New article in OBHDP (April 23rd, 2025)

From low power to action: Reappraising powerlessness as an opportunity restores agency

Tianyu He, Michael Schaerer, Trevor Foulk, Elizabeth Baily Wolf, Winnie Y. Jiang

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749597825000160

Agentic behaviors—taking action to pursue one’s goals—are a critical pathway to power in contemporary organizations. Paradoxically, employees who lack power are the least likely to think and act agentically, which creates a self-perpetuating cycle of disadvantage. Existing research on facilitating employee agentic behaviors relies on structural solutions that are often out of reach for individual employees. Yet, anecdotal evidence suggests that this view may be incomplete, as some people seem to be able to overcome the challenges powerlessness poses without relying on organizational or structural changes. The authors propose that cognitively reappraising powerless situations as opportunities can help people cope with the negative effects low power has on agency. A negotiation simulation and two experience-sampling field experiments support their predictions. They found that cognitive reappraisal attenuates the negative effects of low-power experiences, thereby facilitating agentic behavior such as the propensity to negotiate, voice, and task proactivity at work. This research suggests that employees can regulate their reactions to being/feeling powerless, which provides them with an empowering and accessible strategy for sustaining agency.

P.S. if you can’t access the full-text let us (m-kouchaki@kellogg.northwestern.edu or mikebaer@asu.edu) know and we’d be happy to share a copy.