“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”
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Transcript of “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”
“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”
Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? (2003)
Louis Gerstner “Fixing IBM was all about execution.
We had to stop looking for people to blame, stop tweaking the internal structure and systems. I wanted no excuses.”
Power and politics often have negative connotations because people associate them with attempts to use organizational resources for personal advantage and to achieve personal goals at the expense of other goals.
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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 156
Power, formal authority, and obedience.• The Milgram experiments.
Designed to determine the extent to which people obey the commands of an authority figure, even under the belief of life-threatening conditions.
The results indicated that the majority of the experimental subjects would obey the commands of the authority figure.
Raised concerns about compliance and obedience.
Zone of Indifference - the range in which attempts to influence a person will be perceived as legitimate & will be acted on without a great deal of thought
Zone of Indifference
Z o n e o f I n d i f f e r e n c e
Managers strive to expand the zone of indifference
Power - the ability to influence another person
Influence - the process of affecting the thoughts, behavior, & feelings of another person
Authority - the right to influence another person
Reward Power - agent’s ability to control the rewards that the target wants
Coercive Power - agent’s ability to cause an unpleasant experience for a target
Legitimate Power - agent and target agree that agent has influential rights, based on position and mutual agreement
Referent Power - based on interpersonal attraction- timing matters
Expert Power - agent has knowledge target needs
CommitmentCommitment
RewardRewardPowerPower
Legitimate Legitimate PowerPower
CoerciveCoercivePowerPower
ExpertExpertPowerPower
ReferentReferentPowerPower
ResistanceResistance
ComplianceCompliance
Sources of Power
Consequences of Power
(Continued)
Expert Power!
Strong relationship to performance & satisfaction
Transfers vital skills, abilities, and knowledge within the organization
Employees internalize what they observe & learn from managers they consider “experts”
Information Power - access to and control over important information
Formal/informal position in communication network
Interpreting information when passing it on
Does the behavior produce a good outcome for people both inside and outside the organization?
Does the behavior respect the rights of all parties?
Does the behavior treat all parties equitably and fairly?
Personal Power used for personal gain
Social Power used to create motivation used to accomplish group goals
Have high need for social power Approach relationships with a communal
orientation Focus on needs and interests of others
belief in justice altruism
belief in the authority system
preference for work & discipline
Control of critical resources Control of strategic contingencies -
activities that other groups need to complete their tasks
Ways groups hold power over other groups• Ability to reduce uncertainty• High centrality - functionality central to
organization’s success• Nonsubstitutability - group’s activities are
difficult to replace
Organizational Power
Coercive Power - influence through threat of punishment, fear, or intimidation
Utilitarian Power - influence through rewards and benefits
Normative Power - influence through knowledge of belonging, doing the right thing
Organizational Membership
Alienative Membership - members feel hostile, negative, do not want to be there
Calculative Membership - members weigh benefits and limitations of belonging
Moral Membership - members have positive organizational feelings; will deny own needs
Type of Membership
Typ
e of
Pow
er
Alienative Calculative Moral
Normative
Utilitarian
Coercive
SOURCE: Adapted from Amitai Etzioni, Modern Organizations (Upper “Saddle River, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964), 59-61
Ability to intercede for someone in trouble
Ability to get placements for favored employees
Exceeding budget limitations
Procuring above-average raises for employees
Getting items on the agenda at meetings
Access to early information
Having top managers seek out their opinion
First-line Supervisors• overly close supervision• inflexible adherence to rules• do job rather than train
Staff Professionals• resistance to change• turf protection
Top Executives• budget cuts• punishing behaviors• top-down communications
Managers• assign external attribution - blame others or environment
Authority to make decisions without having to first get approval.
Giving Power and Authority Away
Carries Risk and Reward
How does it enhance innovation and why does it work?
Organizational Politics - the use of power and influence in organizations
Political Behavior - actions not officially sanctioned by an organization that are taken to influence others in order to meet one’s personal goals
How to be a Star at Work 1999 Robert E Kelley
“What average performers think it is: The talent for brownnosing and schmoozing in the workplace to help me get noticed by the right people. What start performers know it to be: A work strategy that enabled me to navigate the competing interests in an organization to promote cooperation, address conflicts and get things done.”
How to win Friends and Influence People
Dale Carnegie 1998 “Always make the other person feel
important…and do it sincerely. Please, thank you and Would you mind?...”
(Continued)
(Continued)
A Final Word on Power and Politics- authenticity
(Continued)
Recognize that power and politics influence all behavior in organizations and that it is necessary to develop the skills to be able to understand and manage them.
Analyze the sources of power in the function, division, and organization in which you work to identify powerful people and the organization’s power structure.
To influence organizational decision making and your chances of promotion, try to develop a personal power base to increase your visibility and individual power.
Recognize that power and politics influence all behavior in organizations and that it is necessary to develop the skills to be able to understand and manage them.
Analyze the sources of power in the function, division, and organization in which you work to identify powerful people and the organization’s power structure.
To influence organizational decision making and your chances of promotion, try to develop a personal power base to increase your visibility and individual power.
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Questions