of

this measurement tendency in the analysis of the results.
Each measure, however, is reporting a special dimension
of the power variable among these members. Such

diversity of measurement should increase the variability

86

of the relationships with the dependent variables and

hence the explanatory power of this approach.

Table 2-8

Q-Correlations for Power Measures

 

Perceived Influence Powerlessness

 

Attributed Influence .46 -.41

Perceived Influence -.28

 

Social Power: Independent
Measures

 

The major hypothesis for this section stipulates
that the organizational backing of an individual repre-
sentative will have effects on the influence of that

representative in the coordinating agency.

Hypothesis B-l:

 

An individual's influence in the coordinating agency
will be directly related to the influence of the
organization he represents.
The effects hypothesized will be in the direction of the
power of the organization which the individual represents.
Therefore, a major intent of this section is to develop
measures of the power of organizations in the community

to be used as the indicators for the independent variable

in this section.

 

87

A model of power analysis was needed which
accurately and efficiently rated organizations in the
community. The approach which was adopted is similar
to that employed by Tannenbaum (1968) in the power
studies within organizations. A list of types or groups
of organizations was drawn up which impacted on the
health delivery system. Using a five-point scale,
respondents to the survey rated each type of organi-
zation on its ability to affect community health
decisions. Thus the open or nonzero-sum conception
of power allowed each organization to be rated sep-
arately. All organizations were then ranked on their
average rated power. The overall ranking by respondents
to the survey is presented below.

All the distributions for each organization
are approximately normal. The variance of those
organizations ranked as most powerful is limited by
the ceiling effect, the inability to give such organi—
zations a score greater than five. Thus one-half of
its potential variability is reduced by this limit.
The consistent result of this ranking is that medical
organizations rank in four of the top six places and
that community organizations hold three of the bottom
four places. Comprehensive Health Planning is coinci-

dentally placed immediately between these two large

88

Table 2-9

Ranking of Community Organizations

 

 

Diff. b/n
Mean Std. Dev. means
Medical Professional

Association 4.70 0.61
0.08

Physicians 4.62 0.65
0.11

Federal Government 4.51 0.75
0.24

Hospital Administration 4.27 0.78
0.29

State Government 3.93 0.78
0.07

Medical Schools 3.91 0.93
0.53

CHP Agencies 3.38 0.89
0.16

Community Opinion 3.22 0.87
0.26

Other Planning Agencies 2.96 0.82
0.02

City Government 2.94 0.90
0.19

Voluntary Organizations 2.75 0.81

89

groups. Governmental organizations are also ranked
among themselves from larger (Federal) to smaller (City).

In order to have a ranking which has sufficient
frequency in each cell for analysis, this list must be
condensed. Because of the distinct difference in char-
acter of the top half of the list from the bottom, the
decision was made to dichotomize the list at the point
of greatest difference between Medical Schools and CHP
Agencies. Thus the organizations were classed as high
power or low power organizations in the community.
Rather than using the generic term of power in reference
to these organizations, however, we shall further specify
these organizations as dominant or sub—dominant since
a reputational measure was used to arrive at these rank-
ings.

The average score for dominant organizations
was 4.4 which, in the language of the rating scale,
affords these organizations "Quite a bit" of power or
more. In a similar vein, the power accorded sub-dominant
organizations was 3.1 which represented "Some" amount
of power or less. Thus far, therefore, the rating scale
for organizations seems to have classified organizations
according to their reputational power and accorded them
expected levels of dominance in the health system.

In order to include this information in this

study, however, each individual must be attributed the

90

dominance status of the organization he represents.
Organizational representation is, however, many times
not a matter of record. In addition, even when the
exact organization which an individual represents is
known, the classification of that organization can be
ambiguous. A parallel difficulty is created by the
individual who may work in a sub-dominant organization
but also serves as a representative of a dominant
organization. Therefore, the attribution of the domi-
nance status of the organization to the individual is
by no means a simple process.

Such attribution was accomplished using an
informed panel to rate each individual on the type of
organization he represented. A select panel was utilized
since the categories of organizational ranking were not
accomplished until after the administration of the whole
agency survey. A self—administered rating scheme was
developed with the names of all the individuals in the
study, the two categories of organizational dominance
with the Specific organizations in each, and a "Don't
Know" column which was used equally for individuals
unknown to the informant or when the individual's organi-
zation was unknown. The raters included in the panel
consisted of three agency staff members who had been
'with the agency at least six months, the two staff

Inembers of the consumer participation project, and two

91

secretaries who had worked at the agency for at least
eighteen months. The criteria for a successful clas-
sification of the individual was to be known and rated
by at least three members of the panel in the same class
with no more than one panel member assigning the indi-
vidual to the opposite class. These criteria were
developed to maximize the number of individuals included
without treating those individuals with diffuse or less
well-known organizational backgrounds equally with those
whose representation and the power attributed to that
representation was consistently sharp. The results of
these criteria were the 45 of 143 agency members on the
rolls at that time were excluded from analysis on this
variable. Of the remaining 98, 52% were included in
the dominant organizational category. Thus the distri-
bution of these variables validated the criteria used
by including sufficient numbers of individuals and pro-
viding a near perfect dichotomizing of individuals.
Thus the organizational dominance hypothesized in the
major hypothesis for this section has been operational—
ized using the above techniques.

As with other critical variables in this study,
more than one measure is developed for each variable
in the hypothesis. Organizational dominance is no
exception. The second method of measuring organizational

dominance as it affects the coordinating agency is

92

through funds contributed to the agency. Under the
legislation allowing Federal allocations for such com—
munity planning endeavors, at least 50% of the total
budget of the agency must be supplied by locally con—
tributed funds; the remainder is the Federal contri-
bution. Such local contributions are, therefore, very
important to the agency's livelihood. Their importance
is also enhanced by the difficulty the agency has in
raising such funds. Those organizations which do con-
tribute funds, therefore, a definite scarce resource,
would be expected to have more influence in determining
agency policy. Although such organizations may exert
such influence through informal channels, this study
will analyze the formal component which these organi-
zations' representatives exert in committee meetings.
Thus an organization contributing to the agency's
matched funds for the year under study will be con-
sidered an operational measure of that organization's
dominance transferred to the representative in terms of
increased influence.

The list of contributors for the 1971-72 fiscal
year included 22 community organizations. This group
was principally composed of the larger industrial,
financial, and health organizations in the community.
Of the organizations which contributed, 14 (78%) had

representatives as members of one or more committees

93

within the agency. Twenty-two representatives were

thus identified from these 14 organizations. These 22
were given a score for organizational backing indepen-
dent of the previous measure of organizational dominance.
This measure may indeed cause problems because of its
skewed distribution. Only 15% of the total agency popu-
lation and 20% of those interviewed received positive
scores on this variable. Unfortunately, nothing can

be done about this distribution except to note that such
a variable will be difficult to control later in the
analysis. Nevertheless, this measure represents another
source of interorganizational influence. Again the
independent measurement of the critical variable of
organizational dominance will allow divergent results

to appear in the analysis.

Significance of the relationships in the results
chapter is not the only outcome of this study. In many
cases, significance can be achieved without the strength
of association being important in determining the depen-
dent variable. Such is often the case with the use of
path analysis in determining the factors of a particular
variable. Rarely do all the factors combined explain
more than 10% of the variance although most are signifi-
cant relationships. The factors do relate to the depen—
dent variable greater than chance, but those same factors

still may leave 90% of the dependent variable unexplained.

94

Thus the comparative hypotheses were developed to deter-
mine the extent to which the organizational dominance
affects a representative's influence in comparison with
other more documented sources of such influence.

As discussed in the previous chapter, inter-
personal and small group resources for influence will
be used as comparisons for the organizational bases.

Of the multitude of interpersonal formulations, French
and Raven's (1959) classification portrays probably the
most used and well—known typology of the bases of
influence. Of their five bases, we have been able to
identify two in a purely interpersonal sense which have
applicability to this study, expert and referent power.
It is our intention at this point in time to operation-

alize their concept of expert power.

Hypothesis B-2:

 

An individual's influence in the coordinating agency

is directly related to his task-specific expertise.
Although French and Raven do not distinguish varieties
of expert power, we shall refer to two different
resources in this area and measure these resources
through two different operational measures. The two
different resources are the generalized educational
background necessary for credibility and influence and

the task-specific information which forms the content

95

of influence attempts. Either or both of these resources
in combination could be included in French and Raven's
conception.

The generalized educational background will be
operationalized using the same measure for health-
related education as was associated with the index of
socioeconomic status. Since this variable was essen-
tially bi-modal with peaks at the extreme ends of the
five-point scale, dichotomizing at the median value of
"Some" will produce two groups, those with much health
education and those with little or none. These two
groups will be used to test the hypothesis that expert
resources lead to influence and compare the effects of
those resources with the organizational resources for
influence.

A second type of expertise is that associated
with the task-specific information necessary to plan
for the health care system. In operationalizing this
concept, a number of areas of information were identified.
They were classified as general health information,
organizational information, and task information. The

three areas were tested using the following items.

Information Scale

 

RESPONSE: Correct, Incorrect
1. Please tell me what major department in the Federal

Government finances the agency's annual budget?

96

2. Please tell me what a Health Maintenance

Organization (HMO) is?

3. Please tell me the difference between an "A"
agency and a "B" agency in Comprehensive Health

Planning?

4. Would you give me the names of as many of the

staff members as you know?

5. Would you name as many of the Planning Committees

as you know?
6. Would you name the chairmen of these committees?

7. WOuld you name as many items of next year's

work program as you can remember?

Emphasis in this test of levels of information was placed
on organizational and program items because these areas
were the most discussed and disputed at the early stage
of organizational development which this organization
found itself in. On the other hand, the substantive
issues of health planning were still to come. Therefore,
emphasis on health planning and medical care terminology
would have consistently drawn low correct response rates
and would have been essentially irrelevant to the type
of knowledge needed in the organization at that time.

The following list of specific items and the
correct responses gives an indication of the information

level for different topics at this time.

97

Table 2-10

Percentage of Correct Response to Information Scale Items

 

 

 

 

 

 

N % Correct
I General

HEW 109 76

HMO 108 40

"A" agency 105 29
II Staff Names

Ben Helmuthl 108 83

John Tinker 108 53

Charles Farr 101 47

Thomas Woodall 104 45

Molly Robins 102 43

III Committee Names

Board ofiTrustees (BT)

Executive Committee (EC)

Facilities and Services (FS) 102 65

Manpower and Education (ME) 103 40

Environmental Health (EH) 99 48

Health Economics (HE) 103 39

Urban Design (UD) 98 15
IV Committee Chairmen

Donald Spayd 101 28

Joe Hair 100 21

Oscar Portwood 100 20

Edward Mount 102 20

Robert Freeman 99 11
V Work Program Items

# 1 Goals, Objectives,

and Priorities 99 8

# 2 Pre-paid Group Practice 99 34

# 3 Community Living 99 8

# 4 Restructuring Patient Care 99 26

# 5 Family Health Center 99 27

# 6 Health Information 99 6

# 7 Capital Budgeting 99 15

# 8 Water Monitoring 99 13

# 9 Consumer Participation

Program 99 11
# 10 Sewage—Drainage System 99 9
# 11 Solid Waste Disposal 99 15

 

98

One of the highest response categories was the correct
identification of the Federal Department which funds
the agency. Information fell off rapidly as the general
questions moved into more specific medical and planning
terminology. The staff contained two individuals who
were known by a high proportion of members. As the
director, more people knew Ben Helmuth than any other
staff member. John Tinker was also known by more than
half the individuals interviewed, not for any particular
status or job responsibility within the agency, but
more for his inclination to meet and work with the
people in the community as opposed to remaining in the
agency office. The others were known predominantly by
the committees for which they had staff responsibilities.
The committees differentiated themselves largely on the
basis of the frequency with which they met and hence
the impact they were having on the agency as a whole.
More of this relationship will be discussed in the
following chapters. In general, only committee members
knew the chairmen of their own committees. Therefore,
these chairmen could be ranked according to the size of
their respective committees.

The work program items give a fair indication
of those items which were receiving attention at that
time. Two of the three items which were identified by

more than one-fourth of those interviewed were a

99

feasability study,pre-paid group practice and the recent
funding of a design grant for a comprehensive medical
center in the Model Cities neighborhood. The third work
program item was the consumer participation project,

under which the survey itself was being conducted. In
sum, the directors of this project felt that the knowledge
of the agency's work program and hence its purpose for

the fiscal year was woefully low among the members in
general.

As a measure of expertise, each of these five
areas will be weighted equally by summing the scores for
each area, dichotomizing each separately at the respec—
tive medians, and summing the resulting scores. A
further dichotomization reduced the measure to a high
information and low information categories suitable for
analysis. Thus this measure stands with the generalized
health education measure as resources for influence
under the aegis of expert power as classified by French
and Raven.

Another resource for influence which could have
substantial effects on an interpersonal basis is the
referent power, again identified by French and Raven.
.As discussed previously, the point of this concept lies
in the tendency for individuals to believe in and agree
‘flith reference groups and significant others. Although

the groups in coordinating agencies hardly warrant the

100

level of influence of family members or intimate friends,
the motivation to do well in the group setting may lead
certain individuals to be influenced by those they feel

are like themselves.

Hypothesis B—3:

 

An individual's influence in the coordinating agency
will be directly related to the extent to which
members of the agency identify with the individual.
The operational definition for this concept is
similar to the measure of attributed power presented
earlier and is, in fact, from the same scale (Jackson,

1959). Each respondent is asked to rate all other com-

mittee members he knows on the following item:

In general, he is the same kind of person you are.
(Strongly agree, Moderately agree, Neutral, Mod—

erately disagree, Strongly disagree)

As before, the average response given to each individual
is the extent to which other committee members identify
with the individuals. The median for this variable is
also 3.2, and it will be dichotomized at this value for
analysis. As with the measure of attributed influence,
the neutrality of the response may in fact be an indi-
cation of reactivity rather than a genuine response.
Another potential problem with this measure with

respect to attributed influence is the possibility of a

101

spurious or artificial correlation due to their being
collected at the same time in the same manner. A con-
sistent response to the one measure, due to reactivity,
may also be produced in the other for reasons other than
genuine relation or effect of the one measure on the
other. No means are available to control for such a
process. Simply to be aware of the possibility of
spuriousness is sufficient for the present.

The final comparative hypothesis and independent

variable is derived from small group studies.

Hypothesis B—4:

 

An individual's influence in the coordinating agency

will be directly related to the extent to which he

participates in the meetings of the agency.
As outlined above, participation itself in small group
settings is often a correlate of influence with little
other resources available to the individual. Therefore,
we can hardly ignore such consistent findings in attempt-
ing to explore the strength of the organizational
resources of power in contrast to the more traditional
means to power in small groups.

The measures for participation in the committees
of this agency have already been explored at great
length. Little more need be said concerning these
measures except that all three measures of participation

used as dependent variables in the previous section will

102

now be three Operational measures for the independent
concepts of participation. One difference from previous
research, however, is that attendance will be used as

a resource for influence in this study where verbal par-
ticipation alone has been tested in previous work.
Therefore, the results of all of these participation
measures will be used as a third comparative base for

the strength of the organizational resources for influence.

Measure of Association

 

Because of problems of distribution and meaning
in many of the measures and scales discussed, a large
number of these measures were dichotomized to correct
for such problems of measurement. In the interest of
simplicity and directness, therefore, all measures in
this study were dichotomized so that all tables could
be produced as simple relations between dichotomized
variables. Although some of the subtlety may have been
removed by this process, such distinctions in a study
of this type can often lead to more complex relationships
than the theory or the methods can cope with. Therefore,
four-fold relationships will be constructed throughout
the analysis section.

In order to measure the strength of association
between these dichotomous variables, a measure of

association specifically designed for 2 X 2 tables will

103

be employed, entitled the Q-correlation (Davis, 1971).
The value of the Q-correlation is a simple ratio of
the difference between the cross-products and the sum
of the cross-products in a 2 X 2 table. Thus intuitively,
the greater the difference between the cross-products
in one direction, the greater will be the measure of
association, standardized by the sum of the cross-products.
The basic advantage to Q is that it is calculated on
dichotomous variables which approach 50:50 marginal dis-
tributions. The measure of association, therefore, is
as distribution free as possible if all variables are
dichotomized at the median as we have done. Thus cor-
relations for different variables can be compared with
the assurance that the distributions, equal in this case,
are not affecting the size of the correlation. Since
comparisons of strength of relationship are an important
consideration in this study, this advantage to the Q—
correlation is strong.

The technical aspects of the correlation are
the same as any other standard correlation: (a) inde—
pendent variables register Q = .00; (b) Q ranges from
+1.00 to -1.00; (c) the value of Q has meaning as
opposed to being an arbitrary amount. In the case of
the correlation coefficient, the value represents the
probability of doing better than chance in assigning

an individual to one variable based on his score on the

104

other. For instance, a Q of .50 between status and
social participation would mean that assigning an indi-
vidual to a participation category on the basis of his
status would produce outcomes 50% better than chance
assignment. Without further elaborating the details,
the advantage to this type of interpretation along with
the distribution free comparison of Q—correlations
across different variables makes such a measure of
association an attractive method for discovering the
strength of relationships.

Since the next chapter will also test hypotheses
for levels of significance, the confidence intervals
around each Q value must be calculated. These values
are dependent solely on the level of confidence desired,
the value of Q, and the cell frequencies as portrayed

in the following formula:

Q

2 l l l l
(l - Q ) (- + - + - + -)l/2
A B C D

 

 

2

where: A, B, C, D are the frequencies in each of the

four cells.

105

This formula will be used to test the significance of
the hypotheses. An alpha level of .05 or better will
be considered sufficient to reject the null hypothesis
in each case.

Thus with the analysis set, the methodology for
this study is determined. Beginning in the first chapter
with the conceptual hypotheses, we have operationalized
each variable with one or more measures and discussed
the interrelationships between these measures. We are
now prepared to test the hypotheses presented in the
first chapter and compare the relative strength of the
organizational approach to community participation and
influence with many of the more well-documented deter-

minants for those behaviors.

CHAPTER III

HYPOTHESIZED RESULTS

Having presented the methods of data collection
and the operational definitions for this study, the
results of the analysis for these measures must now be
presented. This chapter will present the analysis and
tests of hypotheses in the order in which they were dis-
cussed in the first chapter. Thus, the initial section
of this chapter will deal with the hypotheses related to
participation. Within this section, the hypothesis
which relates the agency participation to representation
of external organizations will be presented as the major
hypothesis. Following the explanation of these measures,
the three other hypotheses relating to participation
will be tested and their strength of association com—
pared with the major hypothesis of representation.

The following section of this chapter will contain a
similar procedure with respect to the dependent variable
of power--first testing the major hypothesis then com-

paring it with the alternative hypotheses.

106

107

Correlates of Social Par-
ticipation

 

 

The major hypothesis related to participation

within this agency reads as follows:

Hypothesis A-l:

 

An individual's participation in the coordinating
agency will be associated with the extent to which
he perceives his participation as important to the
organization he represents.

Because of the importance of these variables,
multiple measures were developed to insure that all the
dimensions reflected in this concept would be sampled.
Thus, participation was subdivided into three dimensions:
total number of meetings attended, attendance rate,
and number of times speaking per meeting attended.
Because the wide conceptual distinctions among these
measures, each will be used as an indicator of partici-
pation. Likewise, the importance of the independent
variable of representation necessitated sampling four
dimensions of this concept. The first two measures,
formal and informal representation, simply determine the
representative status of the agency member. The respon-
dent who reported representing on either or both of these
same group measures was questioned further to determine
the extent to which he was influenced by such status.
For this purpose, the respondent was asked six items

which divided themselves into two three-item scales

108

based on the intercorrelation matrix presented above.
These two scales tested the influence of the represented
organization on the representative and the effectiveness
of efficacy of such backing for increasing the weight

of the representative's contribution to agency decisions.
As with participation, each of these four measures of
representation will be analyzed independently and its
relation to the dependent measures will be reported.

Thus the Q-correlation for the first hypothesis

forms the 3 X 4 correlation matrix reported below:

Table 3-1

Q-Correlations of Representation and Participation

 

 

 

Total Attendance Times
Meetings Rate Speaking
Formal Representation -.13 -.05 .14
Informal Representation .19 .11 .18
Organizational Influence .42C .67c .33b
Organizational Efficacy --.31b .01 .26a
ap < .05; bp < .005; GP < .001

This matrix shows, as with most multiple measure
hypotheses, that the original assertion is supported in
some aspects and not supported in others. Fortunately,
the most important aspects of the hypothesis, as contained

in the independent measure of organizational influence,

109

supported quite convincingly. Specifically, the strongest
correlation (Q = .67) showed that organizational influence
did indeed have a decided effect upon the member's
attendance rate. Since these two measures are the
central measures for their respective concepts, they
provide the clearest test of the hypothesis. The

effect of organizational influence on total meetings
attended (Q = .42) could well be clouded by the range

of possible meetings attended (3 to 16), an untested
variance in the latter measure. Likewise, the effect

of organizational influence on the number of times
speaking (Q = .33) is not as strong as with attendance
rate since the accountability of the member to his
organization does not extend as strongly to his behavior
within meetings as his attendance at the meetings in the
first place. Furthermore, if the representative's
organization expected particular outcomes from this
agency, the representative would certainly have to
attend such meetings. The correlation between his
speaking and his influence in such meetings, however,

is far from perfect, as we shall see in the next section.
Thus we can conclude that to the extent that a repre-
sentative feels that the organization he represents is
interested in his behavior, his participation will

reflect that interest in all aspects to some extent.

110

The simple state of being a representative of
one type or another, however, does not seem to affect
participation in the same manner. Although representing
an organization or group is a necessary condition for
that group to be important to the member, its effect
on participation is limited simply to that conditional
effect. Thus we can further conclude that simple
representation is not enough to increase participation.
That representation must be accompanied by an active
organizational influence upon the individual.

So far the hypothesis is upheld in all its
aspects. The dimension of organizational efficacy,
however, relates in an odd fashion to the respective
dimensions of participation. One would be hard pressed
to explain the significant correlation with total meet-
ings attended and the almost zero correlation with
attendance rate. To this point, all the measures of
representation have related consistently with the
dependent measures of participation. The explanation
for this difference begins with the fact that the
attendance rate measure is a ratio of total meetings
attended and the total number of meetings possible to
attend for any representative. Even though those who
consider their organizational efficacy high still
attended fewer meetings, the number of meetings they

were allowed to attend may also have been less. The

lll

net result of these two changes would be to decrease the
number of low attenders with respect to attendance rate,
thus reducing the absolute value of the negative cor—
relation. In sum, the individuals with high organi-
zational efficacy scores may have attended less meetings
yet maintained an average attendance record because

they belonged to committees which met less often.

This explanation was tested by computing the
partial correlation between organizational efficacy and
participation controlling for the meeting frequency
of the committees to which they belonged. For this and
the subsequent analysis of meeting frequency, the high
frequency group was identified as the Executive Com-
mittee, Facilities and Services, and the Environmental
Health Committee which maintained a frequency of almost
one meeting per month for each group. The low frequency
group, on the other hand, consisting of the Board of
Trustees and the Manpower and Education Committee and
Health Economics Committee, barely met once every two
months over the course of the attendance data. The
partial correlations of the representation measure with
total number of meetings (Q = -.15) and attendance rate
(Q = -.10) are similar enough to support the hypothesis
that the low total meeting score was a result of the
fact that low meeting committees contained an inordinate

number of individuals with high organizational efficacy

112

scores. We can thus conclude that the correlation Of
organizational efficacy with the attendance measures

are not significantly different from zero. This form

of representative influence, therefore, has little effect
on attendance.

The situation is not the same with respect to
a member's behavior within meetings. Since the number
of times speaking per meeting attended includes only
those individuals who attended a meeting during the
period of observation, the positive correlation some-
what counters the slightly negative correlation dis-
covered with respect to attendance. The significant
relationship, however, arises from the fact that two
Of the three items in the efficacy scale relate directly
to the member's behavior within the meeting, specifi-
cally the likelihood of his speaking and the weight
which his contribution would have. It is not sur—
prising, therefore, that individuals with positive
attitudes in these directions should speak significantly
more Often than those without such attitudes.

In summary, therefore, we shall conclude that
the major hypothesis in relating an individual's repre-
sentation to his participation within the coordinating
agency is upheld in its most important aspects. Although
strictly being a representative was not important enough

to affect participation, it was a precondition for the

113

effects attributable to the importance which the indi-
vidual attached to such representation. The individual's
evaluation of the efficacy of his representation, how-
ever, related only to his behavior within the meetings
once his attendance was assured. Its lack of relation-
ship with attendance measures could be interpreted as a
partial disconfirmation of the hypothesis.

The alternative hypotheses presented above
relate to various personal and situational factors
traditionally related to participation in a voluntary
contest. These three alternative hypotheses read as

follows:

Hypothesis A-2:

 

An individual's participation in the coordinating
agency will be associated with the extent to which
he is attracted to the committee on which he serves.

Hypothesis A-3:

 

An individual's participation in the coordinating
agency will be associated with his social status.

Hypothesis A-4:

 

An individual's participation in the coordinating
agency will be associated with his participation
in other nonwork-related organizations.
Thus for these three hypotheses, the independent
variables are respectively: the attraction of the

member for the committee, his combined income and

educational status, and his voluntary participation in

114

other contexts representing the host of other factors
associated with voluntary participation. The results
for these three hypotheses are presented below with
respect to the three measures Of participation hypothe-

sized earlier:

Table 3-2

Q-Correlations of Alternative Factors and Participation

 

 

Total Attendance Times
Meetings Rate Speaking
Attraction .51b .49b .61b
Status .36a .24 .06
Organizational Activity .51b .47b .35
Organizational Influence .42C .67c .33b

 

ap < .05; bp < .005; p < .001

The previously discussed relationships with organizational
influence have been included for comparative purposes
since one of the reasons for testing these relationships
is to evaluate the relative strength of each of these
factors in their associations with the dependent variable.
Before discussing those comparisons, however, we should
turn our attention to the significance of these alter-
native factors in themselves.

Obviously, the attraction index is most consis-

tently related to the measures of participation. Thus

115

Homans' (1961) dictum, that individuals Speak more fre-
quently to those they like, is borne out in this empiri-
cal test. Homans, however, also cautions that the
relationship between attitudes and behavior in this

area is reciprocal which, in this case, suggests that
the attraction may be a post hoc explanation of attendance
behavior as much as a determinant of such behavior.

With this in mind, we must be particularly careful with
this relationship not to impute causality since indi-
viduals may just as easily be legitimating their atten-
dance by reporting favorable attitudes. Nevertheless,
the association cannot be denied since the correlations
are so strong.

The supposedly best structural predictor of
voluntary behavior, socioeconomic status, lives up to
its advanced billing, though it too maintains a consis-
tent relationship with the attendance measures. Status
fails to relate to behavior within meetings. The reason
for this low correlation will be discussed in the follow—
ing chapter where the effects of status in different
types Of groups is treated in depth. In sum, the com-
bined educational and income status measure did relate
to the total number Of meetings attended and only
slightly less to the attendance rate.

When all possible determinants of voluntary

participation are included under the measure of such

116

participation, the relationship becomes quite significant,
rivalling the importance of the attraction relationships.
Thus, to some extent, these consistent relations show
that participation in a coordinating agency does have
elements quite similar to participation in other, more
voluntary organizations. Thus to characterize such a
coordinating agency as a completely workerelated organi-
zation ignores as much of the motivation which prompts
members to join and participate as to classify it simply
in terms of the classic conception of voluntary organi-
zations. In the following chapter, we shall attempt to
distinguish more clearly the actual differences present
in this one organization.

First, however, we must further investigate the
role of representation in this agency. Even though the
simple fact of representing an organization had no sig-
nificant effects on participation, there may be other
characteristics which we can distinguish for individual
representatives. For this reason, the following cor-
relation matrix relates the two types Of representative
status with the other independent variables in this
section (Table 3-3). The wide range of correlations
in this matrix shows that formal and informal repre-
sentation are indeed two distinct dimensions of an
individual's background. For instance, although only

53% of the formal representatives were of high status,

117

such a figure takes on more importance when we see that
only 19% of those not formally representing outside
organizations were also of high status. Conversely 88%
of high status individuals were formal representatives
as compared with only 61% Of the low status group. Such
figures substantiate the Q-correlations of .66 and the
fact that individuals of high status are also more fre-

quently formal representatives.

Table 3-3

Q-Correlations of Representation and Alternative
Independent Measures

 

 

. Organizational
Attraction Status Activity
Formal Representation .00 .66 .41
Informal Representation .27 .01 .05

 

The same relationship exists between formal
representation and outside organizational activity.
Again only 54% of formal representatives have high
organizational activity scores. When only 33% of the
nonrepresentatives have such scores, the subsequent
interpretation says more about the nonrepresentatives
than it does about the representatives. The figures
suggest that the most unusual case is the nonrepresenta-
tive who has high status and/or high organizational

participation. For example, individual nonrepresentatives

118

have 58% fewer high status individuals than would be
expected from the random assignments of status and
formal representation.

The implications for these findings are important
both for the ideology of community participation and for
the research on voluntary organizations. The popular
conception of the community representative is some
combination of the man-on-the-street as a representative
of the ordinary man and the effective community par—
ticipant with high status in the community and knowledge
of its many issues. Although not conclusive, the evidence
from this research suggests that the member of this agency
who formally represents only himself is of low status
and participates only minimally in other aspects of the
community. Those representing formal interests and
organizations fit more comfortably into the typical
stereotype; yet the conception of the typical community
participant does not allow for such formal representation.

Perhaps even more important are the modifications
suggested for the field of voluntary participation. Even
though the influence of the organization has now been
shown to have important implications for participation,
the role Of formal representation itself must also be
accounted for in such a theory. When 88% of the high
status individuals, the par-excellence voluntary par—

ticipators, are simultaneously formal representatives

119

of other community organizations, the effects of such
representation must be investigated. Unfortunately, the
answers lie in comparative research across different
types of organizations, in particular specifying the
degree of involvement of other formal organizations in
the community. The present research effort can only
outline the problem and suggest that, in organizations
which have work-related functions, the representative
status of the individual plays an equally important role
with his individual status in determining his behavior
within such an organization.

Along with the specification of the effects of
formal representation, this research also points up the
difference in the individuals who formally and informally
represent groups or organizations. As opposed to the
formal representative, the informal representative
showed no differentiation with respect to the structural
or behavioral measures of status (Q = .01) or voluntary
activity (Q = .05). Rather informal representatives
distinguished themselves on their degree of attraction
to the committee (Q = .27). These differences point up
a crucial difference between informal and formal repre-
sentation, namely that where formal representation is
a structural role imposed on the individual, informal
representation is to a great degree created or perceived

by the individual. By definition, the member is not

120

chosen to the agency based on his informal representative
status. In addition, though not formally measured, the
groups mentioned in connection with informal represen—
tation were less often identifiable organizations and
more frequently large unorganized groups such as "the
poor,“ "educators,” and "the black community." Thus the
perceptual character of this form of representation cor-
relates more highly with the perceptual measure of
attraction to the agency and less with the structural
characteristics of individual's status and behavior.

In summary, then, the organizational effects
upon behavior in this coordinating agency are substantial.
In comparison with attitudinal and other structural deter-
minants of such participation, the strength of the organi-
zation's influence on the individual affected all forms
Of participatory behavior. Particularly with respect
to attendance rate, the pressure from the representative's
organization equalled or exceeded the strength of the
relationship for the other variables. The efficacy
attached to such organizational backing by the repre—
sentative only influenced his behavior once he attended
meetings. Finally, the simple status of being a formal
or informal representative did not produce any direct
effects upon behavior. These variables did produce
sufficiently interesting correlations with the alterna—

tive independent variables, however, to imply that the

121

representative status is not equally distributed across
all classifications of representatives. The weight of
this combined evidence leads us to the general conclusion
that the long neglected area of structural role pre-
scription and their effects on participation in a volun-
tary organization have considerable empirical basis.
Conversely, we must begin to distinguish between types

of voluntary organizations since this coordinating agency
exhibits characteristics more applicable to work organi-
zations. In effect, a coordinating agency may well be

a work organization whose focus is the interorganizational
network of other organizations as opposed to the limited
organizational goals of the typical organization. It
would then take its place between the ideal type of
voluntary organization functioning as an outlet for
charitable and philanthropic behavior and the ideal

type goal-directed work organization. Such organizations,
based on these findings, certainly require further

specification.

Correlates of Power

 

The second major question of this research goes
beyond participation behavior in a coordinating agency
and proceeds to evaluate the effectiveness of such par-
ticipation in terms of the influence of the individual
member. As with the previous discussion of participation,

one major hypothesis relates the external

122

interorganizational network to the behavior of members
within the agency. In this case, the major dependent
variable is the dominance of the represented organization
in the health delivery system. In addition, other
variables normally associated with influence in the
small group are also hypothesized to relate to an indi-
vidual's influence within this agency. The discussion
of the results of these hypotheses will follow this
format.

First of all, then, the major hypothesis in

determining individual influence is as follows:

Hypothesis B-2:

 

An individual's influence in the coordinating agency
will be directly related to the influence Of the
organizations he represents.
As with all critical variables in this study, a number
of different measures have been employed to tap the
various dimensions of the independent and dependent
variables. Thus influence has been divided into
attributed influence, perceived influence, and power—
lessness. The first two concepts refer to the influence
as exercised and perceived within the agency itself.
Another factor in these measures is the external vs.
internal evaluations of influence. The second and
third measures, in contrast to the first, provide an

internal measure of influence. Likewise, the concept

123

of organizational dominance is being measured by a

ranking of organizations as well as specific financial
contributions provided to the agency by organizations
represented by individual agency members. The results
of the inter-correlations between these variables are

presented below.

Table 3-4

Q-Correlations of Organizational Dominance and
Individual Influence

 

 

 

Attributed Perceived Powerless-
Influence Influence ness
Organizational
Dominance -.09 .06 -.49a
Organizational
Contribution -.01 .20 -.02
ap < .005

It would seem that few of the individuals and
organizational power measures supported the hypothesis.
Only one relationship, in fact, was significant, that
between organizational dominance and powerlessness (Q =
-.49). The most important conceptual difference between
powerlessness and the other power measures is that it
refers to problems of the health care delivery system
as a whole as Opposed to problems or issues specifically
dealt with in this agency. Thus it would seem that

dominant organizations in the community, which according

124

to the ranking are most of the medical organizations,
feel relatively capable of handling the problems of
interest group pressure and rising cost. These same
organizations, however, cannot or do not translate this
perceived dominance in the larger community to a dominant
position within the coordinating agency through their
representatives. A number of explanations for this lack
of relation is possible.

One possible explanation is that organizational
dominance in the community does not affect the influence
distribution within the agency. Such an explanation
would be consistent with the goal of such coordinating
agencies. By including community representatives as at
least 51% of the voting membership, the enabling legia-
lation intended to provide a counter-balancing force to
the existing dominance of health organizations. These
results may confirm that these goals have been based on
the lack of relation between traditionally dominant
organizations and their representative's influence
within the planning agency.

Another explanation is possible, however, in
the form of an intervening variable. Dominant organi-
zations may be able to exert influence within health
planning if their interests would be served by doing so.
In other words, an organization would be prone to exert

such influence were the outcomes of health planning able

125

to affect the operation of that organization. Certain
dominant organizations could conceivably, however, be
unaffected by a new agency with no regulatory or legis-
lative power and little Operating budget. The lack of
participation on the part Of health insurance carriers
and third-party payers may be an extreme form of such
benign neglect. Such organizations, acknowledged as
some Of the most influential in determining cost and
policy in the health delivery field, may be so powerful
that they can, in effect, ignore the health planning
process with no repercussion upon their operations.

By the same token, if some dominant organizations
can remain completely aloof from health planning, other
less secure but equally powerful organizations could be
members of health planning boards but find it unnecessary
to assert their influence in making decisions. we must
again be careful of the distinction between influence
and dominance. The latter concept implies continued
power with little need to reinforce the response of sub—
dominants. In contrast to such passive possession of
power, influence refers to the active use of power in
arriving at decisions. Bachrach and Baratz (1962) draw
the implications of this distinction in their admonition
to not forget that certain individuals may be powerful
enough to need to influence only rarely because the

issues which could threaten their interests do not arise.

126

Such "nonissues" could well be the interest group pressure
and rising cost that dominants felt well able to handle
on the powerlessness measure. The intervening variable,
therefore, in this specific case, would be the potential
effect that health planning might have on a particular
organization. The interaction of potential effect and
organizational dominance would thus be the major deter-
minant of a representative's influence. Such organi-
zation power would only be operative in situations and
concerning those issues which would potentially affect
the organization's operations. The lack of relation
between organizational dominance and individual influence
would be explained, not by the increased power of general
community representatives, but rather because of the
decision of some dominant organizations not to use that
power since no gains would be forthcoming. Unfortunately,
this project did not measure potential effect on the com-
munity organizations as a variable so that a final choice
cannot be made between these rival hypotheses. The next
step in such a research direction would be, of course,

to resolve that issue.

Given the lack of relationship for the major
hypothesis, the comparative purposes of the alternative
hypothesis is somewhat vitiated. These other independent
variables will still be reviewed, however, to document

the continuity of these power measures with that of

127

other research and to replicate those small group studies
referred to earlier in the natural setting of an operating
agency. For these purposes, the three alternative

hypotheses are presented:

Hypothesis B-2:

 

An individual's influence in the coordinating agency
is directly related to his task-specific expertise.

Hypothesis B-3:

 

An individual's influence in the coordinating agency
will be directly related to the extent to which
members of the agency identify with the individual.

Hypothesis B-4:

 

An individual's influence in the coordinating agency
will be directly related to the extent to which he
participates in the meetings Of the agency.

Because of the two basic dimensions Of infor-
mation pertinent to health planning, general education
and task specific information, the first two independent
measures refer to Hypothesis B-2. Likewise, all three
measures of participation previously employed are
included as independent measures in this analysis.

The following correlation matrix presents the results
of the tests to the three preceding hypotheses (page 128,
Table 3-5).

A review Of these correlations confirms earlier

predictions that these independent influences are indeed

associated with power in one form or another. All but

128

one Of these measures relates quite strongly with
attributed influence. The lack Of significance for
general education can perhaps be explained by the lack
of knowledge on the part of those rating the influence
of their fellow committee members. One would have
external information on all the other variables except

the educational degrees held by the individual.

Table 3-5

Q-Correlations of Alternative Factors and Power

 

Attributed Perceived Powerless-

 

 

Influence Influence ness
General Education .20 .36 -.33a
Specific Information .44b .70d .04
Identification .54d .06 -.20
Total Meetings c c
Attended .42 .50 -.23
Attendance Rate .49d .48C -.31
Times Speaking .48b .24 .06

a b c d

P < .05; P < .01; P < .005; P < .001

The correlates of perceived influence are equally
explainable, however, in terms of what the individual
knows of himself. For instance, an individual would
be able readily to judge his level of information and
his attendance record much easier than how often he

spoke at a meeting and, even more importantly, how

129

other committee members identified with him. Thus, those
items of information which were difficult or impossible
to ascertain would not relate as strongly with the out-
come measure.

Such an explanation, however, has interesting

implications for the measurement and evaluation of power.

- LTI'Q" '

The issue has already been raised concerning the relative
lack of outcomes for this agency as a whole. Therefore
in judging either one's own or another's relative influence

within the group, the ultimate criterion, namely the

 

ability to persuade or exert pressure on another's behavior,
is lacking because the discussion rarely reaches the
decision stage. Had all the independent measures related
with attributed and perceived power, one could not dis-
tinguish between those that were used as a pagig for
judging power versus those that happened to relate to
effective uses of power. Given that respondents judge
another's influence and not their own on the basis of
identification and times speaking, they are using these
variables as the basis for judging such influence as
Opposed to simply relating to the ultimate criterion of
effecting decisions. This evidence, however, is again
not conclusive to decide between the rival explanations.
Further controlled research would be necessary utilizing
groups which were forced to exert influence in making

final decisions and compared with those which did not

h-_\_Z

130

come to such decisions. If the variables actually sub—

stitute for the judgment of influence, the strength of

relationship in the two groups should significantly differ.
Although neither organizational power measure

showed consistent results with the individual's

influence within the coordinating agency, certain con-

clusions can be drawn concerning the type of individual

who represents dominant organizations:

Table 3-6

Q-Correlation of Organizational and Alternative Factors

 

 

 

Total Attend. Times
Info. Ident. Meetings Rate Speaking
Organizational
Influence .11 .25 .14 .10 -.29
Organizational
Contribution .07 -.02 .06 .75 -.25

 

The strongest relation by far is that represen-
tatives of organizations which have contributed funds
to the agency are extremely careful about attending
meetings on a regular basis (Q = .75). Such represen-
tatives have a 65% attendance rate compared to a 49%
rate for those which have not contributed. Another
characteristic Of both measures of organizational domi-
nance is that such individuals do not speak as Often at

meetings which they do attend (Q = -.29, -.25). The

131

differential speaking rates Of individuals expected to
have considerable power will be discussed more fully in
the next chapter. For now we can simply point out the
strikingly high attendance rate in comparison with lower
speaking rates.

In sum, though, we must admit that the dominance
of the organization represented by certain members does
not act to increase the power of those members. As
explained above, such a negative result may simply be
accepted or may be explained as the absence of a neces—
sary intervening variable before such dominance becomes
Operative as influence, namely the potential effect of
decision upon the dominant organization. Under the latter
conception, the hypothesis as stated wOuld be correct
but incomplete. Complementary research must be under-
taken to determine potential effect as well as dominance
in the health delivery network. Given the possibility of
nonissues within health planning in conjunction with the
consistent effects of organizational representation on
the participatory behavior of members, one would expect
such research to show that substantial influence is being
derived from the external arena. We conclude this
section, therefore, with this hope for future elaboration

of these findings.

 

CHAPTER IV

EFFECTS OF ALTERNATIVE GROUP STRUCTURE

One of the limits to the generalizability of this ;
study is that it investigates the correlates of partici-
pation and power in only one coordinating agency. For

that reason, these results may be completely ideosyncra—

 

I‘I-J

tic and invalid for the majority of such agencies. The
relative isolation of the working groups in this agency,
however, may provide a remedy for this limitation. If
the groups are found to differ on a significant dimension,
certain conclusions can be drawn with respect to the
Operation of these relationships under the different con—
ditions described by that dimension. In this fashion,
some predictions for future replications under different
conditions can be attempted.

Another benefit of analyzing these relations on
the group level is to distinguish the individual variation
which is associated with group differences. Such dif-
ferences may be of two types: those variables irreducible
to individual level and the cumulated individual variables.

Because of the purpose to describe different group

132

133

contexts, primary emphasis will be placed on the group
level variables. The structural effects of cumulated
individual variables will also be treated in latter

parts of the chapter.

Group Level Effects

 

The major difference between groups in this
agency is that one group, the Board of Trustees, has
final authority over agency budget and operations. All
staff members deal with Board members in their respective
areas of responsibility, and the Executive Director
reports directly to the Board. All non-Board members
are divided among five planning committees with similar
internal structures. Each committee has a chairman who
is automatically a Board member and a staff representative
to support the committee in its work.

Thus the authority of the different groups could
form the basis for comparing Board members with those
who do not serve with this group. One might expect a
heightened awareness of participation and influence
among Board members and, therefore, stronger relation-
ships between correlates Of these two dependent variables.
Subdividing the agency according to this criterion, how-
ever, would create serious distributional problems
which would preclude full—scale analysis. For instance,
the Board of Trustees contains 46 members, exactly one-

third Of all possible agency members. Only 33 of these

TICt

 

134

46 members were contacted for interviews, further
reducing the total N for that classification. Finally,
the Board has the second lowest group attendance rate

of all committees in the agency. Therefore, we would
expect to find a large degree of missing data based on
lack of knowledge in many of the relevant variables.

The decreased sample size, therefore, prohibits any

type of correlational analysis among Board members alone.
The same problem applies to the other groups in the

agency with even greater force because all are initially

 

smaller than the Board. Rather we must look for an
interesting and potentially fruitful combination Of
groups within the agency which will provide a suitable
distribution for replicating the previous analysis for
each group.

Committees differ on other variables, however,
as shown by the following table. The group level
variables presented here are intended to be an exhaustive
list of potentially relevant variables collected during
this project.

From this array of data (Table 4—1), we would
like to discover that variable which meets three cri-
teria: inclusion of all agency members, approximately
equal distribution of members, and theoretical interest
in further replication. In order to bring some order

into these variables, the intercorrelation matrix was

135

 

 

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136

computed using Spearman's rank order correlation methods.
From this matrix, we shall attempt to discover those
variables which relate to each other and perhaps
describe some central distinguishing characteristic
underlying these committees. The percentage of the
committee surveyed is only included in this table for
the reader's information. Since it has no theoretical

relevance, it is not included in the following analysis.

Table 4-2

 

Spearman Rank—Order Correlations of Group Level Variables

 

Mem/ Att. Know Know

 

 

 

 

N Meetings Mtng Rate Actions Com. Cl .
2 3 4 5 6 7

N Members 1 .05 .88* -.29 .31 .30 .33
N Meetings 2 .20 -.03 .76* .90* -.53
Mem/Mtng 3 .21 .53 .83* -.05
Att. Rate 4 -.01 .20 -.53
Actions 5 .88* -.48
Know Com 6 -.43

 

*p < .05
Of all the variables included, the number of

individuals which could recall the committee on the
information items (#6) would appear to be a central
variable since it relates significantly with three of

the other variables. Those correlates describe the well—
known committees Facilities and Services (ES) and
Environmental Health (EH) as meeting frequently (12 and

13 times respectively, r = .90), having a higher number

137

Of members per meeting (19 and 8, r = .83), and formally
acting on more proposals (13 and 4, r = .88). One could
include such characteristics under some global concept
of committee activity or centrality to the work of the
agency. Thus the score of each committee on the infor-
mation items would meet the criteria of interest and
potential theoretical value. This item on the survey,
however, did not include the Board of Trustees (BT) or
Executive Committee (EC) as a possible response because
the different level Of these groups in the agency did
not allow their combination into an information scale
with the planning committees.

We must, therefore, turn to one of the three sub-
sidiary measures which form the correlates of this
committee score. In order to dismiss one of these
measures, we must point out that the correlation of
the number of members per meeting (#3) with the number
Of members on the committee (#1) is, of course, partially
an artifact of the derivation of the former measure.
Without this correlation, variable #3 relates to no
other variable other than the information item and,
therefore, can be excluded as central to this sample
of group variables.

Of the two remaining variables, we shall use
meeting frequency (#2) as the basis for dividing the

agency into groups. This decision is based partially

"Jr‘-

 

iv!- r-

138

on distributional considerations since including Execu-
tive Committee (EC), Facilities and Services (FS), and
Environmental Health (EH) into one group provides an

N = 75. The N for the less frequently meeting group

is 101 since some individuals are included in both

groups because of multiple membership. The division

'7-

of the agency according to the number of formal actions
(#5) would have left only 56 members in the high activity
group as Opposed to 120 in the other category.

Other criteria also suggest that meeting fre- I

 

“'9‘-

quency will produce the best results after division of L
the agency. The high activity will include Environmental
Health (EH) which ranked highest on the information

scale (known by 47% of noncommittee members) despite

its low number of formal actions. Another advantage

is that the number of committee meetings is a more
reliable measure than the number of formal actions.

This report has already documented the small amount

of substantive accomplishment in this agency up to

this time. Therefore, measuring the number of formal
actions required some fine distinctions between actions,
all of which had little community impact. Another

reason for choosing meeting frequency is that this
variable affected all members of the committee equally
since all members received adequate notice of upcoming

meetings. Nonattenders would perhaps not be aware of

139

the actions taken or the implications which those actions
had. Furthermore, each Of the actions would have dif-
ferent meanings and effects for different members. All
members, however, were informed of the meeting itself.

Of course, if the primary emphasis of committee
activity were defined as measurable output, variable #5
(the number Of formal actions) would be the more appro-
priate choice. The Obvious advantage of this measure
would be to segregate the workings of the Executive
Committee (EC) and Facilities and Services (FS), the
actual decision-making groups, from the rest of the
agency. Environmental Health (EH) certainly met just
as frequently without handling that level of work load
since it was providing a different opportunity to its
members, that of information exchange and discussion.
By including EH, therefore, the concept of committee
activity or centrality is meant to apply to the working
groups in the agency, those groups which Offer the com-
munity representatives a valid reason for attending.
Within this group, such reasons include both decision-
making and professional information exchange. In this
study, the groups which offer its members these benefits
will be considered working groups. Thus the frequency
Of meeting will be the distinguishing characteristic

of these groups.

 

1: "2".”

140

The relationship of meeting frequency with the
other variables analyzed in this study is portrayed in
Table 4-3, page 141.

After the justification for this group level
variable, the lack of significant relationships with
the individual is truly remarkable. Except for the
number of meetings attended, which is a pure artifact
of the committee frequency, and attendance rate which
is related to the number, no other relationship achieved
significance. Such an outcome can be viewed as a mixed
blessing. Being able to explain individual differences
on these committees would have further explicated the
significance of the number of times the committee met.
On the other hand, the ultimate purpose of this treat-
ment is to discover differences in the relationships
between these variables as a result of meeting frequency.
Its independence from most individual level variables,
therefore, increases the interest of whatever differences
are discovered. Certain conclusions can be drawn from
the direction and partial strength of these correlations
with the proviso that the conclusions have more than
the normal chance of being due to random variation.

The activity of the committee did encourage
individuals to maintain a higher level of attendance.
One could most probably point to the regularity of

meeting as the active agent in this relationship.

 

141

Table 4-3

Q-Correlations of Individual Variables

and Meeting Frequency

 

 

 

 

Participation Variables Q
Number of Meetings Attended .48*
Attendance Rate .36*
Times Speaking per Meeting -.18
Formal Representation .24
Informal Representation -.10
Organizational Influence .15
Organizational Efficacy -.20
Attraction .25
Status -.23
Organizational Activity .24

Power Variables Q
Attributed Influence .29
Perceived Influence .00
Powerlessness -.l7
Organizational Dominance .12
Organizational Contribution .19
Information -.01
Identification .20

 

 

'—::.-
I

142

Individuals knew that on a certain day of the month

that committee would be meeting as opposed to having to
wait for a sporadic meeting to be called. The activity
of the committee also interested the interorganizational
community because of the potential for action affecting
those organizations. Thus the individuals on these
active committees more often formally represented other
organizations (Q = .24) and, in general, are more active
themselves in organizations beyond the planning agency
(Q = .24).

The surprising finding among these variables is
the lower status among members of active committees.
Although only significant at the .10 level, the lower
status can be explained in terms of the hierarchical
nature of the community power structure. For instance,
Dahl (1960) makes a distinction between top leaders
and subleaders. Hunter (1953) contrasts men of indepen—
dent decision and executors of policy. Sanders (1958)
proposes a more complex scheme distinguishing between
key leaders, dominants, functionaries, organizational
leaders, issue leaders, and spokesmen. However dif-
ferent types are classified, all descriptions of com—
munity power structures mention at least two levels-—
one to establish policy, one to carry out policy.

In this case, one does not expect policy makers

to carry out the month—to-month problems of

 

I utt-

143

interorganizational relations that an agency of this
type is designed to handle. The actively working groups
in this agency are, therefore, of lower status. For
example, EH has the lowest proportion of high status
individuals with 20%. In contrast, higher status indi-
viduals can afford to belong to the Board of Trustees,
one of the low activity groups, and still remain less
active in the execution of policy. It follows, there—
fore, that 63% Of the Board Of Trustees is high status

individuals. As in the traditional work organization,

 

 

the lower status individuals spend the time working on E
a problem while the higher status members have the
authority Of final decision. This division of labor
is maintained in this organization between the higher
status, less active Board of Trustees, and the lower
status, more active planning committees.

These different groups also explain the lack of
a strong relationship between status and participation.
For an agency with a specific interorganizational char—
acter and task, these correlations may not be as impor-
tant as in a purely voluntary association since the
activity may be defined as interorganizational work.
Thus, the less active groups, such as the Board, may
indeed approach the volunteer model. We shall see, how-
ever, that the more active committees are more like

work organizations.

D—a- 4-

144

The picture with regards to the power variables
is not as clear. Aside from the participation measures
already discussed, the only two strong characteristics
were that members of more active committees attributed
more influence to each other (Q = .29) and identified
more with each other (Q = .20). Even these relations,
however, were not significant. The latter relationship
is an indication of the greater homogeneity and cohesion
among the members Of these working groups. Although

the larger groups may have considerable hierarchical

 

differentiation, the nature of their work attracts L
like-minded individuals dealing with the interorgani—

zational relations. Thus the greater activity and

necessity to work together filters deviants from the

groups and leaves a more homogeneous residual. In

total, though, high activity committees do not dif-

ferentiate as sharply on the power variables as they

did on the participation variables.

Social Participation Within
Different Groups

 

 

Not only does the activity level of each com-
mittee differentiate the members, it also affects the
relationships between the variables previously analyzed.
The following table presents those relationships con-

trolled for the activity level of the committee.

145

Table 4-4

Partial Q-Correlations of Participation Hypotheses

Controlled for Meeting Frequency

 

 

Number of Attendance Times
Meetings Rate Speaking
Formal Repre-
sentation --- --- ---
Informal Repre-
sentation .07(-.13) .12( .01) .04(-.l4)
Organizational
Influence .48( .06) .61(-.06) .43( .10)
Organizational
Attraction --- .35(-.14) .51(-.10)
Status --- .32( .08) .05( .01)
Organizational
Activity .61( .10) .49( .02) .44( .09)

 

*
Number in parentheses is difference from

original Q

The partial correlations in this table shift some

values substantially from the original zero—order

relations. For instance, previous results showed

COI"

that

more high attracted individuals attend meetings more

regularly (Q = .49) and also speak more Often at
meetings (Q = .61). Here, however, we find that

relationship is less when controlled for meeting

such
the

fre-

quency (Q = .35 and .51) since high activity committees

have a greater share of high attracted (Q = .25),

participating (Q = .48 and .36) individuals. Mos

high

t

likely the subject matter and the continuity of regular

meetings combined to make members more satisfied

with

 

[2?” _

146

these committees. Since these members also attended

more often, part of the previous relationship is explained
by this joint correlation. The relationship, however, is
not reduced sufficiently to invalidate the original
support for the respective hypotheses.

Equal but Opposite shifts were produced in the
correlations which describe the relation between organi-
zational activity and participation. Even the correlations 1
of organizational activity with meeting frequency was

equal in direction and degree to that of attraction with .

 

meeting frequency, the effects of controlling for meeting E
frequency increased the strength of the correlations.
Since organizational activity represents a host of deter-
minants of participation, it was already an important
correlate. These shifts do not change the previous
distribution of variables to any considerable degree.

In order to examine any specification effects
of meeting frequency, in which the relationships are
either strengthened or reduced under different meeting
conditions, the following table (page 147) presents the
participation relationships for members of low activity
committees. As the table shows, the significant changes
in relation are in the areas of status and type of
representation. Since the low activity committees meet
on a sporadic basis and have less specific productive

output, they are more akin to the classic conception Of

147

the voluntary organization. In terms of the previous
discussion on the consistency between status and par-
ticipation, the increased relationship (Q = .36) could
be predicted from existing theory. The fact that higher
status individuals also Speak more at such meetings
merely makes this type of participation consistent with
their attendance. We shall see that this consistency

is reversed for high activity committees.

Table 4-5

 

Q-Correlations of Participation Hypotheses for #
Low Activity Committeesa

 

 

Number of Attendance Times
Meetings Rate Speaking
Formal Repre-
sentation -.06( .07) .06( .11) .51( .37)b
Informal Repre-
sentation .07(-.12) .21( .10) -.19(-.37)b
Organizational
Influence .37(-.05) .50(-.l7) .29(-.04)
Organizational
Efficacy -.l8( .13) -.18(-.19) .26( .00)
Attraction .42(—.09) .47(-.01) .62( .01)
Status .31(-.05) .24( .00) .36( .30)b
Organizational
Activity .63( .13) .58( .10) .47( .12)

 

aNumber in parentheses is difference from
original Q

bP < .05 from original Q

Formal representatives also spoke more at such

meetings (Q = .51) although the relation does not achieve

148

significance of its own. Unfortunately, the frequency
distribution for this variable does not allow us to
compare participatory behavior for formal representa—
tives in high activity committees to determine whether
the increased verbal behavior is also found in high
activity contexts. If the relationship would not have
been found in high activity committees, a possible
explanation for its presence here rests on the sporadic
nature of meetings. We shall see the role of information
and verbal behavior in determining an individual's power
in low activity rests on the lack of continuity and
necessity for certain individuals in such committees

to keep the majority informed Of current events in the
health field. An analogous situation may exist here

in that formal representatives are precisely those
individuals who have such information to pass along to
the uninformed. In this light, the decreased relation—
ship for informal participants is also possible since
informal constituencies, by definition, do not provide a
great deal of information to the representatives.

These individuals, therefore, cannot participate in

the meetings as much because they have nothing to say.
As Opposed to the previous lack of relationship, there-
fore, the actual fact of having a formal constituency
does significantly affect participation in committees

which do not meet Often. It may, in fact, use these formal

r. .—-‘. _— u nu.nlh..' ‘14."

 

149

representatives which keep these groups informed by
acting as liaisons between the group and the health
delivery network.

The relationships of these variables for high

activity groups also leads to some interesting comparisons.

Table 4-6 We

Q-Correlations of Participation Hypotheses for
High Activity Committeesa

 

 

 

Number of Attendance Times
Meetings Rate Speaking
Formal Repre- Lu
sentation -—— --- ---
Informal Repre-
sentation .l3(-.06) .16( .05) .16( .00)
Org. Influence .68( .26) .76( .09) .58( .25)
Org. Efficacy -.09( .22) .03( .02) .24(-.01)
Attraction --- .16(—.32)b .43(-.l8)b
Status --- .45( .21)b -.15(—.21)
Org. Activity .57( .07) .32(—.16)b .42( .07)

 

aNumber in parentheses is difference from
original Q

bP < .05 from original Q

The issue of status and participation is again raised,
but with different effects in this case. The attendance
rate among high status individuals is even stronger (Q =
.45) but this trend is not accompanied by any differen-
tiation with respect to their verbal behavior within

the meetings (Q = -.15). The difference between working

committees and committees with low productivity has

150

already been explained. Its significance for this
relationship is that high status individuals attend the
working groups, not necessarily to contribute, but to
monitor the outcomes of the committee. Thus they do not
refuse to contribute all of the time, a mode of behavior
which would result in a strong negative correlation, but
rather they contribute only when necessary as opposed to
their attendance which is regular and consistent. Such
a discrepancy could ultimately be attributed to the dif-
ference between monitoring and attempting to direct the
planning process--i.e., consistent monitoring and
direction only when necessary.

The direction of the shifts in relations for
other variables with respect to attendance rate is con-
sistent with this conception. Since the high activity
committees are more working groups and less groups from
which individuals derive personal rewards, the importance
of attraction to the group as a determinant of partici-
pation falls Off. Likewise, the attendance rate at
these committees is less related to other types of
community, a further indication of the unique character
of these groups. Finally, the influence of the organi-
zation upon individual participation actually increases
from an already strong position for the agency as a
whole. Thus when considering actively working groups

in interorganizational relations, this evidence leaves

151

little doubt as to the importance of the organizational
network in establishing the participation patterns

within this agency.

Social Power Within Different

Groups

 

The classification of committees according to
meeting activity may also affect the relationships of
power reported earlier. we would expect the relation-
ships for the correlates of power to be generally
strengthened for high activity committees since, as
these committees have more effect on the decisions in
health planning, the characteristics of power Should be
more apparent. This conception is put to test in the

following table.

Table 4-7

Q-Correlations of Power Hypotheses for High.Activity
Committeesa

 

Attributed Perceived Powerless-

 

Influence Influence ness
Org. Dominance -.10(-.01) .07( .01) -.39( .10)
Org. Contribution --- .58( .38)b .12( .14)
Information .39(-.05) .67(-.15)b .00(-.04)
Identification .70( .16)b .51( .451b -.05( .15)
Number of Meetings .47( .06) -—- -——
Attendance Rate .60( .11) .71( .23)b -.36(-.05)
Times Speaking .57( .09) .35( .11) .51( .45)b

 

aNumber in parentheses is difference from
original Q

bP < .05 from original Q

. 75':

I - _;-_- —'-V\' Ath

 

In»;

152

The results of analyzing the power relationships
for high activity committees showed no change in the
correlates of attributed influence except for increasing
the strength Of the association with identification
(Q = .70)--an already significant relationship. The
effects on perceived influence and powerlessness, how-
ever, are worthy of comment.

It would seem that the major hypothesis for this
section in the form of organizational contribution is
partially supported despite the decreased size of the
sample. For high activity committees, the organizational
contribution is a more salient resource in the mind of
the individual himself. In addition to discussing inter-
organizational problems and resolving interorganizational
disputes, these groups are more likely to be aware of
agency's financial condition and its need for matching
funds. Those individuals who come to participate with
such contributions obviously feel that such actions
enhance their influence position.

This gain in supporting one aspect Of the
hypothesis was accompanied by a loss of significance
for organizational dominance with reSpect to powerless—
ness (Q = -.39). Although the correlation was not
reduced that much, the decreased sample size prevented
the correlation from achieving significance. A

potentially more important association, however, was

. cl!

 

153

also achieved for high activity committees. In such
situations, individuals who participate in the meetings
also tend to be powerless with respect to the problems
of interest group and rising cost. Two explanations
are possible in this case.

One possible explanation is that the subleaders,
highly active members Of these committees, have little
influence over the major issues outside the agency. A
less likely possibility is that more powerless individuals
speak more in order to Obtain greater influence. This
latter explanation, however, would also predict an
increase in attendance for these powerless individuals,
a relationship not, in fact, increased for high activity
committees. Therefore, we shall take this increased
relationship between powerlessness and verbal behavior
as support fOr the differences noted earlier, namely
that high status individuals attend more but speak less
in high activity committees. The complete relationship
would, therefore, be that high attenders tend to be of
higher status within these groups and feel more power-
ful with respect to the problems of medical cost and
intereSt group pressure. High verbal participators,
on the other hand, tend to be of lower status and are
more powerless on these problems. These findings support
the conception of the composition of these groups as
major leaders who attend and sub—leaders who actually

participate.

154

The low activity committees present a much dif-

ferent picture of the bases of influence.

Table 4-8

Q-Correlations of Power Hypotheses for Low
Activity Committeesa

 

Attributed Perceived Powerless-

 

Influence Influence ness
Org. Dominance .11( .20) -.19(-.25)b -.67(-.18)b
Org. Contribution --- .24( .04) -.03(-.01)
Information .70( .26)b .85( .03) .01( .03)
Identification .40(-.14) -.22(-.23)b -.21(-.01)
Number of Meetings .41( .00) .45(-.05) -.33(—.10)
Attendance Rate .43(-.06) .49( .01) -.47(—.16)
Times Speaking .47(-.21)b .35( .11) —.11(—.05)

 

 

aNumber in parentheses is difference from
original Q

bP < .05 from original Q

Where high activity committees generally increased the
importance of all factors of influence except information,
low activity committees felt that information was even
more important (Q = .70). Conversely, they also seemed
to subscribe to the axiom that "talk is cheap" since

high verbal participators were less frequently accorded
high power (Q = .47). Since these groups generally had
fewer members in attendance, most members had the oppor—
tunity to speak and the differentiation between those

who took this Opportunity and those who did not was

155

less sharp. Therefore, the hierarchical differentiation
of verbal participation within meetings does not emerge
in these committees as in the high activity groups.

Another source of differentiation, however,
which did have more effect on these groups was the level
of information. Since these committees met infrequently,
keep up with the proceedings of the agency and the health
care system between meetings was much more difficult.
Therefore, those individuals who kept the committee
informed on these matters are accorded more power.

The major outcome of viewing these relationships
under different conditions has then been to discover
shifts in the bases of power. The next chapter will
discuss these shifts in more detail. Suffice it to say
at this point that although large differences were not
discovered, the increased effect of organizational
contribution showed, as with the participation variables,
that the interorganizational network has increasing
effect on groups the closer they approximate the model
of a working, decision-making group as opposed to simply
a membership group. Thus more refined techniques for
distinguishing groups along this continuum may also

Show an increasing interorganizational pattern.

Structural Effects

 

One final method for analyzing these relation-

ships is through the structural effects analysis pioneered

156

by Blau and Scott (1962). In this conception, groups
in the agency are divided according to their ranking on
each of the independent variables previously discussed.
The method used to arrive at the group variables is to
determine the number of individuals on each committee

who rank above the median on a particular individual

“Ii-I

variable. Those committees for which more than half of
the members are above the median are classified as high
on that variable. The low committees on the group

variable are, therefore, those for which less than half

 

of the members are above the median. These measures La
should not be confused with the group level variables
utilized above since these group variables are based
upon individual level scores rather than measures which
apply to the group as a whole. Controlling for these
group averages, the individual effects of the same
variables with respect to the dependent variables can
be determined. Because of the distributions Of these
variables, most of the variables resist analysis in
this fashion. Those with sufficiently uniform distri—
butions are presented on page 157.

External organizational activity has been a
strong correlate of participation, particularly in the
low activity committees. When committees are divided on
the basis of organizational activity, we continue to find
that individuals with little external activity are

affected on committees with high external activity.

157

Table 4-9

Percentage of High Meeting Attendance for Individual and
Group Organizational Activity

 

Group Organizational Activity

 

 

LO HI
Ind. LO 59% (N=27) 37% (N=27)
Org.
Act. HI 70% (N=20) 79% (N=28)
Table 4-10

Percentage of High Attendance Rate for Individual and
Group Organizational Activity

 

Group Organizational Activity

 

LO HI
Ind. L0 59% (N=27) 33% (N=27)
Org.
Act. HI 70% (N=20) 68% (N=28)

 

Both of these tables exhibit substantially lower
participation for individuals with less organizational
activity when their fellow committee members have more.
High external activity leads to high participation in
both cases, however. The presence of high activity
seems to inhibit participation on the part of those who
do not participate outside the committee. With.more
evidence of this nature, one could begin to piece together
an explanation based on an atmosphere of expertise con-
cerning voluntary participation. Those with high exper-
tise scores are not affected in either type of group;

presumably their experience with voluntary participation

 

158

allows them to function in many different situations.
Individuals without such experience are highly sensitive
to the predominant experience of the group. They seem
less inclined to attend meetings where they are at a dis-
advantage with respect to voluntary participation.

The same inhibitory effect is discovered with
respect to the status of the individual versus the pre-
dominant status Of the group (Table 4-11). In addition,
a double effect is Observed with respect to the total

participation of the individual (Table 4-12). Along

 

with the inhibitory effects, therefore, we find that
high status individuals attend more meetings if they

are members of high status groups.

Table 4-11

Percentage of High Attendance Rate for Individual and
Group Status

 

Group Status

 

 

LO HI
Individual L0 64% (N=28) 37% (N=27)
Status HI 63% (N=l9) 64% (N=28)
Table 4-12

Percentage of High Meeting Attendance for Individual and
Group Status

 

Group Status
LO HI

 

Individual L0 64% (N=28) 41% (N=27)
Status HI 63% (N=l9) 75% (N=28)

 

159

In other analyses using the principle of
structural effect, when the independent and dependent
variables are positively correlated, the findings indi—
cate that individuals tend to follow the group averages.
For instance, in a group high on the independent variable,
individuals low on that variable will have a greater pro-

portion high on the dependent variable than will their

I,
,.

counterparts in the low group. More individuals with
a low value on the independent measure are high on the

dependent if the committee is high on the independent.

 

Rather than this enhancing effect, however, high values
for the committee on organizational activity or status
actually inhibit participation for members with low
values for those variables. Thus if given a preference,
a higher proportion of low status individuals can be
expected to attend low status groups. High status indi-
viduals, likewise, tend to attend groups which have a
higher proportion of other high status individuals.

The correlation between status and participation is
preserved, however, since the proportion of low status
individuals preferring low status groups, the group

of choice, is exactly the same as the proportion of

high status individuals preferring those groups, although
they do not prefer them. The proportion of low status
individuals attending high status groups decreases from

this level while the proportion of high status individuals

160

in these groups increases. High status individuals
therefore preserve their absolutely higher participation
rates according to previous theory.

Another effect is apparent in these findings
which has significance for the overall attendance rate
of the group. Since the low status preference and high
status no-preference line is approximately 63%, the
lower proportion of low status individuals in high status
groups has greater potential range than the higher pro-

portion of high status individuals. Therefore, the

 

overall effect is to decrease the overall attendance ?
for high status groups with respect to low status groups.
In fact, the proportion of low status individuals in
high status groups declined by 23% while the proportion
of high status individuals increased by only 12%. The
result is that groups high on the status variable have
generally lower participation than committees low on

the status variable despite the positive individual
correlation. The result Of this effect is that com-
mittees high on either of these variables has generally
lower participation than committees low on the variable
despite the positive individual correlation. For
instance, the relationship between group status and
attendance rate is presented in Table 4-13. This
relationship is also representative of the effects Of

group status on the number Of meetings attended and of

161

organizational activity on both participation measures.
Thus although individual characteristics have substantial
effects on behavior, the social system in which that

behavior is carried out also has its effects.

Table 4-13

Group Status and Attendance Rate

 

Individual Attendance Rate

 

LO HI
Group L0 38% 62%
Status HI 49% 51%
N = 102 Q = -.23

 

 

High status committees contain an almost equal
share of low and high attenders (49% and 51% respectively).
Low status committees, on the other hand, have better
attendance rates (38% and 62%, Q = -.23), a finding
directly Opposite the relationship on the individual
level (Q = .24). Because of the inhibitory effect of
the high status group on low status participants, low
status groups actually contain a lower proportion of
low participators and a higher proportion of high par-
ticipators. In order to maintain the positive relation-
ship on the individual level, the preponderance of low
status-low participators must be on the high status

groups. The unavoidable conclusion is then that it is

162

precisely the discontinuity between the status of the
group and the status of the individual accounts for

low participation rates.

"'9‘. a"
D

 

CHAPTER V

DISCUSSION

Organizational research encompasses two main
streams: general theoretical findings which apply to
all organizations and specific conclusions which describe
in depth the Operation and function of particular
organizational forms. This study is largely of the
latter type focusing upon a community planning organi-
zation in the health field and distinguishing the factors
associated with individual participation and power in
that setting.

Its ultimate purpose is, on the other hand, quite
broad since such an organization represents one segment
on the ongoing interorganizational relations in this
field. This segment is, in addition to being represen-
tative of the interorganizational arena, also more
limited and therefore more researchable than the multi—
faceted exchanges of every organization. Because of
this complexity, the whole area on interorganizational
relations has received scant treatment in research.

The subject is, however, vital since the link between

163

'!

 

164

the primary group and the community is generally accepted
to be the associational or occupational organization.

How these organizations relate among themselves, who
participates in such a planning agency, and which
organizations wield the most influence are some of the
key questions addressed in this paper.

From interview questions matched against atten-
dance records for members of this agency, two types of
factors were elicited in explaining the participation
in planning and coordination meetings. One type Of
factor was hypothesized largely as replications of pre—
vious work in voluntary participation. The direct
effects of these variables happened to be straight-
forward and almost trivial in import: those individuals
who were attracted to their committees and/or participated
regularly in other voluntary organizations had better
attendance records in this agency. SO far, so good--
but there is certainly nothing startling in the finding
that motivated social joiners and boosters attend plan—
ning meetings.

A second level Of factors derived from the
agency's organizational environment provide more interest
to this area since they relate directly to a member's
organizational role as Opposed to his individual interest.
The interest which a representative's organization

showed in his planning activity and, consequently, its

 

IHNI‘II J.

165

influence on that activity related to all forms of par-
ticipation, in particular enhancing the representative's
attendance role. The importance of this relation is

that it introduces a completely different type of variable
as a correlate to voluntary participation, namely a con-

dition imposed upon the individual as opposed to charac-

teristics of the individual himself.

In addition, the traditional conception of a
"voluntary" organization may not completely apply to

this planning agency. Although the normative restrictions

 

H"- .

and role expectations of some voluntary organizations
are quite strict, particularly those which are political
in nature, one of the essential differences between a
voluntary and a work organization is that the rewards
of the latter are primarily financial. Therefore, the
reasons for joining and the consequences of leaving a
work organization are closely related to basic individual
needs and goals of survival as opposed to the more
socially relevant rewards of status, esteem, etc.
derived from voluntary associations. This differen—
tiation of rewards underlies the finding that higher
status individuals belong to more voluntary organizations
since their basic needs are more adequately and, in
many cases, more easily met.

The characterization of such organizations as

"voluntary" does not imply that each member always wants

166

to join or attend. As well as freeing an individual to
participate, social status may also prescribe partici-
pation in certain organizations. Hence, the finding
that low income individuals attend meetings that they
like and do not attend those they dislike contrasts
sharply with the inability of the high income individual
to base his decisions solely on attraction since income
role prescriptions create noise in the system and destroy
the one-to-one relationship. Thus more high income
individuals attend when they dislike the group and do
not attend when they do like it based on the exigencies
of their status position.

Although the previous findings are well documented
in other settings an individual's organizational role
based on the influence exerted by his representative
status also specifies behavior which goes beyond strict
motivational desires. It is this role specification
which transforms what appears to be a community organi-
zation into an extension of the work organizations in
the community. When individuals participate in planning
as appointed representatives of a work organization or
even as part of the job responsibilities in a certain
organization or occupation, the planning agency is no
different from an interdepartmental task force within
an organization since representatives do not participate

as individuals for individual rewards but rather because

 

167

of organizational expectations. Although most community
planning agencies are composed of a paid staff serving
volunteer committees, this analysis makes the point that
the volunteers may not be the typical "concerned citizens"
but rather paid representatives of other organizations.
Only certain groups in the agency exhibit the
characteristics of a work organization. These groups
meet on a regular basis, either for professional infor-
mation exchange or interorganizational decision—making,
and display participation patterns more dependent on
status than other groups do. These patterns are, in
addition, hierarchical in a manner similar to the par-
ticipation of community leaders and sub—leaders described
in numerous other studies on community power. In these
committees, higher status individuals attend and lower
status individuals speak. Thus, we have working groups,
monitored by higher status individuals, but in which
most of the business seems to be carried on by the
lower status participants. This pattern contrasts with
the other committees in which attendance is based on
participation in other voluntary organizations and
speaking is solely a function of attraction to the
group. Individual characteristics, therefore, model
the behavior patterns in these committees where role
prescriptions have the greatest effect in the actively

working groups.

168

The implication of these findings is that within
broad issue areas stable participation patterns in com-
munity affairs seems to have more validity than the
predominately issue relevant participation suggested in
some studies. Participation would most likely vary con-
siderably across institutional sectors, but within the
health care area, at least, the major participants in
decisions represent a continuing group over time. Both
the high attendance level for these groups and partici-
pation based on role rather than preference denote a
continuing group participating within this agency.

Although planning does not represent the complete
interorganizational scene, it is designed to include
broad representation from many sectors. The informal
interorganizational network, therefore, would most
likely be even more restrictive, though perhaps no more
stable, since that system is not obliged to include as
many community representatives. One further implication
may be that interorganizational negotiations are carried
on within so-called "voluntary" organizations more than
present theory has allowed. The assumption has been
that interorganizational relations have by definition
been completely detached from a formal organizational
setting. Litwak and Hylton (1962), however, have

attempted an integration of interorganizational

169

relations into an organizational setting. The partici-
pation within this agency tends to bear out their con-
tention that
coordinating agencies will develop and continue in
existence when formal organizations are partly
interdependent; agencies are aware of this inter—
dependence, and it can be defined in standardized
units of action.
Their study of the national community chest organizations
supported this hypothesis. Our study has focused on the
same problem from the local perspective and shown the
effects of the interorganizational network on the par-
ticipation within this agency. As community integration
becomes more necessary, the system of achieving such
integration may be more and more institutionalized by
delegating those functions to identifiable organizations.
The implications for further research in this area will
be covered at the conclusion of this chapter.

The evidence is strong, therefore, for the par-
ticipation of members in this agency based on their
affiliation with the interorganizational network in the
community although the direct effects of such variables
were not strong. The influence of these members, how—
ever, is less dependent on the dominance of their
organizations in the external system than was originally
supposed. The greatest single factor for the lack of a

one-to-one correspondence between power outside and

inside the agency is an error in the previous theory.

 

170

As explained above, power in this agency would only be
necessary when an organization's goals are threatened

by the agency's decision. Powerless organizations could
not apply sufficient resources to the problem, and domi-
nant organizations would generally not be threatened

in the first place. Observed influence, therefore,

would be evident only when the potential for impact on

an organization's goals is combined with the resources

to influence that impact. As a result of the theoreti-
cally negative correlation between potential impact

and resources, the relationship between observed influence
and external dominance, a usable resource for internal
observed influence, may approach some type of curvilinear
relationship because of the differential need to use the
dominance reserve. An analysis of "nonissues," those
subjects which do not arise in health planning, may

also be enlightening with respect to those organizations
which would be able to successfully stifle any movement
in those directions.

Another discontinuity in the correspondence
between resources and actual influence lies in the per-
ceptions of the individual. The findings showed that
attributed influence related to all hypothesized sources
of influence except organizational bases while perceived
influence was dependent only on those for which the
individual had direct knowledge, the most important being

information.

 

1'7 1
The conclusion from these findings is that indi-
viduals have only a limited perspective on the sources
of their own power. Although attributed influence and
perceived influence are correlated, the relation is far
from (Q = .46). The discrepancy is due to the bases of
influence which are beyond the direct knowledge of the

individual. A number of implications follow from this

difference. First of all, most theoretical treatments

1;va fir .4.T.Tl’
[v

of power and influence employ a rational economic model

in which gains and losses are calculated and resources

 

T'F

are used or spent for a specific end in any influence
attempt. The assumption is one of conscious application
of means to an end. The failure of such a model to
explain the outcome of all influence attempts has been
attributed to the lack of a common denominator on which
to compare quantities of different resources (T. Clark,
1968). This analysis suggests another possibility.
Individuals may have a deficiency or surplus in a
resource category which they ignore in determining their
power. Such a discrepancy could easily explain the lack
of an influence attempt when power is available or its
failure when the individual feels assured of success.

A second implication of this finding is the
failure of individuals to correctly assess the power
of another individual. Although the success of any

specific influence attempt rests on P's perceptions of

172

0'5 resources, that perception may not follow the rules
of rational economy either. In the case of reputational
power measures, for instance, reputed power itself may
be the sole resource available to an individual which,
if brought to a test, would fail for lack of other
resources. This possibility puts an extra burden on
the structural analysis of power attempted in this
study since attributed influence is equivalent to
structural organizational resources only when those
resources or the lack thereof are correctly assessed

by the individual being influenced. The conclusion may
be that sociological theory admit bluffing as a usable
resource in an influence attempt.

Another argument which disputes the assumption
that a planning agency is a reflection of the larger
interorganizational network is based on the fact that
individuals representing powerful organizations, while
exhibiting no greater power within the agency, are the
least powerless group with respect to the problems
identified on the powerlessness scale (Protecting
personal interest in conflict and containing rising
medical costs). As members of powerful organizations,
they feel that they can handle these problems which
affect the larger society, but they are not regarded
nor do they regard themselves as particularly powerful

within this organization. Therefore, either the planning

 

173

agency does not represent the complete larger inter-
organizational network or, if it does, powerful organi-
zations do not transfer their power into it. Since the
first is more likely, we must forgo, for the time being,
major direct effects of the organizational environment
in determining power within the organization.

Two major findings emerged from the division
of this agency into more active and less active groups.

With the higher attendance rates and more frequent meet-

! fa?) ‘n’rl- ‘1‘. '1“ "

ings of the high activity groups, information about the

 

T‘”' L: ‘DY. .“

proceedings was more constant so that information
variance was less. The variable of information, there-
fore, had less effect as a differential influence
resource. Conversely, since the more active groups

had slightly more members per meeting, the differences
between those who talked and those who did not were
sharper, resulting in greater differentiation. For low
activity groups, the effects were reversed-~i.e., fewer
members allowing for more discussion and less frequent
meetings forcing members to rely on different external
sources of information with more variance.

These differences in relationships raise another
concern of general interest with regard to studies of
social power. Attention should be directed to the fact
that individuals must differ on a particular resource

before it can be used as a source of differential power.

174

Although not as yet attempted, perhaps further research
across groups could be conducted in which the relation-
ships were controlled for the variance of the resource
variable. Greater consistency may be apparent in dif-
ferent group settings with this line of attack.

The overall effect of this study, then, has been
to look in depth at a planning agency, its members, and
its environment. Since viewing such an agency as an
intermediary between organizations and its members as
primarily representatives of those organizations, a
fruitful new approach to interorganizational analysis
has begun. All too often we assume that all relations
between organizations take place over the telephone,
on the golf course, in the cocktail lounge—~far beyond
the prying instruments of social scientists. Conversely,
we are too ready to accept the organizational chart
and the Board minutes as accurate representations of
organizational decision-making. A more valid conception
of both would be to consider these two arenas of social
behavior as the beginning and the end of the rationaliz—
ing process. Bureaucratic rules, authority, and the
norms of rationality have long been accepted parameters
of the organizational system. We forget that as
resources become more scarce and expectations of
efficiency increase, organizations themselves are

going to move to adopt such regulations on their

‘7'

 

175

behavior. Interorganizational relations, therefore, are
going to be increasingly visible in public agencies.
Informal networks will remain, as they have in the most
bureaucratic organization, but the field of interorgani-
zational relations should offer more opportunities for

study in years to come.

r .

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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ABBREVIATIONS

APSR - American Political Science Review
ASQ = Administrative Science Quarterly

ASR = American Sociological Review

 

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