Power and Politics Relations

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Power and Politics
Conclusions
References

Introduction

In the world of the permanently developing international relations and competition in all the possible markets, it is of crucial importance for an organization to be able to control and supervise its growth and influence increase. Scholars argue that for this purpose an organization should have the considerable power and the ability to implement this power in practice, i. e. to conduct the reasonable organizational politics (Robbins & Judge, 2009, p. 179). At the same time, power and politics are directly related to the notions of the organizational leadership and management. To put it simply, the leadership is the major organizational power, while management is a toll of politics, i. e. leader’s ability to convince his/her employees in the rightness of the developmental direction chosen. The examples of such organizations as NASA and CIA illustrate these considerations rather vividly.

Power and Politics

General Notions

First, it is necessary to consider the basic definitions. Thus, power, according to Resistance, Empowerment, Ethics (2009), 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”. Drawing from this, power is associated with leadership as it is the task for the leader to exercise the power and lead an organization in a necessary direction of development. Further on, the leader should have the tools to influence the organization and be able to practically use its power. The process of implementation of power of the organization, and more specifically the instruments of this process, is called the politics of an organization. The relation of the concepts of power and politics to the purely internal organizational concepts of leadership and management is also obvious (McGinnis, 2009).

Organizational Management and Leadership

The concepts of the organizational management and leadership, in their turn, can be viewed as the two sides of a single phenomenon. Petrock (2009) views management and leadership as different stages of the single process of directing the organization’s development and identifies 18 principles of the successful management and putting the organizational leadership in accordance with the power and politics ideas. These principles include the need to set clear and measurable goals, demonstrate encouragement to the employees, establish the success assessment scale, and face the consequences of the management and leadership decisions (Petrock, 2009).

NASA

The example of NASA illustrates what the poor organizational management resulting from the lack of conformity between the organizational power and politics can lead to. The 1986 Shuttle Challenger accident that took lives of the seven crew member ended up the long chain of NASA management problems. The latter included the great number of contractors for the Challenger project and the hard pressure over NASA to cope with all construction works in time and within the limits of the given project budget (ACW, 2009). As a result, low quality equipment was produced for challenger, which led to the tragic shuttle explosion. If considered from organizational power and politics perspective, this case presents the example of the lack of organizational power and inability of NASA to carry out politics aimed at meeting the safety requirements rather than contractors’ financial demands. Possibly, NASA lacked the strong leadership in the situation and its organizational management was insufficient to keep track of achieving the goal of Challenger flight. The principles of power and politics were ignored by NASA in the case and this led to the failure of the whole project.

CIA

The example of the CIA organizational management and exercising its power through the strong and consistent politics illustrates how successful leadership results in the proper power and politics balance in an organization. The 1962 struggle between CIA and USAF over the leadership in Cuba missile systems over flight ended up by CIA carrying the project out (ACW, 2009). All the disputes with USAF were solved shortly by the CIA leadership and organizational management’s firm position in the issue. Therefore, CIA power was properly exercised through the respective politics of non-compromising. The power and politics thus manifested themselves as the basic principles of organizational management and leadership. In the CIA case, the full compliance to the above mentioned principles of management/leadership can be seen. The CIA set the goal and the ways of its achievement. USAF was an obstacle for the goal achievement process, so the CIA had to implement its power and to eliminate the obstacle through its politics. Finally, the solution of Cuba missile crisis by CIA was the result of the fully coordinated organizational management and leadership.

Conclusions

To conclude, it is obvious that to reach its goals and develop an organization should have the properly structured management and leadership conforming to the organizational power and politics characteristics. Power and politics are related to the management and leadership as the equally important aspects of the organizational development. The example of NASA and CIA illustrate the outcomes of the situations of conformity and non-conformity or power and politics to the organizational management and leadership characteristics.

References

ACW. (2009). Leveraging Power and Politics. Web.

McGinnis, P. (2009). Power and Politics in an Organization. Web.

Petrock, F. (2009). Changing Organizational Climate: A Six Pack of Leadership Practices. Web.

Resistance, empowerment, ethics. (2009). Managing power and politics in organizations. Web.

Robbins, S. & Judge, T. (2009). Organizational behavior (13th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

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