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business, power is the manifestation of control by those who have
seized the system level choices and can exercise downward power over
the rest of the organization and formalize it through a command

structure.

‘People power’ is an upward rebellion by the people (or the aggrieved)

against those clutching the system-wide levers including control over
the structure. Power structure can generally be very stable and for the
individuals ‘in power’ lucrative and even inheritable (monarchy, family

business successors). The power structure breaks down when either,
conditions become intolerable inside the system, or some contextual
tipping point occurs that exposes the fragility of the regime and it
collapses. Curiously, and as a matter of history, revolutions are

typically started by those in the middle who feel threatened or see
opportunity rather than the ‘poor and dispossessed” who rarely have
the resources because they are ‘poor and dispossessed’.

Political theorists have hypothesized different ways the up-down
interplay can resolve the power issue in the general social context.
Classic examples include:

 Hobbes proposed a central authority (monarchy with its own
executive) to protect citizens from each other in their perpetual

‘state of war’; he grew to adulthood in the English Civil War
period. Variants of this model are many including the
‘benevolent-despot’ model of the Hapsburg Dynasty; but, it is
always open to corruption be a dictator-despot.

 Locke proposed a ‘trusteeship’ model of representative bodies
controlling the executive and thereby protecting and promoting

the will of the people against an otherwise self-serving
monarchy. This is extant today in the world’s parliamentary
systems. Locke came to adulthood in the Restoration of the
Crown after the English Civil War and wrestled with the

problems of evolving a constitutional monarchy and a powerful
mercantile class demanding control.

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