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3.PowerandPolitics-Lecture111.pptxUnderstanding Organisations and People
Power and Politics #1
organisations: rational or political?
Dr. Selen Kars
Room: 5X219 email: [email protected]
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An Overview
ORGANISATIONS: RATIONAL OR POLITICAL?
Political
Rational
Politics… decision making… conflict and resistance
AN INTRODUCTION
What do we mean by ‘politics’ and ‘power’?
Pluralist View
Radical View
Unitarist View
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Setting the Scene
“Power and organisational politics are indisputable parts of everyday life, of every social relationship imaginable, and are at the heart of organisation. Everyone has to deal with or will be affected by power and politics in their organisations”(Fulop and Linstead, 2009: 278)
“Authority and power … [are] political issues, which establish specific forms of superior-subordinate relations” (Odih and Knights, 2007: 311)
“Power and organisational politics are absolutely central to a great deal of what normally goes on in organisations” (Clegg, 2005: 162)
but.... What do we mean by ‘politics’ and ‘power’?
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Understanding Organisational Politics
As organisations only have limited resources, we see on-going ‘turf-wars’ (Lencioni, 2006) to negotiate who gets what...
Ultimately, politics refers to recognising situations of competing interests
Politics links with...
Relationships between people
Diversity of interests (Morgan, 2006)
Conflict (Knights and Willmott, 2012)
Decision making (Robbins, 1998)
Power (Knights and Roberts, 1982)
“Organisational politics arise when people think differently and want to act differently” (Morgan, 2006: 152)
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Politics & Conflict – A series of ‘turf’ wars
Divergent
objectives
Political
activity
Conflict
Resource
Scarcity
Distribution
of Power
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Politics = Power in Action
Politics in organizations involves activities taken to acquire, develop and use power in order to obtain one’s preferred outcomes.
Power is the ability to get others to do what you want them to do, even if this was against their will. (Weber, 1974)
Power is the basis of influence.
Power can be seen as the ability to resist others.
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French and Raven (1959) – The bases of power
Legitimate power
Expert power
Coercive power
Reward power
Referent power
So where does power come from?
“Power is the concept that encompasses the mechanisms, processes, and dispositions that try, not always successfully, to ensure that people act according to the rules of the game” (Clegg, 2005: 153)
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Some ways of increasing power (Adapted from Morgan, 2006: 167)
Dependency Creation
Formal authority
Control of scarce resources
Use of organisational structure, rules, regulations
Control of decision processes
Control of knowledge and information
Ability to cope with uncertainty
Centrality & Non-substitutability
Problems with resource dependency?
“anything can be a resource in the right context – the context is what is important” (Clegg et al 2008)
Therefore, possessing scarce resources in themselves will not guarantee power in place of authority unless we understand the specific context
Which one is more valuable
in a desert?
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Unitarism
Organisations are rational
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“What pattern of behaviour do we expect from the members of the successful and healthy functioning team? We expect them to strive jointly towards a common objective, each pulling his [sic] weight to the best of his ability. Each accepts his place in his function gladly, following the leadership of the one so appointed. There are no oppositionary groups or factions, and therefore no rival leaders within the team. Nor are there any outside it; the team stands alone, its members owing allegiance to their own leaders but no others” (Fox, 1966: 87)
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Unitarism
Assumed to be the perspective most commonly held by managers
Organisations are an “integrated and harmonious whole existing for a common purpose” (Farnham and Pimlott 1991: 31)
The organisation is a ‘happy family’...
Employees are loyal to the organisation, and managers are in charge
POLITICS:
If politics refers to the management of competing interests, and unitarism functions on the assumption that interests are objectively shared, then...
Politics don’t (or shouldn’t) exist
Many managers and unitarists treat politics as a ‘dirty’ word- something to be denied, decried and discarded (Kanter, 1979: 65)
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Unitarism and Decision-making
Decision-making is a rational and straightforward process, enacted through top-down and hierarchical structures (Knights and Willmott, 2012)
Managers’ ‘right to manage’ emphasises managers acting in the interests of all in the organisation because they know best (Fournier and Grey, 2000)
Restore property and decision-making rights to managers
Employees have no place or voice in decision-making
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Unitarism and Conflict / Resistance
Conflict and resistance is irrational, pathological and dysfunctional (Thomson, 2000; Knights and Willmott, 2012) – everybody should be a member of the same team
It undermines managerial prerogative... Managers should be able to manage their organisations however they choose, free from dissenting voices
How has conflict and resistance been dealt with?
In 1980s unitarism associated closely with ‘New Right’ (Fournier and Grey, 2000)
Removal of support for collective bargaining to widen basis of support for managerial decision-making
More active role for legislation to curb and in extreme cases outlaw strikes and other industrial action – restore the ‘right to manage’
Commitment to free markets and removal of obstacles to the operation of free markets – market imperfections
Trade unions & collective bargaining are major market imperfections...
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John Kotter – Resistance and Change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wdroj6F3VlQ
Some issues with unitarism
Why should managers’ values be accepted unquestioningly? (Hart, 1993)
Why should we assume values of organisation are equal to those of individuals and groups? Values of unitarism are superficially appealing but much more difficult to turn into practice
How sensible is an approach which assumes an unquestioning acceptance of managerial prerogative? (Heath, 2004)
We know that conflict does exist in organisations, how do unitarists explain this? (Leflaive, 1996)
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References
Clegg, S. (2005) ‘Managing and Organisations’. London: Sage.
Farnham, D and Pimlott, J. (1990) ‘Understanding Industrial Relations’. London: Cassell.
Fournier, V. and Grey, C. (2000) ‘At the critical moment: Conditions and prospects for critical management studies’. Human Relations, 53(1): 7-32.
Fox, A., (1966) ‘Industrial Sociology and Industrial Relations’. Research Paper 3, Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employer Association, Her Majesty’s Stationary Office: London.
French, J. and Raven, B. (1959) ‘The bases of Social Power’. In: Cartwright, L. and Zander, A. (eds.) ‘Group Dynamics, Research and Theory’. London: Tavistock.
Fulop, L. and Linstead, S. (2009) ‘Power and politics in organizations’. In: Linstead et al (eds.) ‘Management and Organization. A Critical Text’. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hart, T. (1993) ‘Human Resource Management – Time to Exercise the Militant Tendency’. Employee Relations, 15(3): 29-37.
Knights, D. and Roberts, J. (1982) ‘The power of organisation or the organisation of power’. Organisation Studies, 3: 47-62.
Knights, D. and Willmott H. (2017) ‘Introducing Organisational Behaviour and Management’ (3rd edition) Cengage Learning
Leflaive, X. (1996) ‘Organisations as Structures of Domination’. Organisation Studies, 17: 23- 46.
Lencioni, P. (2006) ‘Silos, politics and turf wars: A leadership fable about destroying the barriers that turn colleagues into competitors’. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Morgan, G. (2006) ‘Images of Organisation’. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Odih, P. and Knights, D. (2007) ‘Political organization and decision-making’. In: Knights, D. and Willmott, H. (eds.) ‘Introducing organizational Behaviour and Management’. London: Thomson.
Robbins, P. (1998) ‘Organisational Behaviour’. New Jersey, NJ: Prentice Hall.
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