Office Politics and Management

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Those in power will do what they can to maintain it. This was said in the text, and by the Evil Emperor in Star Wars, Darth Sidious. In a perfect world people would show up to work, put in their best effort, and go home without drama and power games. One could also hope Santa Clause would fly in on a unicorn, bringing magic pizza, and cure world hunger. Medical care deals with people, and thus a wise manager will be able to reduce the amount of time wasting power games, and keep morale high, and business on track.

A majority of the business I worked for previously have been in the Rational Model. The rational model has leadership and all staff pointed to a common external set of objectives and goals (TEXT). This is the old school business model, top down leader ship and formal authority, much like military and police, each person is fit into a role. It is assumed that work tasks are inline with the organizations objectives. Conflict and the human equation is often considered unproductive, and should be minimized.

Authority based on formal positions will often have full control of company resources, and thus force all subordinate position to depend on upper management for the resources needed to operate. This gives the central authority full control over nearly all decisions. If any manager should voice opposition they could find their department lacking key resources, and being unable to do the job well, the manager could find their career in jeopardy.

Power is shown most when one or more of four things happen. A structure change, interdepartmental coordination, management succession, and resource allocation/budgeting (TEXT). When the structure changed at one of my previous employment places, we would end up with a bu...

... middle of paper ...

...rst impression of being a mere MPH with authority I should not have, in their eyes.

This is one of my favorite sections, for some twisted reason I love studying people doing what they do, and office politics. It is amusing how things do not change from second graders trying to win the teachers favor, up to multimillionaire executives hovering around a senior executive to win favor, or even to simply have their name remembered. Personally I enjoy the say what you do, do what you say type of business and networking, reality says I live in an idealize fantasy world. Politics will be necessary, however one does not have to be dirty and resort to Machiavellian tactics.

Works Cited

Quinn, R.E., & Rohrbaugh, J. (1983). A spatial model of effectiveness criteria: towards a competing values approach to organizational analysis. Management Science, 29(3), 363-377.

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