Organizational Behavior:

1
Organizational Behavior Power and Politics
2
The Meaning of Power

• Power is the capacity of a person, team, or
  organization to influence others.
• The potential to influence others
• People have power they dont use and may not know
  they possess
• Power requires one persons perception of
  dependence on another person

.
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Power and Dependence
Person B
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Influenceability of the Target of Power

• Dependency
• Uncertainty
• Personality
• Intelligence
• Gender
• Age
• Culture

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Sources of Power in Organizations
Sources Of Power
Legitimate Power
Reward Power
Coercive Power

• Substitutability
• Scarcity
• Centrality
• Importance
• Visibility

Expert Power
Referent Power
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Five Bases of Power

• Reward power Promising or granting rewards.
• Coercive power Threats or actual punishment.
• Legitimate power Based on position or formal
  authority.
• Expert power Sharing of knowledge or
  information.
• Referent power Power of ones personality
  (charisma).

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Consequences of Power
Sources of Power
Consequences of Power
Expert Power
Referent Power
Legitimate Power
RewardPower
Coercive Power
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Information and Power

• Control over information flow
• Based on legitimate power
• Relates to formal communication network
• Common in centralized structures (wheel pattern)
• Coping with uncertainty
• Those who know how to cope with organizational
  uncertainties gain power
• Prevention
• Forecasting
• Absorption

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Sexual Harassment and Power

• Harasser stereotypes the victim as subservient
  and powerless
• Harasser threatens job security or safety through
  coercive or legitimate power
• Hostile work environment harassment continues
  when the victim lacks power to stop the behavior

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Nine Generic Influence Tactics

• Rational persuasion. Trying to convince someone
  with reason, logic, or facts.
• Inspirational appeals. Trying to build enthusiasm
  by appealing to others emotions, ideals, or
  values.
• Consultation. Getting others to participate in
  planning, making decisions, and changes.
• Ingratiation. Getting someone in a good mood
  prior to making a request being friendly,
  helpful, and using praise or flattery.
• Personal appeals. Referring to friendship and
  loyalty when making a request.
• Exchange. Making express or implied promises and
  trading favors.
• Coalition tactics. Getting others to support your
  effort to persuade someone.
• Pressure. Demanding compliance or using
  intimidation or threats.
• Legitimating tactics. Basing a request on ones
  authority or right, organizational rules or
  polices, or express or implied support from
  superiors.

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Skills and Best Practices How to Turn Your
Coworkers into Strategic Allies

• Mutual respect.
• Openness.
• Trust.
• Mutual benefit.

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The Evolution of Power in Organization
Delegation
Participation
Consultation
Domination
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Psychological Empowerment (Spreitzer and
Mishra)

• Meaningfullness
• Competence or Self efficasy
• Impact
• Self determining
• Trust.

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Organizational Politics
Organizational politics Involves intentional
acts of influence to enhance or protect the
self-interest of individuals or groups.

• Political Tactics
• Attacking or blaming others.
• Using information as a political tool
• Creating a favorable image.
• Developing a base of support.
• Praising others (ingratiation).
• Forming power coalitions with strong allies.
• Associating with influential people.
• Creating obligations (reciprocity).

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Managers Feelings About Workplace Politics

• Statement
• The experience of workplace politics is common in
  most organizations.
• Successful executives must be good politicians.
• The higher you go in organizations, the more
  political the climate becomes.
• Powerful executives dont act politically.
• You have to be political to get ahead in
  organizations.
• Top management should try to get rid of politics
  in organizations.
• Politics helps organizations function
  effectively.
• Organizations free of politics are happier than
  those where there is a lot of politics.
• Politics in organizations is detrimental to
  efficiency.

• Agreeing
• 93.2
• 89.0
• 76.2
• 15.7
• 69.8
• 48.6
• 42.1
• 59.1
• 55.1

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Levels of Political Action in Organizations
Distinguishing Characteristics
Cooperative pursuit of general self-interests
Network Level
Cooperative pursuit of group interests in
specific issues
Coalition Level
Individual Level
Individual pursuit of general self-interests
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Factors Contributing to Political Behavior

• Individual Factors
• Authoritarian (Machiavellianism)
• Self-Monitoring
• High-risk propensity
• Internal locus of control
• High need for power, status, security, or autonomy

• Organizational Factors
• Competition
• Level in Organization
• Low trust
• Role ambiguity and Counternorms
• Unclear evaluation systems
• Zero-sum allocations
• Democratic decision making
• High performance pressures
• Self-serving senior managers

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Controlling Political Behavior

• Provide Sufficient Resources
• Introduce Clear Rules
• Free Flowing Information
• Manage Change Effectively
• Remove Political Norms
• Hire Low-Politics Employees
• Increase Opportunities for Dialogue
• Peer Pressure Against Politics

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Practical Tips for Managing Organizational
Politics

• Dont close your eyes to politics.
• Reduce System Uncertainty and Ambiguity.
• Reduce Competition
• Break Existing Political Fiefdoms
• Prevent Future Fiefdoms
• Challenge political behaviors.
• Walk the talk.
• Recognize that others may interpret your
  behaviors as political, even if you really
  werent being political.
• Reduce your own and others vulnerability to
  political behaviors.

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Defensive Behaviors

• Defensive Behaviors to Avoid Action
• overconforming
• passing the buck
• playing dumb
• stretching and smoothing
• stalling

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Defensive Behaviors (Continued)

• Defensive Behaviors to Avoid Blame
• buffing
• playing safe
• justifying
• scapegoating
• misrepresenting
• escalation of commitment
• Defensive Behaviors to Avoid Change
• Prevention (resisting change)
• protecting turf

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Ethical Guidelines for Political Behavior
Unethical
Ethical
Question 1 Is the action motivated by
self-serving interests which exclude the goals
of the organization?
Yes
Question 3 Is the political activity fair and
equitable?
Yes
No
No
Unethical
Yes
Question 2 Does the political action
respect individual rights?
No
Unethical
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Impression Management

• Impression management The process by which
  people attempt to control or manipulate the
  reactions of others to images of themselves or
  their ideas.
• Impression management is behavior that people
  direct toward others to create and maintain
  desired perceptions of themselves.
• The most prominent type of impression management
  behavior is self-presentation, which involves the
  manipulation of information about oneself.
• Self-presentation can be verbal or nonverbal or
  involve display of artifacts.
• There are at least eight types of verbal
  self-presentations.

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IM Techniques or Verbal Self-Presentational
Behaviors
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Poor Impression Management

• Four Motive of Poor Impression
• Avoidance
• Obtain
• Exit
• Power

• Unfavorable Upward Impression Management Tactics
• Decreasing Performance
• Not Working to Potential
• Withdrawing
• Displaying a Bad Attitude
• Broadcasting Limitations

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Organizational Determinants Organizational Values

• Bottom-line mentality. Sees financial success as
  the only value to be considered rules of
  morality are simply obstacles on the way to the
  bottom line.
• Exploitative mentality. A selfish perspective
  that encourages using people to benefit ones
  own immediate interests.
• Madison Avenue mentality. Says, Its right if I
  can convince you that its right. Focuses on
  making others believe our actions are moral.

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Organizational Determinants Norms and
Counternorms

• Counternorms
• Secrecy and lying play your cards close to your
  chest
• Break the rules to get the job done.
• Spend it or burn it
• Avoid responsibility pass the buck
• Achieve your goals at the expense of others
• Maintain high visibility grandstanding
• Never do today what you can put off until
  tomorrow

• Norms
• Openness, honesty, candor
• Follow the rules
• Be cost-effective
• Take responsibility
• All for one and one for all
• Maintain an appearance of consensus support the
  team
• Take timely action

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Pfeffers Political Strategies
EFFECTIVE POLITICS
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Pfeffers Political Tactics

• 1-Selectively use objective criteria
• 2-Use outside experts
• they have expertise
• they appear to be objective
• they are expensive
• 3-Control the agenda
• keep items off the agenda that you dont want
  discussed
• place items on the agenda in ways to get desired
  amount of discussion
• place a weak dummy proposal on the agenda
  before a key proposal you want to be approved
• 4- Form coalitions
• external coalitions
• these bring in new resources
• they may cause resentment
• internal coalitions
• these may seem less overtly political than
  external coalitions
• one form of internal coalition is coalition
  through promotions
• 5-Coopt dissenters
• 6-Use committees

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The Bottom Line Managing Organizational Politics
Effectively
Learn the Culture and the Rules of the Game
for Success in the Organization
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Political Games

• Henry Mintzberg has suggested that organizational
  politics is a collection of goings on, a set of
  games taking place a kind of three ring
  circus.
• He identified four types of games
• Authority Games
• Power Base Games
• Rivalry Games
• Change Games

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Potential Benefits of Political Activity

• Political activity may
• act in a Darwinian way to ensure that the
  strongest members of an organization are brought
  into positions of leadership.
• ensure that all sides of an issue are fully
  debated.
• stimulate necessary change that is blocked by
  those currently in power.
• ease the path for the execution of decisions.