Week 3: Power, Politics and Influence in Organisations Flashcards
1
Q
Power
Influence
A
- Power: ability to get someone else to do something you want done, or the ability to make things happen or get things done in the way you want (its an intention)
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Influence: a behavioural response to the exercise of power
- Power requires a person’s perception of dependence on another person
2
Q
Three bases of power as a result of manager’s position in an organisation
Reward
Coercive
Legitimate power and formal authority (process and information power)
A
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Reward power: potential use of extrinsic and intrinsic rewards to control others
- Ability to control allocation of rewards valued by others and to remove negative sanctions
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Coercive power: potential denial of desired rewards or administration of punishment to control others
- E.g., peer pressure
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Legitimate power and formal authority: potential use of the internalised belief that the ‘boss’ has a ‘right of command’ to control others
- Agreement that people in certain roles can request certain behaviours of others
- Legitimate power range varies across national and organisational cultures
- Process power: the control over methods of production and analysis
- Information power: is the extent to which individuals have control over information needed by others
3
Q
Two main bases of personal power an individual holds
A
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Expert power: arises due to the possession of knowledge, experience, or judgement that others don’t have but need
- Employees can gain expert power over companies in a knowledge economy
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Referent power: ability to control another individual because the individual wants to identify with the source of the power
- Charismatic leadership
- More likely to be influenced by someone liked and respected
4
Q
Power, authority and obedience
Milgram experiments
A
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Milgram Experiments: strong tendency amongst individuals to follow the instructions of authority figures
- 65% of “teachers” continued to the highest shock level and none stopped before 300 volts
- The level of compliance was somewhat reduced when:
- Experimentation took place in a rundown office (rather than a university lab)
- The victim was closer
- The experimenter was farther away
- The subject could observe other subjects
5
Q
Obedience and acceptance of authority
A
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Requires understanding, capacity, and consistency with both organisational purpose and personal interests e.g. employees need these circumstances to follow a directive from a boss:
- The employee can and must understand the directive
- The employee must feel mentally and physically capable of carrying out the directive
- The employee must believe the directive is not inconsistent with the purpose of the organisation
- The employee must believe the directive is not inconsistent with his or her personal interests
6
Q
Obedience and zone of indifference
A
Terms of psychological contract
- Zone of indifference: is the range of authoritative requests to which an employee is willing to respond without subjecting the directives to critical evaluation or judgment- that is, the requests to which the employee is indifferent
7
Q
Dealing with subordinate employees:
A
- Explore the reasons for the unacceptable behaviour
- Inform the employee that he or she has engaged in unacceptable conduct and that certain conducts are strongly expected of all employees. Refer to the specific rules or policies in that respect
- Discuss the negative consequences that will occur if the employee fails to change unacceptable behaviour
- Clearly outline the positive consequences of changing the improper behaviour
- Develop an action plan that you and the employee agree on to change the unacceptable behaviour
8
Q
Three dimensions of managerial power and influence
A
9
Q
Acquiring managerial power
A
- Enhancing Power Position:
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Increase the centrality and criticality of role in organisation
- Centrality is a function of:
- How many others are affected by you
- How quickly others are affected by you
- Centrality is a function of:
-
Increase job discretion and flexibility
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Discretion: freedom to exercise judgement
- Rules that limit discretion limit power
- Perception – acting as if you have discretion
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Discretion: freedom to exercise judgement
- Increase difficulty of evaluation
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Increase the visibility of job performance
- Visibility can also incorporate symbols to communicate power source(s)
- E.g., diplomas, clothing
- Strategic location, i.e., salience/visibility
- Increase task relevance to organisation
10
Q
Turning power into influence
A
- Reason: using data and logic
- Friendliness: creating favourable impression
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Coalition: using relationships for support
- Groups can gain more power than individuals alone
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Bargaining: negotiating exchange of benefits
- Promising benefits in exchange for other’s compliance
- Reciprocity
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Assertiveness: being direct and forceful
- Actively applying legitimate and/or coercive power
- Reminding, confronting, checking, threatening
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Higher authority: gaining higher level support
- Formal alliance or perception of alliance with higher status individuals
- Sanctions: using rewards and punishments
Research suggests that reason is the most popular strategy overall
11
Q
Empowerment:
A
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Empowerment: process by which managers help others acquire and use power needed to make decisions in their work
- Expanding zone of indifference
- Power as an expanding ‘pie’
- Empowering others
- Limits to empowerment
12
Q
Guidelines for implementing empowerment
A
Guidelines for implementing empowerment
- Encourage creative decision making by allowing employees ample flexibility in how they achieve company directives.
- Provide all the necessary information to assist employees to make informed decisions.
- Communicate openly with employees on the organisation’s activities, performance, and long-term goals. Let them know how the organisation is doing and how their roles and actions affect the bottom line.
- Employee training on problem solving, time management, and decision making can help prepare them for increased responsibility.
- Run regular meetings between employees and management, staff surveys – even a traditional suggestion box can be effective.
- Be sure to respond swiftly to input and suggestions from employees, since lengthy silence can lead to discouragement.
- Allow room for error, encouraging employees to be more involved inevitable entails some risk taking. Hence a certain amount of error is likely to occur. Allow for this and put in place an action plan to address errors.
13
Q
Organisational politics
Organisational politics in action
A
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Organisational politics: management of influence to obtain ends not sanctioned by the organisation, or to obtain sanctioned ends through non-sanctioned means of influence
- Two broad traditions:
- Politics as unsanctioned and self-interested
- Politics as compromise between competing interests
- Two broad traditions:
-
Organisational politics in action
- Office politics and informal networks
- It’s not what you know…
- Networks increase social capital
- Politics and managers
- Politics and subunit power:
- Access to scarce resources
- Ability to cope with uncertainty
- Centrality in flow of work
- Substitutability of activities
- Office politics and informal networks
14
Q
Politics and subunit power
A
15
Q
For a subunit to gain power it must increase the control over:
A
- Access to scarce resources
- The ability to cope with uncertainty
- Centrality in the flow of work
- Substitutability of activities
20
Q
The ethics of political behaviour in organisations
A
- For a person’s behaviour to be considered ethical it needs to satisfy the following criteria:
- Utilitarian outcomes: the behaviour results in the optimisation of satisfactions of people both inside and outside the organisation; that is, it produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people
- Individual rights: the behaviour respects the rights of all affected parties; that is, it respects basic human rights of free consent, free speech, freedom of conscience, privacy and due process
- Distributive justice: the behaviour respects the rules of justice; that is, it treats people equitably and fairly, as opposed to arbitrarily
