Power in Institutional Research: A Study of Sources, Orientations, Will and Ability Stephen J. Crynes Abstract All organizations consist of complex power relationships but few are as complex as institutions of higher education. Information is a key commodity in power relationships and at the center of this commodity in higher education is institutional research. Institutional researchers are skilled analysts that have the ability to influence decisions-making through the development and distribution of information. Yet, institutional researchers are not often included in the decision-making process. Analysts, according to Mintzberg (1983b), have five sources of power by which they are able to influence decisions: the control of a resource, technical skills, unique knowledge, legal prerogatives, or access to decision-makers. But simply having one or more of these power sources are not enough to intentionally influence decisions, an analyst must also have the will and the ability to influence decisions. This research sought to understand if institutional researchers have the power sources proposed by Mintzberg (1983b) and to see if institutional researchers also have the will and the ability to intentionally influence decisions. This was an exploratory quantitative research project that used an attitudinal survey to determine the presence of the power sources and to measure the participants’ feelings toward the use of power as reported by the participants themselves. Participants were institutional researchers recruited from the membership list of the Association of Institutional Researchers. The survey asked participants to express their level of agreement with a series of statements related to the individual power sources, their orientation toward power, their opinion about the use of power, and their ability to use power to influence decisions. The final step in this project was to conduct a regression to determine which variables contributed the most to the variances in the participants’ ability to influence decisions. The study confirmed that institutional researchers have access to all five of the power sources although at various levels of strength. However, not every statement within the power source measurement tool was found to be present in the power sources. All five of the power sources were associated with the variance in the participants’ ability to influence decisions. The control and autonomy power orientation and the political connection power orientation were the most common power orientations; however, having personal charisma and political connections were found to contribute to the variance in the ability to influence decisions. The size of the institution for which the participants worked was also found to contribute to the variance in the ability to influence while the years of experience participants had at their institution was shown to have a negative relationship. In examining the differences in responses between subgroups by institutional size, institutional type, job description, managers by institutional type and managers by experience, the responses between managers and staff and between managers with more than 13 years of experience and those with less than 13 years of experience had the most differences in their responses.