Power, Office Politics, and a Career in Crisis - Case Study Example

Green Case Jain (174) suggest that politics is an art of governance where, the involved persons formulate rules or regulations and principles that would help them run or deliver well to the public or community at large. Politics involves matters or affairs of public interest. Politics relates most with power and resource distribution. Here political ideas used to create chances or persuade people or individuals for personal gain. However, politics has both the good and the bad side in every involvement that touches on politics. Politics may play a major role in influencing certain actions or behaviors to suit personal gain. In an organization, politics may influence the decisions the management make at certain points concerning certain critical issues in the organization. Issues about promotion and performance at work may involve politics. Politics plays an important role in creating regulations and principles governing the public affairs with an aim of maintaining law and order. With these points at hand, in agreement with statement that politics is not inherently bad there are several instances or reasons in favor of this statement. To support the statement, it is good to consider the case of Michelle Jones, used her political tactics to shape up her region’s strategy and the support she gave to their selling efforts. To this end, this political move translated to her performance and for her organization’s benefit at the end of the day. She may have used political ideas to gain creativity and influence both her seniors and the clients for that case, to win over their confidence and interest to her company. This translated to her outstanding performance as she used a strategy that favored and supported the company’s selling efforts. It is beneficial to incorporate political ideas in one or two cases to solve complex issues of an organization. Some times, it may be difficult to get a promotion the organization, but with the power of political influence, addition to performance of an individual, it may be easier to use a political path and win a promotion in an organization. For the case of Thomas, it would have taken him years to get to the right position. However, it took him only a few years or months due to his involvement with the company’s vice president, Miss McDonald. Politics has power to institute changes in an organization (Sasser and Beckham 9; Jain 151). From Sasser and Beckham (8) suggestions, it is true also that, politics is a fact in an organization. Here, Thomas used his political and his power of creativity to influence or convince the company’s vice president so as to get into the ob position he so wished to be in. In normal circumstances, this would not have occurred in this order, positions some times go with experience and the right procedure to select qualifying candidates within the department or organization may seem okay. In addition, because of politics some decisions that would have been impossible to make, influencing may be in a matter of hours of a few days when a politically activated channel of decision-making is used (Jain 156). Decisions in a big organization may at one point need the application of politics to effect good and reliable solutions as this may call on all company employees and representatives to participate in some kind of voting for the best principles for an organization to adapt. This points out to Michelle’s efforts that involved all the sells representatives at one point or the other. A number of organizational factors that lead to or contribute to some political behaviors in an organization range form; self-serving seniors, unclear evaluation systems in an organization, this may be in terms of promotions and critical decision making, lack of such systems leads to the individuals like Thomas seeking there own way to address there needs or ways of promotion. High performance pressures, this case an assumption concerning Michelle’s political involvement that created an impression to her seniors and a move that also influenced her division in sells efforts and the outcome is possible and practical. To this end, it is right to assume that Michelle faced performance pressures that forced her to seek political tactics to win approval and foster performance. Further still politics could play a role in decision-making process in any organization when well utilized. Finally, it is very possible to find political influence where resources are extremely scarce, although political influence may find its use when the resources are not so scarce. This is because; some people may want to engage in politics with intensions of bringing disruptions to an organization or for their own mutual benefit (Jain 170; Sasser and Beckham 5). Jain (174) affirms that organizational politics has two forms; legitimate and illegitimate. For legitimate politics, this involves normal and every day political behaviors in an organization, they may include command issuing and the chain of commands and the act of developing outside contacts through professional activities that revolve around the daily business activities of the company. The second form is illegitimate one, here this unacceptable behaviors that violates rules; symbolic protests that are politically motivated and to some extend sponsored. An illegitimate political behavior usually leads to problems and most of the time the practice of such behaviors is for selfish gains. To some extent, it is not right to engage in political behaviors. A number of political behaviors in organizations exist one of them is the distortion of performance figures or information. To this end, Frank Davis may have interfered with Green’s performance information intentionally so that he could politicize his behaviors by identifying a person of he favored to fit in Green’s position. Jain (192) asserts that some conditions in an organization lead to illegitimate political behaviors in an organization. They may be personal and other may revolve around the organization’s culture and the internal environment. Individual or personal factors involve personal traits and needs. From the diversity and culture; individual self contribute most to illegitimate political behaviors, for instance, while Thomas wanted to identify himself as unique from the rest, he engage in illegitimate behaviors where he use his closeness to the vice president of the company to find his way up the promotion ladder. From the same reasoning, Thomas thought that he was always right and he needed to do things in his own way. He went the extent of seeking views of other employees in an effort to find support that was. Internal factors in an organization may lead to illegitimate political behaviors. To Thomas, lack of clear guideline in setting realist goals, this almost pushed him to engage in illegitimate behaviors as he did oppose or disagree with his senior openly in a meeting. This could amount protests against the Davis. This is symbolic protest in favor of Thomas (Sasser and Beckham 8). Political behaviors should be part of organizations for a number of reasons. The first thing is that, politics could play an important role in decision-making process. Here politics meets decision making in a way facilitating a voting systems that would facilitate the passing of important issues by the support of majority. Key roles and opinions that need the participation of many or every employee in an organization could be effective when a voting system put in place facilitating voting. Some committee in an organization may have political posts that need campaigning and voting system to decide the rightful candidate to a committee. This is democracy at its best applied to in organizational matters. With the help of political ideas, external contacts established in favor of the organization’s business, leads to the success in the organization’s line of business. For instance, Michelle applied politics to win both internal attentions that lead to her division’s success. This brought in more customers and it benefited both Michelle and the company as a whole. In conclusion, politics is important in an organization and it applies every day life of people in the organization. It simplifies the process of decision making especially cases that involve a multiple number of decisions. The environment of an organization may allow certain levels of politics and to some extend it also plays a role in determining the kind of politics that would prevail in an organization. People have different degree of self that may prevail in there characters. This degree differ form person to person depending on the personality or traits of the person that identifies one with a certain group (Jain 178: Sasser and Beckham 10). Works Cited Sasser, Earl and Beckham, Heather. Thomas Green: Power, office politics, and a career in crisis. Harvard: Harvard business school publishing, 2008.Print. Jain, Klick. Organizational behavior. New York: Atlantic Publishers & Dist, 2005. Print. Read More