Reflection summary Of Recorded Live Lecture 08
Deonpalmgrove
567Su13Lecture8Politics-Power.pptxManaging Groups & Teams
MGT 567
Dr. Brandon Randolph-Seng
Besides excellent work, what does it take to get ahead in an organization?
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Influence
What is influence?
Process of affecting the thoughts, behavior, and feelings of another person
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Managers & Influence?
A Manager may have the right to influence a subordinate (authority), but may not be influential
E.g., All managers are not leaders
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Need for Influence?
Without the power to influence, neither organizations nor individuals can accomplish much
As a manager, how can you best influence your employees?
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Situational Factors
Situational factors of subordinates are what managers can INFLUENCE the most
What are these situational factors in organizations?
Situational Factors in Organizations: Any factor that is external to the individual in an organizational context
E.g., Organizational culture, Work context, Group Norms, Assigned Roles, Reward systems
Organizational Politics/Power is central
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What is Organizational Politics?
Informal, unofficial, behind-the-scenes efforts to sell ideas, influence organizations, and increase power
How might you engage in political behavior at your job?
Learning the organizational culture and power players
Develop good working relationship (especially w/ boss)
Being a loyal team player
Gaining recognition
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Is Political Behavior Unethical?
Work in organizations requires skill in handling conflicting agendas
Effective when can maintain relationships while achieving results
Politics not inherently bad
Aware of potentially destructive aspects
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Organizational Politics
Politics part of organizational life
Made up of different interests need to be aligned
Scarce resources (decisions, change)
People ally with like-minded others to win scarce resources
Organization overly driven by politics?
Less committed, lower satisfaction, poorer performance, more anxiety and depression on the job
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Minimize Political Behavior?
Equal access to information
Model collaborative behavior
Not reward or tolerate negative political behavior
High levels of feedback
Remember politics can be a healthy and effective way to get things done
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Overcoming Ineffective Politics
Steps for overcoming ineffective politics due to turf wars:
Create a thematic goal
Create a set of defining objectives
Create a set of ongoing standard operating objectives
Create metrics to measure them
Political Skill
Political skill refers to a person’s interpersonal style, including their ability to relate well to others, self-monitor, alter their reactions depending on the situation, and inspire confidence and trust.
70% of managers felt that in order to be successful, a person had to engage in politics
Social Networks
A social network is a map or the relationships between individuals. A social network analysis (SNA) is a systematic effort to examine the structure of social relationships in a group.
Social Networks
75-95% of all jobs are filled through social networks
Those with Political Skill tend to know the social networks and how to use them
Much of the work in organizations is done through informal social networks
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What is Power?
Power is the ability to INFLUENCE the behavior of others to get what you want.
Bases of Power?
Bases of Power?
Legitimate
Role or position
Reward Power
The ability to grant a reward
Coercive Power
Expert Power
Information Power
Referent Power
Take away or punish someone for noncompliance
Knowledge and skills
Special access to specific information
Interpersonal attraction
Who is this?
Fortune recently named Steve Jobs the most powerful person in business.
Why?
Helped to transform five different industries: computers, Hollywood movies, music, retailing, and wireless phones
How?
Through people following Job’s direction
Why did they follow his direction?
He knew how to use his power (all six kinds) to inspire and intimidate
Why does this work?
Stan Milgram (1961) of Yale wondered the same thing about power
Video
Shock Generator
Caution
Amps
On
Intensity
Resistance
Amp Meter
Slight
Shock
Moderate
Shock
Strong
Shock
Very
Strong
Shock
Intense
Shock
Extreme
Shock
Danger
XXX
All Obeyed
All Still
Obeying
All Still
Obeying
All Still
Obeying
1 of 4
Stopped
1 of 8 more
Stopped
65% Still
Obedient
How many obeyed?
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The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.
Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.[4]
Milgram’s obedience study
Participants serving as “teachers” are ordered to continue shocking someone with a known heart condition who is begging to be released.
Result?
63% of “teachers” delivered highest level of shock (450 volts) to the heart condition “learner.”
Recently replicated w/ similar results
What factors affect obedience?
Four major factors affecting obedience:
Legitimacy and physical closeness of the authority figure
Command by phone
Other participant given control
Off of Yale University campus
Remoteness of the victim
Not seen or heard
Same room
Forced hand to the shock plate
Depersonalized (executions, combat, gas chamber)
What factors affect obedience?
Assignment of responsibility (self vs. others)
Someone else administer shocks, you administer the learning test
Experimenter takes full responsibility
Modeling/imitation (others openly rebelling or fully obeying)
Liberating effects of group influence
How does the fact that people do what they are told relate to real life organizations?
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Obedience & Ethics
In organizations members accept the idea that, to be members in good standing, they must give up a certain amount of independence and autonomy
Managers can hold great power as the legitimate authority in work settings
Automatic default to manager (leader)
No choice but to follow boss’ orders?
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Management Implications?
Step-by-step entrapment
Escalation of Commitment
Competing brands (smart phones)
Campeau & Bloomingdale’s (Federated)
600 mil more than worth
Power of the Situation
F.A.E.: Act according to dispositions?
“Ordinary people doing their jobs without any particular hostility can become agents of a destructive process”
Assigned Roles
Social Roles
Cluster of norms
Patricia Hearst’s story
Symbionese Liberation
Army
Social situations can move most “normal” people to behave in “abnormal” ways
Prison Study
Role playing (what is unreal can subtly evolve into what is real)
Doing becomes believing
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What is the connection between roles, ethics, and real life organizations?
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Roles and Ethics
Enter work organizations in a state of role readiness (ethical selves)
Conflicting roles pressure to be dishonest (e.g., corporate physicians, lawyers, accountants)
Roles powerful influence on behavior: ethical and unethical
Roles can reduce sense of individuality
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If you could be totally invisible for 24 hours and were completely assured that you would not be detected or held responsible for your actions, what would you do?
Deindividuation
The loosening of normal constraints on behavior when people can’t be identified, leading to an increase in impulsive and deviant acts.
Zimbardo (1970)
New York University women and shock
Internet chat rooms, newsgroups, and listservs: hostility
Convertibles and Jeeps
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Deindividuation makes people less accountable.
This occurs for two reasons: 1) people feel less accountable for their actions because it reduces the likelihood that any individual will be singled out and blamed.
What is the connection between personal responsibility, ethics, and real life organizations?
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Responsibility, Work, & Ethics
Personal responsibility: Prerequisite for moral action
Organizational Dynamics can lessen this feeling of personal responsibility
At work often encouraged to turn responsibility over to higher levels
Decisions made in groups (groupthink)
Responsibilities divided (just a small cog in the large organizational machine) & psychological distance
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What can be done about diffused responsibility in groups?
To Kill a Mockingbird
Self-awareness is the opposite:
Increase self-control
Action reflect attitudes
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In the movie To Kill a Mockingbird,
A lynch mob arrives to kill Tom Robinson
Atticus’ daughter scout starts talking to one of the men in the mob – calling him by name “Mr. Cunningham”
Then she started talking about his son, how she’d bullied him once, but how nice he was about it, and how she’d had him over for dinner once and how nice it was to have him over for dinner.
This simple act mitigated the ‘deindividuation’ effect of the mob – and Mr. Cunningham instructed the group to ‘clear out’
“When we understand the ordinariness of extraordinary evil, we will be less surprised by evil, less likely to be unwitting contributors to evil, and better equipped to forestall evil”
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Course Notes
Quiz questions will come from the live sessions. A review sheet is provided under Doc Sharing on eCollege
Quiz #4 will open on eCollege Tomorrow until July 6th. Once click on link will have 40 min to complete
Team Development Part III Due on eCollege by July 3rd @ 11:59 PM
Peer-evals due on July 3rd
Complete on your own and kept confidential (make sure to include the total score and to do a separate one for each member of your team including yourself)
