What is power and influence? Although power appears as a multilevel concept, the early organizational literature tended to view it as wielded by people--measured as skills, traits, or competencies. This would change in the 1980s, in large part to a classic empirical study providing evidence that one's position within an organizational structure was more likely to translate into one's source of power. Dan Brass' article, "Being in the Right Place: A Structural Analysis of Individual Influence in an Organization" from Administrative Science Quarterly is the subject of this episode.