Core groups: a theory of power
and influence for “learning”
organizations
Art Kleiner
New York, New York, USA
Keywords Group theory, Organizations, Learning, Power measurement, Influence, Governance
Abstract Core groups stand as the tangible, but fluid repositories of knowledge, influence and
power in organizations. Thus, the core group in any organization is the focal point of
organizational learning throughout the organization, because people act to fulfill the perceived
needs and priorities of some key group of people. An organization goes wherever its people perceive
that the core group needs and wants to go. An organization becomes whatever its people perceive
that the core group needs and wants it to become. Core Group Theory holds implications for how
the complex of power, knowledge and influence interacts with organizational opportunities for
genuine learning and creativity.
This issue of JOCM asks whether the organizational change phenomenon
called “organizational learning” could liberate organizational members from
unnecessary constraints on human freedom, dignity and self-determination.
Certainly, when Senge (1990, p. 8) writes about “clarifying the things that really
matter to us,” and “living our lives in the service of our highest aspirations,”, it
portends a kind of emancipation. Indeed, if employees at all levels in enough
organizations could learn to use the organizational learning tools of personal
mastery, working with mental models and systems thinking, then the net effect
would not only benefit individual organizations, but also society.
However, that hope, as with so many managerial reform movements, is
countered by the vast difficulty of making headway. Over the years, I have
come to realize that conditions for creating learning organizations exist within
the context of the organization’s power and governance structures. But these
structures are not as immutable and rigid, or even as hierarchical, as they seem
to be at first glance. Like everything else in organizations, the power structures
are also products of the ways that people think and interact.
The overarching thesis of this essay is that if we are going to act effectively
in a society of organizations, we need a theory that helps us see these power
structures clearly, as they are. Only then can we ask: Why does it operate this
way? And what, if anything, could be different? Only then can we learn to use
organizations, instead of feeling like we are being used by them.
In the following pages I offer an explication of what I call Core Group
Theory (CGT). Basically, I argue that core groups stand as the tangible, but
fluid repositories of knowledge, influence and power in organizations. Thus,
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm
JOCM
16,6
666
Received July 2002
Revised January 2003
Accepted March 2003
Journal of Organizational Change
Management
Vol. 16 No. 6, 2003
pp. 666-683
q MCB UP Limited
0953-4814
DOI 10.1108/09534810310502595