Politics and Power in Today’s Corporate World
An effective organization focuses on strong leadership, power and political issues. These components are critical to creating an organization mindful of values, ethics, culture and innovation. Analyzing the use of power and politics are essential to understanding the behavior of individuals within organizations. There are two sides to power and politics. In one respect power and politics imply the shady side of leadership. However, power and politics can be positive tools that managers use to accomplish tasks. This paper defines power and politics and examines how one can be used to influence the other in a positive way, thus resulting in gain, and in a negative, corruptive way, which ultimately leads to destruction of an organization.
POWER
Power has been described as the last dirty word. Money is easier than power for most people to talk about. People who have power deny it; people who want power try not to appear to be seeking it, and those who are good at getting power are secretive about how they got it (Kanter, 1979). The essence of power is control. In organizational behavior power is defined as the ability of controlling the behavior of others. Power is the force one uses to get things done. Power and leadership should not be confused. Leadership achieves goals and power is the means to facilitate their achievement. Power focuses on the tactics for gaining compliance while leadership focuses on style.
Power is not without influence. One has influence when one has power. Power and influence are key components when a person is trying to achieve organizational goals. Power is divided into two categories; position and personal (Schermerhorn, Hunt, and Osborn, 2003). Power-based on a person’s position has six bases: coercive, reward, legitimate, process, information and representative (Schermerhorn, et al., 2003). The coercive power base is defined as being dependent on fear. A person will react to this power out of fear of the negative results that might occur. A manager has the power to suspend or terminate an employee this gives the manager coercive power over the employee. The opposite of coercive power is reward power. People comply with the wishes or directives of another because doing so produces positive benefits. In the organization context it can apply to promotions or favorable performanc...
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...ely leads to destruction of an organization.
Power and politics can be used to influence the success or failure of an organization. An effective organization selects strong leadership and takes precautious steps to control power and political issues. An organization that fully understands these issues creates a culture centered on values, ethics and innovation. By analyzing power and politics we are able to understand how they influence individual behavior in organizations. We can also better understand how they are used with good intentions and how to avoid them in destructive situations.
References
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General Motors became a “centralized organization, so decision-making authority is concentrated in the hands of top-level managers, and little authority is delegated to lower levels” (Ferrell et al., 2015, p. 199). Centralized organizations have little upward communication and top-level manager may not be aware of problems and unethical activities. According to Ferrell et al., (2015), it has been noted that “centralized organization may exert influence on their employees because they have a central core of policies and codes of ethical conduct” (p. 201). Conversely, to survive at GM employees praised the CEO intelligence and carried out their orders by keeping a low profile, and never made waves. GM rewarded employees who followed the old traditional ways and those that challenged their thinking lost promotion opportunities or their jobs. However, General Motors experienced conflict between corporate management responsibility and social responsibility. Consequently, General Motors “attempted to implement a new mentality upon its management in a short period of time” (Goussak, Webber, & Ser, 2012, p. 49) by changing the company’s environment, but
The problems surrounding the level of power and deregulation of executives, the unethical nature of the company culture, and the availability of complicit partners were manifested throughout every level of the company in the form of unethical behaviour and can be described as symptoms of these greater issues.
Assess how communication and collaboration, and power and politics influence group (i.e., the organization’s) dynamics.
This paper will study the different facets of leadership and power in small group interactions. The variety and number of studies that have focused on leadership and power attest to the importance and ambiguousness that surround any attempts to define their origins or implications. First, the definitions of leadership and power from a social psychological viewpoint will be presented. Then a discussion will follow examining the effect of different variables on the leadership effectiveness and then a look at the convergence of power and leadership and their interrelationship.
According to Hannah (as cited by Folger,Poole & Stutman, 2012, p. 143), "Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the roup keeps together" In other words, power, as the ability to effect or control events, is originated from the relationships among people, which also means that power is denpended on others. Only when some one endores the resource the power based on, then he or she is able to "grant or deny things that are valuable" (Folger, Poole & Stutman, 2012, p. 144). For example, the boss of a new company gives a newly-hired product ower the authority to build a new group to implement a new program, however, his or her power is useless before the human resource department
As stated in Chron, power is the ability of a person to exert her will over another (person) (Lister, 2015). Power sub-section of the Career Center defines the types of power in the workplace alongside with the examples of power abuse and tips to protect oneself against the power abuse.
The political frame relies on the assumption that organizations are alliances of unique people and interest groups. The people are unique due to their different views of the world, their morals, faith and activities and the information they have given these characteristics. The political frame also assumes that all key decisions arise from the need to allocate scarce resources such as time, money and information. These scarce resources and differences amongst people are what make conflict the core of organizational dynamics and make power such a crucial asset. Finally, the political frame assumes that all objectives and conclusions are e...
Political deviance is the use of one’s influence to harm others in a company. This occurs in many workplace as “company politics” and is considered a form of workplace deviance.Poltical deviance take place in many different forms such as favoritism, rumor spreading, falsely blaming co-workers, and much more. These deviant acts contributes towards a negative working environment which breeds hostile work environment, demoralizing employee morale and destroying leader- member and/ or managers-employe...
Without vision, mission, and goals for organizations to govern themselves by, it is venerable to the personal values, or the lack there of, imposed by administrators. John Bryson states, an organization that forgets its mission will drift, and opportunism and loss of integrity are likely to spread and perhaps become rampant (Bryson, 2011). This was the case in the City of Bell scandal which focused on city officials engaged in acts of negligent and gross misappropriation of city funds for personal, gain over several years, in the late 2000’s. In addition, the residents had no standards in which to hold their Administrators and Officials
...s. Lunenburg (2012) specify that a true leader is skilled to influence others and alter behavior through possessing all of the sources of the power (Coercive, Expert, Informational, Legitimate, Referent, and Reward) simultaneously. In most cases, the personal sources of power are more vigorously related to employees’ job contentment, organizational dedication, and performance than are the organizational power sources. The idea of power and leadership has been and will persistent to be complementary.
As far back as history can be told mankind has struggled between balancing culture, power and politics. Many wars have been fought and many people have placed their lives on the line in order to stand up for what they believe in. The combinations of culture, power and politics have spilled over into the workplace. In today’s business environment individuals have much more to worry about than just completing their assigned tasks. Organizational culture, power and office politics influence day to day operations as well as govern the atmosphere within the organization. The amount of impact that power and politics have in the workplace, directly reflect the organization’s culture formally as well as informally.
Power equals influence. It 's personal, too, residing within those who wield it. Sometimes a position of authority within an organization lends power to a person, but borrowed power isn 't necessarily as effective as power derived from leadership. Every organization has leaders who hold no positional authority, yet somehow wield influence, while managers who should be able to command respect flounder. Small-business owners wanting to enhance their influence and that of their managers should consider the five sources of power available at organizations. Three come with position. The other two are available to anyone.
One part of organizational politics includes the manipulations of an individual to get other employees to perform or act as the manipulator desires. The other part of the organizational politic game is the negotiation and cooperation with or resistance to the manipulator (Clarke, 1990). Politics can assist or harm an employee, depending on his or her decision to play the game. Employees must understand that politics is a power scheme game that is combined with other power scheme. Some things are accomplished by following organizational procedures, while other things are accomplished politically. Once employees recognize and accept that politics are everywhere and they do not place judgment on them, employees can begin to work with them to advance their career (Grimm, 2004).
Power is the ability to influence the behavior of others. The most important aspect of power is dependence; a person’s power increases if someone is dependent on them, or if they have something the other needs. Some people have power that they don’t use or may not even know they have.