Reading focus
Syllabus: How Do Social Influence and Power Work?
Map valued outcomes and alternatives in both directions.
Why you’re reading it. Add the structure of the relationship to explanations of compliance.
A question to consider. Which changes would reduce a worker's dependence, and which would merely make the existing demands easier to tolerate?
Why this reading
Power depends on a relationship: what each party needs and what alternatives exist. Emerson makes that dependence central rather than treating power as a personal possession.
Before you read
Dependence increases when another controls valued outcomes and alternatives are costly or unavailable. Power here is a capacity to influence, which need not be visibly exercised. Mutual dependence can be unequal.
Read for
- Translate the paired power–dependence equations into an everyday relationship.
- Compare adapting to demands with changing dependence itself.
- Ask what assumptions connect alternatives, coalitions, status, and legitimacy.
Consider afterwards
- How could an additional source of employment change a worker's bargaining position even if the supervisor's personality stays the same?
Editorial context
This is a general theoretical scheme with brief empirical illustrations, not a complete test of its propositions. Its gendered and coercive examples reflect period assumptions and warrant criticism. Recognizing possible balancing processes does not mean people can freely escape unequal relations.