Organizational Behavior & Leadership - Essay Example

Organizational Behavior Describe each of the five bases of power demonstrated in the given scenario.Social psychologists describe five sources of power in an organization: coercive, referent, legitimate, expert and reward power (Champoux 317). They each manifest in different ways in an organization. In this corporation A, each of these five powers is manifested and they all have implications on the employees’ work performance in the long run.Coercive power is the use of force and threats of punishment to demand results from an employee.

In the marketing department, the marketing manager encourages employees to work over the 40 hours required failure to which they will not be considered for the yearly bonus. Employee 1 therefore works even during the weekends in order to try to get the bonus. This type of power makes the performance of individuals start going down due to the extreme pressure and stress they encounter. Legitimate power is the power that an individual acquires as a result of the position he or she is in. The individual’s decisions are therefore based on that power and cannot be questioned.

The marketing manager of employee 1 exercises the legitimate power accorded to him as a result of his position as a manager to make employees work more than the forty hours stipulated. The manager of employee 3 also uses his power to make employee 3 a team leader.Referent power is the one possessed by an individual that makes others want to be like him or her and be similar to the individual. In the company’s situation, employer 3 has referent power and it is evident by the way his fellow colleagues want to be like him and be similar to him and therefore emulate all the decisions made by him.

This type of power motivates the other employees and in the long run performance improves in the organization and so does the interrelationship between the employees and employer.The other base of power is the expert power. This power is exercised by an individual who has knowledge and skills in a particular area and he or she knows that people need the expertise. In this case, employee 2 has this sort of power because he is the only certified public accountant in the organization and therefore uses this to make the rules that about his work schedule and the manager has to comply.

The individual may misuse this power since they know the target have no other alternative.The last is the reward power where an individual holds this power based on reinforcing or promises to reinforce the target group. The manager of employer 1 has this power due to the fact that he promises a reward at the end of the year to the best employee. The manager of employee 3 rewards the employee with promotion to a team leader through showing good decision making skills. This however only works if the rewards are favorable and liked by the target group, if not then the power will not be maintained.

Describe the relationship between dependency and power.Dependency is relying on someone or on an object for support and comfort. Power is the ability to make individuals change their mind and follow you and your ideology. People with little or no power at all depend on individuals with more power to push through their ideas or for other types of support (Champoux 367). This is because those with power can manipulate issues and other people to get desired outcomes. Most individuals therefore depend on power to effect changes in their lives or in policies per se.

As a result of this dependence on power, individuals holding more power therefore harass those without and extort them in return for a favor. Works CitedChampoux, Joseph. Organizational Behavior: Integrating Individuals, Groups and Organizations. New York: Taylor & Francis. 2010.