In the previous two chapters, we showed that perceptions of social networks matter and that such perceptions are systematically biased. But some people are more accurate than others in perceiving network patterns. If this is so, do these accurate people gain benefits in organizational arenas of competition and power? This is the theme we investigate in this chapter. We expand the discussion to include perceptions of both friendship and advice networks, and investigate whether an accurate perception of the political landscape – including who are the central players — predicts who has power in the organization.

How does one assess the political landscape in an organization? One way of addressing this question is to identify the key political actors in the organization (Pfeffer, 1981). But simply identifying the most powerful actors may not give sufficient information to anticipate the overall dynamics of resistance and support for political acts. Additional questions about these actors come to mind: Are these powerful actors organized such that they tend to act in unison? Do they represent different political constituencies? Precisely whom does each have influence over? Beyond knowing who is powerful, it is useful to know how the powerful and powerless are organized or structured (Bailey, 1969: 108).

One way to approach the answers to these deeper questions about the political landscape is to study access to and the control of information flow in the organization (Pettigrew, 1973).