The Concept of Power

The concept of power is present within various realms of all organizations. Power, however, is not something that should necessarily be looked at negatively. There are justifiable types of power that may be important to criminal justice organizations. The main role of power in criminal justice administration should be to gain compliance from subordinates of all types, and turn that power over time into acceptable forms of authority (Stojkovic et al., 2008). It is for this reason that power is an important attribute in criminal justice agencies.

It is important as a criminal justice manager, and agency as a whole, to have legitimate power. Power that is not coercive and works for the good of the organization is beneficial in gathering information, resources, and compliance. Legitimate, expert, and referent power can be effective in the attainment of goals (Stojkovic et al., 2008). Legitimate power operates on the assumption that those in traditional authority positions are the power holder and wield their authority over the power recipient because their internalized norms justify the amount of compliance needed (Stojkovic et al., 2008). Legitimate power is most useful within criminal justice agencies because it takes into account the culture, and social structure, and operates within a hierarchy to promote successful delegation of duties.

While political power does have some benefits within a criminal justice agency, it is easily corruptible and leads one to believe legitimate power should be internally focused for a successful organization. There is a difference is the power structure from group to group, and it has been found that power is mostly socially based. The key to successful power structures that work for all situat...

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...issue. An example of this exists when two same level corrections officers are seeking the same promotion, and one becomes unable to function in a professional or friendly manner to the other because of the conflict. At this time, an entire organization may be at danger of experiencing negative side effects from this one conflict. Once a conflict is taken to a personal level, it may move into the manifest conflict stage. During the manifest stage behaviors that may be hidden or evident will present themselves to uncover the conflict (Stojkovic et al., 2008). The occurrence of negative behaviors in manifest conflict stage may occur between two officers, or even among supervisors and subordinates that will knowingly irritate or sabotage the other person’s interests. Conflict aftermath begins once the issues that began the conflict are dealt with for resolution.