Power in Organizational Behavior - Essay Example

Power in organizational behavior s Submitted by s: Introduction There have been suggestions that organization behavior cannot be appreciated without considering how power operates in the context of the organization as well as in the general systems of governance (Jackson and Carter, 2007, p. 111). However, as far as organizational behavior is concerned, the concept of power has not been well developed. In a context of organizations, power is a capacity to get people to do things that they normally would not necessarily want to take part in. This appears to be comparatively un-contentious and often leads to the argument that it is the main reason why organizations require managers. If the members of different organizations did what they were supposed to do or acted accordingly, then there would be no need for having managers, as everything would run smoothly and precisely (Jackson and Carter, 2007, p. 94). The main assumption while studying organizations is that its members act in a rational manner in order to achieve the organization’s objectives that have been defined by the managers. Rational in this case implies that regardless of the fact that the member may not favour the activities they take part in, they determine that this is the most logical manner of achieving the needed outcomes. This belief is founded on the perception that organization is a process with rational attributes even in the cases when the members of the organizations may not be rational. Leadership and power are aspects of organizational behavior that are closely related, as there is a general tendency of people to follow powerful people and as a result of this following, the people with power lead (Witte and Davis, 2013, p. 144). However, leaders possess power for various reasons including having the capacity to give bonuses and raises, as well as assigning tasks (Sims, 2002, p. 221). Even though these leaders have official power that is informal, the teams they lead have likelihood of being unenthusiastic of the method of leadership they employ. However, leaders may also be powerful since they have expertise in the fields they work in, or as a result of admiration from their team members. These leaders do not possess formal leadership roles but they have an ability to influence other people because of their expertise and personal characteristics. In this context, this essay will explain power in terms of organization behavior and the various attributes of power that are connect to an affect organizational behavior. The concept of power When considering power, people do not think about what represents power, however, in all the organizations, there are particular symbols of power (Millen, 2012, p. 11). Additionally, if a member of an organization wished to overcome his or state of powerlessness, the people who have power must share their power. The symbols of power include objects or images that people unconsciously use as representations of repressed thoughts or impulses as power simply denotes possessing control over other people (Murphy-Hiscock, 2005, p. 134). Different objects such as furniture, pagers and watches among others can symbolize power in an organization. For instance, in terms of furniture, the manager who has a locked filing cabinet in his office holding crucial company files is considered as having some form of power. Another example can be demonstrated in the conference tables that are rectangular in shape, which implies that the most important person will sit at the head of the table rather than round tables. In addition, the size of the desk shows the amount of power that is possessed by the person who sits behind it as most of the executives have large desks in their offices, which are also costly. A positive attribute in organizations is empowerment as this promotes shared power, which is associated by different necessities that must be met before a person can feel empowered (Borkowski, 2009, p. 149). To begin with, the members of the organization must develop a sense of passion in the work they do so that they can get the feeling of being empowered. Competence is also an attribute of the organization that maintains the confidence of employees with the capacity to finish their assigned tasks in the correct manner. Another attribute of empowerment is self-determination, which provides the employees with a definite trust-worthiness to deal with their assigned tasks independently. Leaders in the organization have the ability to play a predominant role in the encouragement of employees so that they can develop a sense of empowerment (Williams, Hall and Champion, 2011, p. 409). In the event that the leaders want to assess the possibility of empowerment in terms of the organization, they must develop a confidence in their workers so that they can set the bar at a standard that is high enough. The employees should also be allowed to make some of the decisions in the organization and the regulations and policies that interfere with self-management should be made more lenient in order to make the empowerment more successful. Even though the concept of empowerment can lead to successful outcomes, the associated risks may be devastating. Therefore, it is important to always remember that allocating responsibilities can have a have real possibilities of failure. Power is also associated with political behavior in organizations, which does not have to be negative regardless of the fact that it is considered so most of the time (Samuel, 2005, p. 94). Organizations should not be arenas where people develop conflicting interests and it is responsibility of the manager to make sure that competing interests have been reconciled. Political behaviours define action that is not formally approved by the firm and are supposed to be influential to others in order to achieve individual needs of one person. Majority of the people in organizations have an ability to identify and recognize political behaviours from their supervisors and other people in top managerial positions (Kirst-Ashman and Hull, 2009, p. 148). Further, most organizations encourage people to have political activities including uncertain goals, despotic decision making as well as uncertainty making the people who utilize power and organization organizational politicians. However, political behavior may become negative when it is employed in maximizing self-interests, which may result in an individual being unmindful to the concerns of other people. Effective organizational politicians can spot the differences between moral and unethical conduct while appreciating that relationships are at the centre of the political process making it important to use power responsibly. As far as power and influencing tactics are concerned, there are three forms of influence including upward, downward and lateral referring to bosses, employees and co-workers in that order (Staw and Sutton, 2001, p. 161). Further, eight basic tactics that can be used to create influence in the organization, and the most frequently used include consultation, inspirational appeal and rational persuasion as well as ingratiation. Consultation involves a person an individual seeking another’s involvement in decision making or planning of policy implementation methods, strategies or changes. Inspirational appeals, on the other hand, entail people making emotional requests for proposals that arouse enthusiasm through creating appeals to values and ideas or an enhancement of confidence. When it comes to rational persuasion, the individual employs reasonable arguments along with factual evidence in persuading other people that a proposal or request is feasible with a likelihood of resulting in the attainment of task goals. Finally, the use of ingratiation involves a person seeking to influence others through using good moods or making other people think favourably for them prior to asking them to perform a task (Sinha, 2008, p. 228). A very fine line exists between using power effectively, overusing the power and totally depending on power in an organization (Singh, 2010, p. 390). Managers must make sure they maintain positive relationships with all the people they come across including supervisors, peers and outside suppliers among other people. Being over dependent on may lead to vulnerabilities along with weaknesses making the running of the organization less smooth meaning that dependency in the organization should be done in moderation. Managers are supposed to ensure that all the subordinates are aware of their exact roles so that they do not have to use utilize typically ineffective approaches like persuasion. If a manager wants to be successful, he or she is supposed to cope with dependencies through being sensitive, avoiding needless dependence as well as the establishment of power. Therefore, this power is equal to organization, good workers, proper budgeting and plans. Effective management is fundamentally based on the manager’s sense of obligation that filters to the rest of the organization. Power sources French and Raven created what is considered as a definitive scheme for the classification of several bases of power where they identified five distinctive bases including reward, legitimate, coercive, referent and expert. Hershey and Blanchard further expanded these five aspects where they included two more bases of power including connection and information (Goethals and Sorenson, 2006, p. 85). Generally, these seven bases of power can be divided into two wide classifications: personal and positional. Personal power Expert power comes from having an awareness that is valuable to the organization on individuals who interact with a specific person where skills in a particular field or in solving problems are examples of expert power. Expert power is specific to individual people who have the required skills nonetheless; possessing expert power may be the foundation for the rise to a management position in a specific field. On the other hand, referent power is developed when a person stimulates admiration, faithfulness and competition to the extent that the individual obtains power that an influence other people. Compelling leaders wield referent power as they have a vision for the organization they are leading, convictions concerning the exactness of the vision and a pronounced confidence in their capacity to achieve the vision (Campbell and Craig, 2005, p. 481). On the other hand, connection power is in most situations considered as networking, as it is the manner in which people in the organization are linked with each other within and outside the organization. Information power involves power that may be personal or positional and a manager is supposed to have more information power compared to the people that are directly under him or her (Furnham, 2012, p. 412). As a consequence, a person who is actively engaged in the “grapevine” in most cases has more precise information than his managers. The grapevine is considered predominantly as a rumour, however, when studied, it proves to be eighty percent accurate. This makes the individuals in the organization with the most dependable information to be considered as having a certain degree of power. Wise leaders acknowledge that in order to be a leader who is effective, he or she cannot depend entirely on positional powers. The most captivating part about power is that the people who hold it are supposed to use it so that they do not risk losing that power for not exercising (Porter, Angle and Allen, 2003, p. 140). When President Reagan was in power, he could be considered as an example of an individual who was able to achieve personally the role of a powerful president. In the same context, Carter who usually carried his own luggage was not considered as an individual who had a considerable degree of individual power. This is a delicate balance but people have to exercise adequately their legitimate power and regardless of whether an individual is an executive or a secretary, they are supposed to exercise their powers. Power is a neutral instrument and thus the exercise of power is not supposed to be a negative activity, instead people should use their genuine power to perform their jobs more efficiently. In some cases, managers consider themselves as being the powerful in almost the same manner that politicians consider they have power instead of the tools required to perform their duties. When managers consider themselves as having positional power based on who they are instead of the position they hold in the organization, it is likely that they will encounter trouble in the long run. Additionally, power is neutral and thus can be result in both negative and positive implications since when power is seen as a chance to do good for all the people in the organization, it will be beneficial to all the stakeholders. Power may be equated to love in numerous ways, since if people share it more, it will grow further. Most managers cannot easily share power as they are afraid that they will be giving away a scarce resource and consider sharing of power as losing it. Positional power Power that originates from the position a person hold in an organization is referred to as legitimate of formal power and it exists because organizations consider it beneficial to assign particular power to people in order for them to perform their jobs efficiently (Lussier and Achua, 2010, p. 110). Conversely, reward power is dependent on the capacity of one to reward appropriate conduct originating in part from formal power. As a consequence of their position, managers control particular rewards like increases in pay, promotions, work timetables as well as recognition incentives with which they can utilize in rewarding appropriate conduct (Saha, 2006, p. 507). Further, coercive power is typically the opposite of reward power as it is founded on the capacity of a person to punish or prevent another person from achieving the appropriate rewards. Punishment and rewards are powerful tools that may be used in the motivation of employees, and leaders are usually considered better when they use reward power compared to when they use coercive power. However, this is only the case when reward power is used in the most efficient manner. Conclusion In the study of the role of power in regard to organizational behavior, personal power is separated from other forms of power as it is characterized by its own attributes. This form of power is possessed by a person and does not originate from any other sources, as it may be develop from the person’s charm or nature. The role of personal power in organizational behavior is measured by the degree to which other people in the organization react to this power. This kind of leader can have more personal and trustworthy associations with his or her subordinates based on their response to the character of the leader as an individual and not based on any other considerations. The risk with this form of power is the fact that any changes that take place in the organization involving the replacement of a dynamic leader might result in opposition and resentment from the subordinates who may not have the same degree of like-mindedness for the new leader. An additional attribute in studying the role of power in organizational behavior involves the study of authentic power in the organization where formal power is the form of power that is held in the position the leader occupies and in transferal to other leaders. This form of power is not associated with character of the leader who may not have any extraordinary leadership qualities. As far as organizational behavior is concerned, expert power can also exist and this is founded on the expertise of the people occupying senior positions. For instance, if a manager of a computer company is given the position based on his or her extensive expertise in computers, the power welded by the manager over other employees originates from the superior skills possessed by the manager. In situations that clearly show that other people in the organization have superior skills; the manager may not be in a position to utilize his knowledge to create an advantage in order to command the respect of other employees. Bibliography Borkowski, N. 2009, Organizational behavior, theory, and design in health care, Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Sudbury, Mass. Campbell, D. and Craig, T. 2005, Organisations and the business environment, Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann, Amsterdam. Furnham, A. 2012, The Psychology of Behaviour at Work, Second Edition, Taylor and Francis, Hoboken. Goethals, G. and Sorenson, G. 2006, The quest for a general theory of leadership, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK. Jackson, N. and Carter, P. 2007, Rethinking organisational behavior, Prentice Hall/Financial Times, Harlow, England. Kirst-Ashman, K. and Hull, G. 2009, Generalist practice with organizations & communities, Thomson Brooks/Cole, Belmont, CA. 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