Power is frequently defined by political scientists as the ability to influence the behavior of others with or without resistance. The term authority is often used for power perceived as legitimate by the social structure. Power can be seen as evil or unjust, but the exercise of power is accepted as endemic to humans as social beings. In the corporate environment, power is often expressed as upward or downward. With downward power, a company's superior influences subordinates. When a company exerts upward power, it is the subordinates who influence the decisions of the leader (Greiner & Schein, 1988). Often, the study of power in a society is referred to as politics.

The use of power need not involve coercion (force or the threat of force). At one extreme, it more closely resembles what everyday English-speakers call "influence", although some authors make a distinction between power and influence – the means by which power is used (Handy, C. 1993 Understanding Organisations).

Much of the recent sociological debate on power revolves around the issue of the enabling nature of power. A comprehensive account of power can be found in Steven Lukes Power: A Radical View where he discusses the three dimensions of power. Thus, power can be seen as various forms of constraint on human action, but also as that which makes action possible, although in a limited scope. Much of this debate is related to the works of the French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926–1984), who, following the Italian political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), sees power as "a complex strategic situation in a given society social setting". Being deeply structural, his concept involves both constraint and enablement. For a purely enabling (and voluntaristic) concept of power see the works of Anthony Giddens.

Power may refer to:

Frances Fox Piven (born October 10, 1932) is an American professor of political science and sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, where she has taught since 1982. Previously, she had been a member of the political science faculty at Boston University.

Piven was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, of Russian Jewish immigrant parents, Rachel (née Paperny) and Albert Fox, a storekeeper. Piven immigrated to the United States when she was one and was naturalized as a United States Citizen in 1953. She was raised in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York. She attended P.S. 148 and Newtown High School. She received a B.A. in City Planning in 1953, an M.A. in 1956, and a Ph.D. in 1962, all from the University of Chicago. She attended on a scholarship and she waitressed for living expenses.

Piven was married to her long-time collaborator Richard Cloward until his death in 2001. Together with Cloward, she wrote an article in the May 1966 issue of The Nation titled "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty" advocating increased enrollment in social welfare programs in order to collapse that system and force reforms, leading to a guaranteed annual income. This political strategy has been referred to as the "Cloward–Piven strategy". During 2006/07 Piven served as the President of the American Sociological Association.

Manuel Castells (Spanish name: Manuel Castells Oliván, born in Hellín, Albacete, Spain, in 1942) is a sociologist especially associated with information society and communication research.

The 2000–09 research survey of the Social Sciences Citation Index ranks him as the world’s fifth most-cited social science scholar, and the foremost-cited communication scholar.

Manuel Castells was raised primarily in Barcelona. Although from a conservative family, he was politically active in the student anti-Franco movement, an adolescent political activism that forced him to flee Spain for France. In Paris, at the age of twenty, he completed his degree studies, then progressed to the University of Paris, where he earned a doctorate in sociology. At the age of twenty-four, Dr Castells became an instructor at the University of Paris, from 1967 to 1979; first at the Paris X University Nanterre, who fired him because of the 1968 student protests, then at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, from 1970 to 1979.

Michel Wieviorka (born 23 August 1946, Paris) is a French sociologist, noted for his work on violence, terrorism, racism, social movements and the theory of social change.

A former student of Alain Touraine, he is now one of the most renowned sociologists and public intellectuals in France and abroad. A number of his books are translated in different languages. Wieviorka received some international media attention as an expert following the 2005 civil unrest in France, and has been elected in Durban as the 2006-2010 President of the International Sociological Association.

Together with Touraine and François Dubet, Wieviorka developed the method of intervention sociologique and employed it to the study of militant social movements, in particular French anti-nuclear activism and student leagues, but also the famous trade unions Solidarnosc in Poland. Following Max Weber's classic concept of interpretative sociology (verstehende Soziologie), intervention sociologique aims at understanding the subjective rationale of actors in the context of larger social conflicts. This concept was opposed to, e.g., Raymond Boudon's failed attempt to establish a strict rational choice approach in French sociology.