Leadership: The Five Basis of Power - Essay Example

The reward power reflects the ability of the power to offer valued material rewards including money, time off, promotions, or other desired gifts. In the case study, the marketing department of the corporation (or marketing manager) provides large bonuses to its employees who achieve a superior rating on their yearly performance evaluation; here, the organization employs the power of reward.

Personal power can be referred to as people’s ability to “attract others, Person along interpersonal relations ships, to persuade and build loyalty” (Mason, 2009, p.55). The case context indicates that Employee 3 has personal power because he/she could reach the project leadership position regardless of his/her experience in the organization. Even though employee 3 had been inexperienced as compared to most other employees in the firm, he/she could dominate his/her co-workers with his/her power.

Expert power represents a form of power that people derives from their skills, knowledge, and experience and it is highly specific and limited to a particular area. From the given scenario, it seems that Employee 2 has expert power in the corporation as he is the only certified public accountant (CPA) in the firm. CPA is a highly expert and specific position that is not easily attainable for everyone. Finally, coercive power refers to the application of fear-based influence on both

For instance, the marketing manager can apply coercive power over employees as he has the authority to rate the employee's performance. As every employee wishes to be rated top, they are compelled to be under the coercive power of the marketing manager. B. Dependency and power are two interrelated concepts by which an individual attains more power when another person or unit is more dependent on him. The strategic contingencies model provides a clear explanation of the relationship between dependency and power.

As per this model (as cited in Hitt, Miller, Colella, 2006), dependency is expressed as the power that an individual or unit attains from their ability to deal with the e organization’s potential issues (p.456). Scarcity, importance, and substitutability are the three factors that determine the strength of the relationship between dependency and power. One can easily find out the bond between dependency and power in the given case study. Since the marketing manager has a reward power to choose the outstanding employee performance at the end of the year, employee 1 is to depend on the marketing manager.

As per the terms of the strategic contingencies model, the accounting manager has the power of dependency over the employee. For example, finally, since employee 3 has been selected to lead the team on the project, he gains power over his colleagues and thereby his co-workers become dependent on him.