The influence of gender on the likelihood of using soft social power strategies in school consultation

Abstract

The social power typology developed originally by French and Raven in 1959 and revised by Raven in 1965 and 1992 was applied to study school consultation. Specifically, we investigated how the gender of school psychologist consultants and teacher consultees influence how likely consultants are to use soft power strategies, identified as those drawing on expert, referent, informational, legitimate dependency, and legitimate position power. A modified version of the Interpersonal Power Inventory was mailed to 1,000 Nationally Certified School Psychologists. Results obtained from 352 respondents indicated that, when consulting with female teachers: (a) male psychologists are more likely to use expert power than the other four soft strategies combined, and (b) female psychologists are less likely to use referent power than the other four soft strategies combined. Findings suggest that consultant gender plays an important role in determining influence strategies used by school consultants. C 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Why do employees follow their superiors’ instructions? Identification of the reasons to comply with superiors’ will in a group of Polish employees

“…Such factor structure is similar to the one obtained by Erchul et al (4-factor structure [12], and in contrast to others, e.g., 7 factors distinguished by Raven et al [3] or 2 distinguished in [4,13,16,17]). Although 2-factor solution emerges more frequently, the factorial structure of the original 11 power bases is still to be established.…”

“…We supported the view that power bases were not independent and they constituted factors [3,[12][13][14][15][16][17]. We also confirmed that people complied with their superiors' will for different reasons that accounted for styles of compliance.…”

“…Moreover, not the actual use but the possibility to use the specific power base perceived by subordinates motivates them to comply [3]. Many researchers have searched for the factor structure of power bases [4,[11][12][13][14][15][16][17] but the amount or content of such factors were diverse (Table 1). For example, Raven et al [3] distinguished 7 factors: n impersonal reward with impersonal coercion, n expert and informational power, n legitimate equity with legitimate reciprocity, n personal reward and personal coercion, n referent, n legitimate position, n legitimate dependence as separate factors.…”

“…Two factors (harsh versus soft power bases) emerged in research of Getty and Erchul [13], Koslowsky et al [4], Wilson et al [16], or Yukl and Falbe [17]. Moreover, earlier studies suggest that regardless of the measurement method or the group surveyed some power bases occur as the reasons to comply more often than others (e.g., informational and expert power [4,12]) and they tend to occur in combinations [3].…”

Evaluating Factors that Influence Treatment Integrity During Peer Consultation

“…Some, but not all, of these include: (a) consultant leadership style (Kelleher, Riley-Tillman, & Power, 2008;Tysinger, Tysinger, & Diamanduros, 2009), (b) consultee and consultant skill level (Gettinger, Stoiber, & Koscik, 2008;Lewis & Newcomer, 2002;Sterling-Turner, Watson, & Moore, 2002;Wilkinson, 2003), (c) social power strategies (Getty & Erchul, 2009;Wilson, Erchul, & Raven, 2008), (d) acceptability of treatment plans (Chitiyo & Wheeler, 2009;Kelleher, et al, 2008;Noell et al, 2005;Sanetti & Kratochwill, 2008;Segool, et al, 2007;Tysinger, et al, 2009;Wilkinson, 2003), (e) time of consultant and teacher to implement the intervention (Gansle & Noell, 2008;Gonzalez, Nelson, Gutkin, & Shwery, 2004;Lane, et al, 2004;Sanetti & Kratochwill, 2008), and (f) training provided to consultee (Sanetti & Kratochwill, 2008;Sterling-Turner et al, 2002). When treatment integrity is not assessed during the consultation process, behavior change cannot be fully attributed to the effectiveness of the treatment plan (Lane et al, 2004).…”