Power and Politics in an Organization - Essay Example

?Power and Politics in an Organization Management Power and Politics in an Organization In organizational management, the hierarchical power radar is used to define the various levels of power that individuals hold in an organization. The essence is to define responsibility boundaries in order to ensure smooth running of an organization without conflict of power. For instance, leaders are assigned a higher level of power to enable them manage those who are below them. In principal, distribution of power in an organization is a tool to get things done. There has been a controversy as to whether there exist a clear cut boundary between organizational power and organizational politics in any particular business system. This paper will focus on the differences between organizational power and organizational politics. The role of leaders in an organizational set up is to control effectively those workers that are directly below them. Power has been identified as a critical tool that enables leaders to increase their dependability in their management roles. The best strategy for managers to optimize their power is to increase the workers' dependence on them. Dependence can be assessed on the extent to which the workers will turn to the managers for critical decisions or solutions for organizational problems. However, power can be categorized into two, either as ‘power over’ or the ‘power to’ depending on the purpose of its use (Clegg and Haugaard 2012, 115). The former has been used to express a negative power that is bureaucratic that is solely meant to increase the individualistic dominance. On the other hand, the ‘power to’ is provision of right to implement or act within one's capacity. In brief, organizational power can be defined as the capacity one party has to influence the behavior of another party in an organization. On the other hand, organizational politics has been often been termed as ‘power in action’ which defines informal attempt to influence the actions of individuals within an organization. The intention of a political action is to act outside the official role in an attempt to manipulate the natural balance of power within an organization. In essence, perpetrators of organizational politics are individualistic people whose intention is to define new authority boundaries in order to have control over the others in business set up (Mauws and Dyck 2005, 34). This kind of behavior is associated with the tendency of the key decision making tools in an organization to remain open to misinterpretation hence giving opportunists a loophole to exploit them in order to enjoy unwarranted merits. Organizational politics have been criticized as an ill motive that is meant to provide individualistic privileges that are not for the best interest of an organization. These two types of power are not only different in their motivation principles, but also the way they are acquired. The essence of management power is to promote the goals and objectives of the organization through team building and cohesive reasoning. This kind of power allows every employee to be answerable to a higher power while still acting within their power and ability to handle organizational roles that are defined by the position they hold. The motivation of this kind of power is to ensure that there is one key of decision maker to avoid conflict of opinions within the organization. On the other hand, the political behaviour is meant to overturn the organizational power by exercising powers outside the roles defined by the organization. Its intention is to secure rights that benefit one person rather than the organization (Porter, Angle and Allen 2003, 22-27). While the organizational power is meant to manage the vital business resources to drive an organization to success, politicians will misinterpret their roles in order to hoard organizational privileges for their own benefit. Economists have identified numerous strategies that can be used for empowerment of people in a business system. One form of power is the legitimate power that defines power boundaries on depending on the hierarchy defined within an organization. In this case, the organization is required to define hierarchical positions and their associated roles in order to limit the actions of their employees. Another form of power is expert power, which is defined by the skills possessed by individuals within an organization (Zweifel 2006, 102). In this situation, to climb the vertical radar one has to have more specialized skills in terms of educational merit or even experience. The assumption of this kind of a scheme is that individuals make decisions depending on the kind of skills and experiences they have in a specific field. From this point of view, power in management is defined by the capabilities of the individuals’ especially when it comes to effective management decision. The power is limited to the roles formulated by the organization, and its goal is to manipulate key resources of the firm in order to drive the business to success. Unlike organizational power, political power has no clearly defined formation or even structure. Research has established that political behavior is a form of coercive power that is based engraved in the ability of a position holder to induce fear within his subjects. Politicking is more of a personal character that emanates from greed to control scarce resources in a business in order to be able to control other people. For instance, in a business ethics sphere, they're widespread sexual harassment that emanates from this kind of coercion. In most instances this power is utilized to control deny individuals the right of promotion or to deform the promotion structure. Many women have to submit to sex demands of their bosses in order to be promoted to higher ranks. This means that politics in an organization will often result to unethical behavior such as corruption, denial of rights. According to Fairholm (2009, 59), over 75% of political actions in an organization are against the employees’ rights, unfair and against the organizational goals. In a nutshell, political action is the greatest rival of any organization and should be discouraged. While organizational power is a strategy to achieve the set goals and targets, political actions emanate from both individual factors and organizational factors. Buchanan and Badham (2008) pointed out that individuals who have a high self-monitor attitude in social spheres are aggressive and have high regard for control, which pushes them to attempt manipulating resources in their favour. However, these individuals capitalize on organization factors that provide opportunities for political actions. For instance, a political employee is likely to surface when the firm resources are at stake or when promotional criteria are changing. The reason behind this is that at this time the business structure is unstable and weaker than ever. In management, the best way to curb political behavior is to institute impression management, which aims at aligning the behavior of the employees to the organizational goals. In conclusion, it is indisputable that there exists a significant difference between power and politics in all business spheres. While the organizational power is hierarchical and based on merit, politics take a coercive form and go beyond the formal roles of an organization. Secondly, a manager will use power to manipulate resources in a manner that will benefit the firm while a political power is individualistic and more often against business ethics. It is an element of individuals who are diverted away from the business goals and need to hoard power in order to obtain privileges that will benefit them. Political behavior is likely to surface more often when the business provides the opportunity for role misinterpretation, and especially when business is unstable. In this view, managers have a challenge to contain political actions by aligning all the employees to the core business goals and objectives. Bibliography Buchanan, David and Badham, Richard. Power, Politics and Organizational Change. UK: Sage publishers. 2008. Clegg, Stewart, and Haugaard, Mark. Power Collection: Power and Organizational Power and Politics. UK: Sage Publications. 2012. Fairholm, Gilbert. Organization power politics: Tactics in organizational Leadership. USA: ABC-CLIO. 2009. Mauws, Michael and Dyck, Bruno. The Politics of Organizational Learning. Integrating power into the 4I Framework. 2005. Retrieved from :< http://amr.aom.org/content/30/1/180.short> Porter, Lyman W., Angle W. Harold and Allen, Robert. Organizational influence Processes. Asia: M.E Sharpe. 2003. Zweifel, Thomas, (2006). International organizations and Democracy: Accountability, Politics and Power. Switzerland: Swiss Consulting Group. Read More