Discussion

  

I need at least 150-word comment on my classmate’s discussion

Organizational Politics in TV or Movies

                    Alexander 

Class,

So I am a big fan of office space and I can defiantly see a lot of examples in their leadership were things were highly political.  So office space was about and employee who was disgruntled because he did not know what to do with his life and felt he was working at a dead end job. He lacked motivation and had no faith in the organization he work for. He saw them as the evil empire and he acted like it and let everyone know how unhappy he was.  What I found interesting was how he was able to enlist others in his organization to feel the same way he did and actually act on those feeling.  The organization was conducting interviews to determine how productive the employees were and looking to stream line some sections.  The character Peter Givens completed his interview and really had already decided in his mind he was going to get back at the evil empire. Interview clips:    https://youtu.be/_iiOEQOtBlQ 

https://youtu.be/qtV_jaEQ2XE

So he took this information and enlisted the help of his coworker’s to steel from the organization a great example of Maintain Alliances with Powerful People-“As has already been pointed out, the formation of Coalitions (alliances) is critical to the acquisition of power in an organization. An obvious coalition would be with members of other important departments or with members of upper-level management. Not so obvious  but equally important would be the formation of an alliance with the boss’s secretary or Staff assistant, that is, someone who is close to the powerful person. An ethnographic study of a city bus company found that a series of dyadic alliances went beyond the formal system and played an important role in getting the work done both within and between departments. 84  For example, alliances between supervisors and certain drivers got the buses out on  the  worst  winter  snow  days  and  kept  them  running  during  summer  vacation  periods when drivers were sparse.” Luthans, F., Luthans, K. W., & Luthans, B. C. (2015) Pete took the information he got from his interview and ran with it. He got close to the organizations leaders only to attempt betray them in the end.

Luthans, F., Luthans, K. W., & Luthans, B. C. (2015). Chapter 10: Power and politics. Organizational Behavior: An Evidence-based Approach. Charlotte, North Carolina: Information Age Publishing, pp. 296-304

Organizational Politics in TV or Movies

  Whitney 

Professor and Class,

I do watch television on my time off from practice to relax and unwind from the long days at practice. I also watch them when traveling to make the time go by quicker. There are many shows out there that show the Organizational Politics. The show that came to mind for me is NCIS. It is about the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. They go to crime scenes to do an investigation on the murder or death of a Navy Soldier. There are six main characters that go to the scene to take pictures and find clues on what happened. They then go back to the office and find more information on the victim. They go through that information to find out who could possibly be the murderer. The team is led by Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs. He gives his Agents tasks on what to do with finding the information to help solve the murder. He also gets more information from Dr. Donald Mallard known as Ducky who is the medical examiner and from Abby who is a Lab tech. They helped to get more information to the team so that they could find the murder. Each episode is a new case, but it also shows the lives of the main characters with the story line.

Politics are a major part of the business world. NCIS does have its politics in the show. The team has changes through the seasons so there is a time to develop the trust and build the team to work together so that the work gets done correctly and efficiently. There are also parts where they learn how to “Play the game” like you mentioned professor. There are times where Special Agent Gibbs has to work with people who he may not always like to work with or get along with. The Agents on Gibbs team maybe “Technical Experts”, but they are trained and developed in to agents that can do more than just their main focus on the job. They learn how to do each other’s jobs as well so they can fill in if something happens to one of the team members or help when needed at times. “Being Likable, sociable and easy to work with does not always result in a strong performance.” (King, 2016) This is Agent Gibbs, he is not always easy to work with but he works with who he has to so that the job can get done the right way. So even though there are politics in the organization, there are ways to make the company work efficiently if dealt with correctly. Agent Gibbs learned how to play the pollical game at work to help his team and get the job done correctly in the end.

References

King, Michelle Penelope (2016) 5 Signs You’re Not Playing the Political Game at Work