Table of Contents

Contents | Pages | The concept of power | 2 | Sources of power | 2 | Political strategies and tactics | 8 | What is political Behavior | 9 | What are the factors contributing to Political behavior | 9 | POLITICS: Power in action: | 11 | What are the Reality of Politics | 11 | What is Organizational Politics | 12 |

What is Power?

Power is the capacity to influence the behavior of others.3 The term power may be applied to individuals, groups, teams, departments, organizations, and countries. For example, a certain team within an organization might be labeled as powerful, which suggests that it has the ability to influence the behavior of individuals in other teams or departments. This influence may affect resource allocations, space assignments, goals, hiring decisions, and many other outcomes and behaviors in an organization.

Definitions of power abound. German sociologist, Max Weber defined power as "the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance." Along similar lines, Emerson suggests that "The power of actor A over actor B is the amount of resistance on the part of B which can be potentially overcome by A." Power appears to involve one person changing the behavior of one or more other individuals -- particularly if that behavior would not have taken place otherwise.

Contrasting Leadership and Power

Leadership focuses on goal achievement. It requires goal compatibility with followers and focuses influence downward.
Power is used as a means for achieving goals. It requires follower dependency. It is used to gain lateral and upward influence.

Using power.

Obtaining, maintaining, and using power are all essential to influencing behavior. Dependency is the extent to which something person A wants can be effected by person B determines A's dependence on B; B's power over A depends on how much A needs what B controls.

What are the sources of power?
Power issues in organizations often focus on interpersonal relationships between managers and subordinates, or leaders and followers. French and Raven identified five interpersonal sources of power: reward power, coercive power, legitimate power, expert power, and referent power.6

A .Interpersonal power—French and Raven's five power bases:

1. REWARD POWER

Reward power is an individual’s ability to influence others’ behaviors by rewarding their desirable behaviors. For example, to the extent that subordinates value rewards that the manager can give—praise, promotions, money, time off, and so on—they may comply with requests and directives. A manager who controls the allocation of merit pay raises in a department has reward power over the employees in that department.

Accordingly, employees may comply with some attempts by managers to influence their behaviors because they expect to be rewarded for their compliance.

2. COERCIVE POWER

Coercive power is an individual’s ability to influence others’ behaviors by punishing their undesirable behaviors. For example, subordinates may comply because they

expect to be punished for failure to respond favorably to managerial directives. Punishment may take the form of reprimands, undesirable work assignments, closer supervision, tighter enforcement of work rules, suspension without pay, and the like. The organization’s ultimate punishment is to fire the employee.

3. LEGITIMATE POWER

Legitimate power—refers to the ability to influence others because of the position one holds in the organization. It is also called authority, or the right to command. Characteristics of organizational authority are: I. It is invested in a person's position. ii. It is accepted by subordinates. iii. Authority is used vertically; flows from the top down. Zone of indifference ‐possessing formal power, or authority, does not mean that all orders will be followed. Orders will be followed if they are acceptable to the subordinate. They lie within the zone of indifference. Unacceptable orders, outside the zone of indifference, will not be readily followed. The zone of indifference may be wider or narrower, depending on sources of power other than authority. It may be shaped by cultural factors.

4. EXPERT POWER

Expert power is an individual’s ability to influence others’ behaviors because of recognized competencies, talents, or specialized knowledge. To the extent that managers can demonstrate competence in implementing, analyzing, evaluating, and controlling the tasks of subordinates, they will acquire expert power. Expert power often is relatively narrow in scope. For example, a team member at Overhead Door Company might carefully follow the advice of her team leader about how to program a numerically controlled lathe, yet ignore advice from the team leader regarding which of three company health plans she should choose. In this instance, the team member is recognizing expertise in one area while resisting influence in another.

A lack of expert power often plagues new managers and employees. Even though a young accountant might possess a great deal of knowledge about accounting theory and procedures, that expertise must be demonstrated and applied over time to be recognized and accepted. Similarly, employees or managers from underrepresented groups may have difficulty getting their expertise recognized by others, as illustrated by the following incident.

The head of a large division of a multinational corporation was running a meeting devoted to performance assessment. Each senior manager stood up, reviewed the individuals in his group, and evaluated them for promotion. Although there were women in every group, not one of them made the cut. One after another, each manager declared, in effect, that every woman in his group didn’t have the self-confidence needed to be promoted. The division head began to doubt his ears. How could it be that all the talented women in the division suffered from a lack of self-confidence?

An assessment indicated that the firm, in fact, had many promotable women. The managers conducting the performance appraisal sessions had failed to recognize the knowledge and potential of their female subordinates. The reason, in part, involved lack of appreciation for differences in men’s and women’s interpersonal and communication styles, approaches to problem solving, and the like.

5. REFERENT POWER

Referent power is an individual’s ability to influence others’ behaviors as a result of being respected, admired, or liked. For example, subordinates’ identification with a manager often forms the basis for referent power. This identification may include the desire of subordinates to emulate the manager. (See Chapter 12 for an explanation of how this source of power is related to charismatic leadership.) A young manager may copy the leadership style of an older, admired, and more experienced manager. The older manager thus has some ability—some referent power—to influence the behavior of the younger manager. Referent power usually is associated with individuals who possess admired personality characteristics, charisma, or a good reputation. Thus it often is associated with political leaders, movie stars, sports figures, or other wellknown individuals (hence their use in advertising to influence consumer behavior). However, managers and employees also may have considerable referent power because of the strength of their personalities. Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay, and Herb Kelleher, CEO of Southwest Airlines, use their referent power to motivate employees to achieve their organization’s goals.

B.Power in Groups:

1. COALITIONS: are Clusters of individuals who temporarily come together to achieve a specificpurpose. It seeks to maximize their size to attain influence. Coalition seeks a broad and diverseconstituency for support of their objectives. It occurs more frequently in organizations with high task and resource inter‐dependencies. it also occur more frequently if tasks are standardized and routine.

2. SEXUAL HARASSMENT: Unequal Power in the Workplace. Unwelcome advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature in a work environment reasonably perceived as hostile or abusive.

C. Power in Organization

1. STRUCTURAL POWER. Power is frequently determined by organizational structure. Structure is the control mechanism by which the organization is governed. Structure allocates decision‐making discretion to various positions, affects the patterns of communication and the flow in information within a system. Structure creates formal power by specifying certain individuals to perform specific job tasks and make certain decisions. Other forms of structural power exist because of:

a) KNOWLEDGE AS POWER

Organizations are information processors that must use knowledge to produce goods and services. The concept of knowledge as power means that individuals, teams, or departments that possess knowledge crucial to attaining the organization’s goals have power. Those in a position to control information about current operations, develop information about alternatives, or acquire knowledge about future events and plans have enormous power to influence the behaviors of others. Thus certain staff and support activities—a data processing center, for example—sometimes seem to have influence disproportionate to their relationship to the organization’s goals and main activities. Personal computers and computerized workstations are having a dramatic impact on the access to and use of information—and thus on power relationships—in many organizations. Information is now widely available to many more employees than in the past. Greater access to information tends to flatten the hierarchy and make hoarding information by individuals and departments more difficult. Further, computer networks provide employees with information that previously was available only to management. Information sharing has important implications for the quality of decision making and other aspects of performance. The extensive use of computer networks is spreading and presenting management with both opportunities and challenges. An example of such changes is presented in the Managing Across Cultures competency feature on the next page.

Some experts now claim that intellectual capital is corporate America’s most valuable asset. Intellectual capital represents the knowledge, know-how, and skill that exists in an organization.12 This intellectual capital can provide an organization with a competitive edge in the marketplace. However, perhaps because knowledge is power, sharing of information doesn’t come easily at some firms. A study at Price Waterhouse found that some junior employees wouldn’t share information on the computer network because of the firm’s intensely competitive culture.13 Computer networks can create a flatter, more democratic organization as they are doing in Africa. But that will happen only if such organizational changes are supported by top management and a compatible organizational culture.

b) RESOURCES AS POWER

Organizations need a variety of resources, including human resources, money, equipment, materials, supplies, and customers, to survive. The importance of specific resources to a firm’s success and the difficulty of obtaining them vary. The concept of resources as power suggests that individuals, teams, or departments who can provide essential or difficult-to-obtain resources acquire power in the organization. Which resources are the most important depends on the situation, the organization’s goals, the economic climate, and the goods or services being produced. The old saying that “he who has the gold makes the rules” sums up the idea that resources are power.

c) DECISION MAKING AS POWER

Decisions in organizations often are made sequentially, with many individuals, groups, or teams participating (see Chapter 14). The decision-making process creates additional power differences. The concept of decision making as power recognizes that individuals, teams, or departments acquire power to the extent that they can affect the decision-making process. They might influence the goals being developed, premises being used in evaluating an issue, alternatives being considered, outcomes being projected, and so on. For example, Southern California Edison uses a technique known as scenario planning to develop strategic plans for the future of the electric utility. Scenario planners might look ahead 10 years and develop a dozen possible versions of the future— another Middle East oil crisis, heightened environmental concerns, an economic boom in southern California, a major recession, and so on. Each scenario has implications for needed capacity, investment funds, human resources, and the like. The individuals and departments involved in scenario planning at Edison wield considerable influence, regardless of whether they make the final decisions about resource allocations. The ability to influence the decision-making process is a subtle and often overlooked source of power. Decision-making power doesn’t necessarily reside with the final decision maker in an organization. A powerful machine politician in New York City once reportedly said, “I don’t care who does the electing, as long as I have the power to do the nominating.”

d) NETWORKS AS POWER
The existence of structural and situational power depends not only on access to information, resources, and decision making, but also on the ability to get cooperation in carrying out tasks. Managers and departments that have connecting links with other individuals and departments in the organization will be more powerful than those who don’t. Certainly, traditional superior–subordinate vertical relationships are important aspects of power, but these linkages don’t begin to tell the whole story. Horizontal linkages provided by both internal and external networks help explain a lot of power differences. The concept of networks as power implies that various affiliations, channels of information, and coalitions, both inside and outside the organization, represent sources of power.

2. INTERDEPARTMENTAL POWER Subunits/departments can gain power by controlling strategic contingencies—events that are critical in accomplishing organizational goals. Relevant to strategic contingencies, subunit power is influenced by subunit ability to cope with uncertainty, and its centrality and substitutability.

RELATIONSHIPS AMONG POWER SOURCES

Managers and employees alike possess varying amounts of interpersonal sources of power. As implied by Figure 9.1, these sources don’t operate independently. A study 270 Part 2 Group and Interpersonal Processes conducted in two paper mills provides an example of how power sources are related.10 One of the mills dropped an incentive pay plan based on performance in favor of a pay plan based strictly on seniority. Compared to the second plant, which retained the performance system, subordinates’ perceptions of the use of various sources of power by supervisors in the first plant changed noticeably. Discontinuing the incentive plan lowered the perceived reward power of supervisors, as might be expected, but other results were more complex. Perceptions of supervisors’ use of punishment increased (attributable perhaps to less control over rewards). The perceived use of referent and legitimate power decreased, but expert power appeared to be unaffected. These findings suggest that the interpersonal sources of power that influence behavior are complex and interrelated.

The ways in which managers and employees use one type of power can either enhance or limit the effectiveness of power from another source. For example, managers who administer rewards to subordinates also tend to be well liked and seem to have greater referent power than managers who don’t give out rewards. However, the use of coercive power can reduce referent power. The threatened or actual use of punishment appears to reduce liking or admiration, leading to a reduction in referent power. Further, employees often view managers who possess knowledge valuable to them as having greater legitimate power in addition to having expert power.
These five sources of interpersonal power may be divided into two broad categories: organizational and personal. Reward power, coercive power, and legitimate power have organizational bases; that is, top managers can give to or take away from lower level managers or others the right to administer rewards and punishments. The organization can change employees’ legitimate power by changing their positions in the authority hierarchy or by changing job descriptions, rules, and procedures. Referent power and expert power, however, depend much more on personal characteristics— personality, leadership style, and knowledge—brought to the job. In the long run, the organization may influence expert power by, for example, making additional training available. But the individuals determine how they use that training, that is, the extent to which they apply the new knowledge. Workplace studies often show that personal sources of power (expert and referent power) are more important than organizational sources (legitimate, reward, and coercive power). We do not argue that these organizational sources are unimportant; however, we do believe that careful selection and proper training are important to supervisory and managerial effectiveness.

Power Tactics

Ways in which individuals translate power bases into specific actions

Influence Tactics
• Legitimacy
• Rational persuasion
• Inspirational appeals
• Consultation
• Exchange
• Personal appeals
• Ingratiation
• Pressure
• Coalitions

Preferred Power Tactics by Influence Direction

Upward influence‐rational persuasion
Downward influence‐rational persuasion, inspirational appeals, pressure, consultation, ingratiation, exchange, legitimacy.
Lateral influence‐rational persuasion, consultation, ingratiation, exchange, legitimacy,personal appeals, coalition

Factors Influencing the Choice and Effectiveness of Power Tactics

• Sequencing of tactics‐Softer to harder tactics work best
• Skillful use of a tactic
• Relative power of the tactic user ‐Some tactics work better when applied downward or upward
• The type of request attaching to the tactic Is the request legitimate? How the request is
Perceived? Is the request consistent with the target’s values?
• The culture of the organization‐Culture affects user’s choice of tactic
• Country‐specific cultural factors‐Local values favor certain tactics over others

POLITICAL BEHAVIOR

Political behavior involves attempts by some to influence the behaviors of others and the course of events in the organization in order to protect their self-interests, meet their own needs, and advance their own goals.22 Described in this way, almost all behavior may be regarded as political. Labeling behavior as political, however, usually implies a judgment that certain people are gaining something at the expense of others or the organization as a whole. However, a balanced understanding of political behavior and its consequences is needed. People often are self-centered and biased when labeling actions as political behavior. Employees may justify their own political behavior as defending legitimate rights or interests, yet call similar behavior by others “playing politics.” In any event, the Managing Change Competency feature on page 280 dramatically illustrates outcomes typically perceived as negative that can stem from unchecked political behavior by powerful people.

Factors Contributing to Political behavior: Not all groups or organizations are equally political. In some organizations, for instance, politicking is overt and rampant, while in others politics plays a small role in influencing outcomes. Recent research and observation have identified a number of factors that appear to encourage political behavior. Some are individual characteristics, derived from the unique qualities of the people the organization employs; others are a result of the organization’s culture and internal environment.

Individual Factors: At the individual level, researchers have identified certain personality traits, needs, and other factors likely to be related political behavior .In terms of traits ,we find that employees who are high self-monitors, possess an internal locus of control, and have a high need for power are more likely to engage in political behavior. The high self-monitor is more sensitive to social cues, exhibits higher levels of conformity, and more likely to be skilled in political behavior than the low self-monitors .Because they believe they can control their environment, individuals with an internal locus of control. Finally, if an individual has a low expectation of an success in using illegitimate means, it is unlikely he or she will attempt to do so. High expectations of success in the use of illegimate means are most likely to be the province of both experienced and powerful individuals with polished political skills and inexperienced and native employees who misjudge their chances.
Organizational behavior: Political activity is probably more a function of an organization’s characteristics than of individual difference variables. It is so because many organizations have a large number of employees with the individual characteristics we listed, yet the extent of political behavior varies widely. Although we acknowledge the role individual differences can play fostering politicking, the evidence more strongly supports the idea that certain situation and culture promote politics, when an organization’s resources are declining, when the existing pattern of resources is changing, and when there is opportunity for promotion, politicking is more likely to surface, cultures characterized by low trust, role ambiguity, unclear performance evaluation systems, zero sum reward allocation practices, democratic decision making, high pressure for performance, and self-serving senior managers will create breeding grounds for politicking. Finally ,when employees see the people on top engaging in political behavior, especially when they do successfully and are rewarded for it, a climate is created that supports politicking .politicking by top management, in a sense, gives permission to those lower in the organization to play politics by implying that such behavior is acceptable.

POLITICS: Power in action
Organizational Politics :political behavior in organizations consists of activities that are not required as part of individual’s formal role but that influence ,or attempt to influence ,the distribution of advantages and disadvantages within the organization. In broad, enough to include varied political behaviors such as withholding key information from decision makers, joining a coalition, whistle-blowing, spreading rumors, leaking confidential information to the media, exchanging favors with others a particular individual or decision alternative. Legitimate political behavior refers to normal everyday politics –complaining to your supervisor, by passing the chain of command, forming coalitions, obstructing organizational politics or decisions through inaction or excessive adherence to rules, and developing contracts outside the organization through professional activities. Illegimate political behavior that violates implied rules of the game. Illegimate activities include sabotage, whistle-blowing, and symbolic protests such as wearing unorthodox dress or protests buttons and calling in sick as a group. Those who pursue such extreme activities are often said to “play hardball”.

The Reality of Politics: Interviews with experienced managers show that most believe political behavior is a major part of organizational life. Many managers report some use of political behavior is both ethical and necessary, as long as it doesn’t directly harm anyone else. Organization are made up of individuals and groups with different values , goals, and interests, this sets up the potential conflict over the allocation of limited resources, such as departmental budgets, space, projects responsibilities and salary adjustments.
Maybe the most important factor leading to politics within organization is the realization that most of the facts used to allocate the limited resources are open to interpretation. What for instance, is good performance? What’s an adequate improvement? What constitutes an unsatisfactory job?
Therefore, to answer the question of whether it is possible for an organization to be politics free, we can say ‘’yes’’. All members of that organization hold the same goals and interests, if organizational resources are not scarce, and if performance outcomes are completely clear and objective. But that doesn’t describe the organizational world in which most of us live.

ORGANIZATIONAL POLITICS

Organizational politics involves actions by individuals, teams, or departments to acquire,
Develop, and use power and other resources in order to obtain preferred outcomes when uncertainty or disagreement about choices exists.23 when people share power but differ about what must be done, many decisions and actions quite naturally will be the result of a political process.
Employees are often concerned about office politics.24 typically; they also believe that an ideal work setting would be free from political behavior. Negative attitudes about political behavior and organizational politics can block understanding of this crucial aspect of organizational behavior. Examples of behaviors often seen as political are shown in Table 9.5. People tend to assume that political behavior doesn’t yield the best organizational decisions or outcomes—that somehow, by pushing for their own positions, they cause inferior actions or decisions to be produced. Although this result can occur, political behavior isn’t always detrimental to an organization. For example, a study involving managers in 30 organizations indicated that they were able to identify beneficial, as well as harmful, effects of political behavior.25 Beneficial effects included career advancement, recognition and status for individuals looking after their
Legitimate interests and achievement of organizational goals— getting the job done— as a result of the normal political process in the organization. Harmful effects included demotions and loss of jobs for “losers” in the political process, a misuse of resources, and creation of an ineffective organizational culture. The effect on culture may be among the most undesirable consequences of continual political behavior. Organizational politics may arouse anxieties that cause employees to withdraw emotionally from the organization. The withdrawal, in turn, makes creating an organizational culture characterized by high performance and high commitment very difficult. Political behavior, then, can meet appropriate and legitimate individual and organizational needs, or it can result in negative outcomes. In any event, managers and employees must understand political behavior because it definitely will occur. Eliminating political behavior isn’t possible—it can only be managed.