•Power

–The ability to get someone to do something you want done

–The ability to make things happen in the way you want

•Influence

–Expressed by others’ behavioral response to your exercise of power

•Interdependence

•Legitimacy

•Obedience

Acceptance of authority

•Subordinates accepted or followed a managerial directive only if subordinate :

–must understand the directive

–must be capable of carrying out the directive

–must believe directive is consistent with organization’s purpose and personal interests

•Zone of indifference

–range of authoritative requests to which a subordinate is willing to respond without subjecting the directives to critical evaluation or judgment

•Position power

–derives from a person’s position in the organizational hierarchy

–stems from roots associated with the position

•Legitimate power

–The extent to which a manager can use subordinates’ internalized values or beliefs that the boss has the “right of command” to control their behavior

•Reward power

•Coercive power

–The extent to which a manager can deny desired rewards and administer punishment to control other people

•Process power

•Information power

–The access to and/or control of information

•Representative power

–The formal right conferred by the firm to speak for a potentially important group composed of individuals across departments or outside the firm 

•Personal power

–resides in the individual

–independent of that individual’s position

•Bases of personal power

–Expertise

–Rational persuasion

–Reference

–Coalitions

•Expert power

–The ability to control another person’s behavior through the possession of knowledge, experience, or judgment that the other person does not have but needs

•Rational persuasion

–The ability to control another person’s behavior by convincing the other person of the desirability of a goal and a reasonable way of achieving it

•Referent power

–The ability to control another’s behavior because the person wants to identify with the power source

•Coalition power

–ability to control another’s behavior indirectly because the individual owes an obligation to you or another as part of a larger collective interest

•Building influence

–Power-oriented is action directed primarily at developing relationships in which other people are willing to defer to one’s wishes

–Downward, upward, lateral

•Ways to build position power

–Demonstrating work unit relevance to organizational goals and needs

–Increasing task relevance of one’s own activities and work unit’s activities

–Attempting to define tasks so they are difficult to evaluate

•Ways to build personal power

–Building expertise

–Political savvy

–Enhancing likeability

–Building expertise

•Advanced training and education, participation in professional associations, and project involvement

–Political savvy

•Learning ways to negotiate, persuade, and understand goals and means that others accept

–Enhancing likeability

•Create personal attraction in relationships with other people

•Ways that managers increase the visibility of their job performance

–Expanding contacts with senior people

–Making oral presentations of written work

–Participating in problem-solving task forces

–Sending out notices of accomplishment

–Seeking opportunities to increase name recognition

•Controlling decision premises

–A decision premise is a basis for defining the problem and for selecting among alternatives

–Executives who want to increase their power will make their goals and needs clear and bargain effectively

•Perfecting influence techniques

–Reason

–Friendliness

–Coalition

–Bargaining

–Assertiveness

–Higher authority

–Sanctions

–The process by which managers help others to acquire and use the power needed to make decisions affecting themselves and their work

•Changing position power

–Moving power down the hierarchy alters the existing pattern of position power

–Changing this pattern raises the following important questions:

•Can “empowered” individuals give rewards and sanctions based on task accomplishment?

•Has their new right to act been legitimized with formal authority? 

•Expanding the zone of indifference

–Management needs to recognize the current zone of indifference and systematically move to expand it

–Management should show how empowerment will benefit people and provide the needed inducement

•Power as an expanding pie

–Employees need to be trained to expand their power and their new influence potential

–The key is to change from a view stressing power over others to one emphasizing the use of power to get things done

–Emphasizes self-interest and the use of nonsanctioned means

–Organizational politics is defined as the management of influence to obtain ends not sanctioned by the organization or to obtain sanctioned ends through nonsanctioned influence means.

•Alternate tradition of organizational politics

–Politics is a necessary function resulting from differences in the self-interests of individuals

–Politics is the art of creative compromise among competing interests

–Politics is the use of power to develop socially acceptable ends and means that balance individual and collective interests

•Subunit power

–Line units are typically more powerful than are staff groups

–Units toward the top of the organizational hierarchy are often more powerful than those toward the bottom

–Power differentials are not as pronounced among units at or near the same level in an organization

•Avoidance is quite common where the employee must risk being wrong or where actions may yield a sanction

•Common techniques for avoiding action and risk taking

–Working to the rules

–Playing dumb

–Depersonalization

–Stalling

•Common techniques for redirecting accountability and responsibility

–Passing the buck

–Buffing (or rigorous documentation)

–Preparing a blind memo

–Rewriting history

–Redirecting

•Scapegoating

•Blaming the problem on uncontrollable events

•Escalating commitment

•Defending turf 

–Defending turf is a time-honored tradition in most large organizations

–Defending turf results when:

•Managers seek to increase their power by expanding the jobs their groups perform

•Competing interests exist among various departments and groups

•Agency theory 

–Suggests that public corporations can function effectively even though their managers are self-interested and do not automatically bear the full consequences of their managerial actions

•Key arguments of agency theory 

–By protecting stockholder interests, all the interests of society are served

–Stockholders have a clear interest in greater returns

–Managers are self-interested and must be controlled

–Pay plan incentives that align the interests of management and stockholders

–The establishment of a strong, independent board of directors

–Stockholders with a large stake in the firm taking an active role on the board

•Resource dependencies

–The firm’s need for resources that are controlled by others

•The resource dependence of an organization increases as:

–Needed resources become more scarce

–Outsiders have more control over needed resources

There are fewer substitutes for a particular type of resource controlled by a limited number of outsiders

•Organizational governance

–The pattern of authority, influence, and acceptable managerial behavior established at the top of the organization