Vine Bernadette. Getting Things Done at Work

John Benjamins, 2004. — 276 pages. — (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series). — ISBN: 1588115216.Power is a concept, which is of obvious relevance to the analysis of workplace data, as power relationships exist between people employed at different levels within an organization. Power due to position has been referred to as legitimate power. However, this is not the only type of power that has been identified and which may be enacted and acknowledged by participants. Of particular interest in the workplace situation is expert or expertise power. This type of power is based on the particular skills and strengths that a person has.Both legitimate and expertise power involve a situation where one individual or group has power over others. Managers take control and enact their power overtly with little discussion or input from other staff.This book explores the expression of power in a New Zealand workplace. Many of the interactions in the dataset are between people working at different job levels within the organization. This allows investigation of the Managers’ style of management and the ways that the people in this workplace mark or minimize power differences. The relevance of a range of types of power and their salience in this workplace is explored using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, with the main focus being on the expression of directives, requests and advice.