Executives—whether in business, government, education, or the church—have power and use it. They maneuver and manipulate in order to get a job done and, in many cases, to strengthen and enhance their own position. Although they would hate the thought and deny the allegation, the fact is that they are politicians. “Politics,” according to one of the leading authorities in this complex and fascinating field, “is…concerned with relationships of control or of influence. To phrase the idea differently, politics deals with human relationships of superordination and subordination, of dominance and submission, of the governors and the governed.” 1 In this sense, everyone who exercises power must be a politician.
A version of this article appeared in the November 1956 issue of Harvard Business Review.
