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Recommended: Power relations and gender

Donna Dubinsky worked at Apple, Inc., as the Director of Distribution and Sales Administration throughout the mid 1980’s. She had been extremely successfully during her first couple years at the company and was in charge of six warehouse, inventory, distribution, and costumer relations. Nevertheless, problems started to arise when the company’s president and General Manager of the Macintosh Division, Steve Jobs, proposed changes in the distribution system to be replaced by the “just-in-time,” method. This change was threating to Ms. Dubinsky job, mainly because it proposed to eliminate the six distribution centers that were under her control. This is where problems started to arise.
Ms. Dubinsky attempted to cite her experience with distribution centers; yet, Mr. Jobs proposal continue to gain traction throughout the company. As this was occurring, Ms. Dubinsky attempted to prove she had power through the company. A source of power she thought she had was expert power. She thought she had expert power, which is described as the ability of the individual to influence others by possessing knowledge or skills valued by others. This form of power fits well with Ms. Dubinsky; mainly because she considered the distribution as her areas of specialty. Furthermore, she thought that her past record with the company would carry all the weight that was needed when her judgment was tested. To her surprise this did not hold up when she and Debi Coleman, Director of Manufacturing, got into a conflict over the company’s distribution. Ms. Dubinsky did fail at relaying her message throughout the company and thought that her weight and experience would be enough for people to trust her. This proved not work when she had a conversation...

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... she might have been able to defend the distribution system. If Ms. Dubinsky had a network of friends and colleagues that were made up of several different groups of people and linked together by her, she might have been better able to defend the system. According to the article, these links can spur creative problem solving, which would have been helpful during all the stalemate meetings.
Ms. Dubinsky should have used power to make herself visible and heard which would have help prevent the ultimatum. She assumed she had more power and influence than she really did, which turned out to be a problem when upper management started to want a reason why her method was better than the just-in-time method . Additionally, she had numerous sources of power at her disposal, but refused to properly utilize any of them, therefore decreasing the power she actually had.

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