WOP: Power and Influence in the Workplace

Question 1

What is mean by power?

Answer 1

Power is the capacity of a person, team, or organization to influence others.

Question 2

What is power based on? (2)

Answer 2

Power is based on the target’s perception that the power holder controls. Power is also based on dependence, the target needs to believe that someone has access to a resource that can help or hinder him to achieve a goal.

Question 3

What is meant by countervailing power?

Answer 3

Countervailing power is the capacity of a person, team, or organization to keep a more powerful person or group in the exchange relationship

Question 4

What is crucial in order to have power?

Answer 4

minimal level of trust

Question 5

Name and describe five sources of power

Answer 5

Legitimate power (power from position); an agreement among organisational members that people in certain roles can request certain behaviours of others
Reward power (power from position); the power derived from a person’s ability to control the allocation of rewards valued by others and to remove negative sanctions.
Coercive power (power from position) This is the ability to apply punishment.
Expert power (power from characteristics) This is an individual’s or work unit’s capacity to influence others by possessing knowledge or skills valued by others.
Referent power (power from characteristics) This is the capacity to influence others on the basis of identification with and respect for the power holder.

Question 6

What is usually the most important type of power in an organisation?

Answer 6

Legitimate

Question 7

What are the restrictions of legitimate power? What is this known as?

Answer 7

it gives the power holder only the right to ask others to perform a limited domain of behaviours. This is called the zone of indifference.

Question 8

Name a type of legitimate power

Answer 8

Control of information

Question 9

Name three ways expertise can help companies cope with uncertainties

Answer 9

Prevention, forecast and absorption

Question 10

What personal characteristic is associated with referent power?

Answer 10

Charisma

Question 11

What form of power is the norm of reciprocity and why?

Answer 11

Legitimate because it is an informal rule of conduct we’re expected to follow

Question 12

What is meant by charisma

Answer 12

Charisma is a personal characteristic that serves as a form of interpersonal attraction and referent power over others.

Question 13

Describe the four important contingencies of power

Answer 13

Substitutability; Power is the strongest when the individual or work unit has a monopoly over a valued resource. Power decreases as the number of alternative sources of critical resource increases.
Centrality; This refers to the power holder’s importance based on the degree and nature of interdependence with others.
Visibility; Power increases with visibility.
Discretion; This is the freedom to make decisions without referring to a specific rule or receiving permission from someone else.

Question 14

How does centrality increase?

Answer 14

With the amount of people that are dependent on you and how quickly and severely they are affected by that dependence

Question 15

What is meant by social networks?

Answer 15

Social networks are social structures of individuals or social units that are connected to each other through one or more forms of interdependence.

Question 16

What is social capital?

Answer 16

Social capital refers to the knowledge and other resources available to people or social units from a durable network that connects them to others.

Question 17

How do social networks maintain and enhance power if its members?

Answer 17

Social networks enhance and maintain the power of its members through information, visibility and referent power

Question 18

What increases with the amount of people connected to social networks

Answer 18

The volume of information, favours and other social capital that people receive from networks increases with the number of people connected to them.

Question 19

What is meant by the term strong ties?

Answer 19

Strong ties are close-knit relationships.

Question 20

What are the benefits of strong ties?

Answer 20

Strong ties offer resources more quickly and more plentiful than are available from weak ties. Strong ties also offer greater social support and greater cooperation for favours and assistance

Question 21

What are the benefit of weak ties?

Answer 21

Weak ties can be valuable because weak ties are often people who are less similar than ourselves and therefore offer resources we do not possess

Question 22

What is the link between network centrality and power?

Answer 22

The more central a person is located in the network, the more social capital and therefore the more power he acquires.

Question 23

What three factors determine centrality in a social network?

Answer 23

Betweenness refers to how much you are located between others in the network. Degree centrality refers to the number or percentage of connections you have to others in the network. Closeness refers to the strength of ties with other people.

Question 24

What is meant by a structural hole?

Answer 24

A structural hole is an area between two or more dense social network areas that lack network ties

Question 25

What is meant by a broker?

Answer 25

A broker is someone who connects two independent networks and brokers have more power.

Question 26

What is the positive effects of empowerment? (4)

Answer 26

Can increase motivation, job satisfaction, organisational commitment and job performance

Question 27

What is the negative aspect of empowered people? (3)

Answer 27

People who feel empowered usually are more likely to rely on stereotypes, have difficulty empathizing and have less accurate perceptions

Question 28

What is the effect of having power over others?

Answer 28

If an individual has power over others, people get a sense of responsibility for the people over whom the power holder has authority and this leads to less stereotyping.

Question 29

What is meant by influence?

Answer 29

Influence refers to any behaviour that attempts to alter someone’s attitudes or behaviour. Influence is power in motion

Question 30

Describe 5 hard tactics of influencing others

Answer 30

Silent authority; This is influencing behaviour through legitimate power without explicitly referring to that power base.
Assertiveness; This is actively applying legitimate and coercive power by applying pressure or threat.
Information control; This is explicitly manipulating someone else’s access to information for the purpose of changing their attitude and/or behaviour.
Coalition forming;This is forming a group that attempts to influence others by pooling the resources and power of its members.
Upward appeal; This is symbolically or in reality relying on people with higher authority or expertise to support our position.

Question 31

Describe three soft tactics of influencing people

Answer 31

Persuasion; This is using logical arguments, factual evidence and emotional appeals to convince people of the value of a request.
Impression management; This is actively shaping, through self-presentation and other means, the perceptions and attitudes that others have of us.
Exchange; This is promising benefits or resources in exchange for the target person’s compliance.

Question 32

What is meant by ingratiation?

Answer 32

It includes ingratiation, which refers to the influencer’s attempt to be more liked by the targeted person or group.

Question 33

What are the three types of reactions when others try and influence them?

Answer 33

Resistance occurs when people or work units oppose the behaviour desired by the influencer. Compliance occurs when people are motivated to implement the influencer’s request for purely instrumental reasons. Commitment is the strongest outcome of influence, whereby people identify with the influencer’s request and are highly motivated to implement it even when extrinsic sources of motivation are not present.

Question 34

What does compliance rely on?

Answer 34

Compliance relies on

external sources to motivate the desired behaviour.

Question 35

What type of tactics do people tend to respond more favourably to?

Answer 35

Soft tactics

Question 36

How do soft and hard tactics differ in relation to reliance on power?

Answer 36

Soft tactics are influencing tactics that rely on personal sources of power and hard tactics are influencing tactics that rely on position power.

Question 37

What is meant by organisational politics?

Answer 37

Organizational politics refers to behaviours that others perceive as self-serving tactics at the expense of other people and possibly the organization.

Question 38

What triggers organisational politics? (3)

Answer 38

Organizational politics is triggered by scarce resources in the workplace, by ambiguous or complex rules and by organizational change.

Question 39

Where is organisational politics more common?

Answer 39

It is also more common in work units and organizations where it is tolerated and reinforced.

Question 40

What are machiavellian values?

Answer 40

Machiavellian values are the beliefs that deceit is a natural and acceptable way to influence others and that getting more than one deserves is acceptable.