Social dominance and interpersonal power: Asymmetrical relationships within Hierarchy-enhancing organizations.

Social Dominance Theory postulates that dominants groups, hold positive high social value and control of resources over subordinate groups. These latter may concur with dominants in preserving hierarchies maintaining a social smooth functioning of stable social system. SDT focused on intergroup level. Few researches deepened the interpersonal level. The present research aims to study whether in work environments high-SDO supervisors – compared to high-SDO subordinates – endorse predominantly the use of Harsh interpersonal power tactics (who contribute to maintain stability of organizational hierarchies) and oppose mostly to soft interpersonal power tactics (who can weaken hierarchies). The study aims to recognize whether group’s hierarchies are maintained through an ideological consensus (the asymmetry hypothesis within SDT; see Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) between supervisors and subordinate in using both interpersonal harsh and soft power tactics. Two hundred and eighty-five employees drawn from a middle-sized company completed a questionnaire. Results of moderation analyses highlighted that "role" variable (dichotomous; supervisors vs subordinates) moderates the relationship between SDO and the preference use of harsh and soft interpersonal power tactics. As expected, the association between SDO and harsh tactics was stronger for supervisors (vs. subordinates). Furthermore, supervisors (vs. subordinates) were lower in endorsing soft power tactics. Ideological consensus was also observed between supervisors and subordinates supporting harsh tactics but was not paralleled in the opposing to soft tactics: Only for supervisors was found a statistically significant negative association between SDO and soft tactics. Results will be discussed deepening the interweaving of SDO and power.