Do you need this or any other assignment done for you from scratch?
We have qualified writers to help you.
We assure you a quality paper that is 100% free from plagiarism and AI.
You can choose either format of your choice ( Apa, Mla, Havard, Chicago, or any other)
NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.
NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.
Power and politics are two important parts of organizational behavior and effective management. Management and leadership skills are complex issues that demand the unique professional knowledge and expertise of a person. The problem of power and politics in a modern organization receives great attention in recent years influenced by changing cultural traditions and new management techniques (Pfeffer, 1992). The distinction between power and politics provides a framework for developing leadership strategy given ones place in a situation, with or without power. The point of the difference between leadership and management challenges, and the different modes of operating that each requires are based on differences between power and politics within one organization.
Power is a bargain; employees entrust leaders in exchange for service. Indeed, it is possible to define this notion as a process entrusted to perform a service (Mintzberg, 1985). When individuals meet expectations, their credibility and chances for promotion increase; when they do not, they risk their image and position. Politics means a certain direction and approach to exercise power and make decisions. In both cases, good leadership skills are needed to provide effective governance if a person is to ensure political leadership and decision-making. To the extent that leaders and managers tried in the past to distinguish between leadership and power, they merely make a distinction between two kinds of power: formal and informal authority. In organizations, politics has usually been associated with informal authority, denoting the ability to gain and deploy powerthat is, the power to influence and inspire a subordinate (Pfeffer, 1992). Power and politics are saddled with expectations that constrain the exercise of leadership. Consequently, equating leadership with informal power does little to help employees develop strategies of leadership, whether with or without power, to tackle the most important challenges. The dependency on power generated by distress has the special advantage of holding a social system together when other management tools fail to function properly (Daft, 2003).
An example of organizational politics is the promotion and training of all employees working with the company for 3 years. Politics allow the company to ensure an adequate supply of professional and competent staff and reduced redundancy rates. In this case, power relations will be a relationship between a manager/trainer and the employee/trainee assigned to further promotion. Power relationships become a critical feature of a holding environment. Leadership, however, such dependency discourages more adaptive social constructs and behavior. The pattern of dependency itself evolved not to enable a given troop to achieve new adaptations (for example, to venture into new technological innovations or address new kinds of work structure), but to enable the crowd to function routinely within the ecological zone to which its particular set of social behaviors had adapted already. Power and politics are interlinked as the main similarity between them are a strong impact on staff and employee relationships and a possibility to change the course of actions. That is, the management is not designed to invent new norms or role structures, but to direct, defend, and maintain order within the established processes. If a new kind of power appears, the staff will enact its procedure for routine predators and the alpha will valiantly attempt to fulfill his role, though unsuccessfully (Pfeffer, 1992).
In contrast to politics, power is connected with visibility. In this case, under visibility researchers imply innovation, critical skills, and making external relationships. So, power relations are achieved when behavior is made distinctive in certain kinds of ways. in its turn, leaders deal with the development and maintenance of the order. It makes sense to equate management with formal and informal authority in a world of technical problems in which expertise and well-designed procedures and norms suffice to meet the challenges we face. Politics and power can be expected to offer strategic direction, defense, course of action, conflict management, and normal maintenance. Many companies have thrived for long periods in quite stable environments due in large part to wise and expert politics and power. But when the company requires changes in employees values, attitudes, or behavior patterns, when responsibility, pain, and initiative must be distributed widely, our unrealistic expectations of authority serve as constraints on the exercise of leadership (Mintzberg, 1985).
In sum, power and politics are connected by their strong impact on the organization and the employees. Power usually refers to the personal characteristics of a leader/manager while politics refers to the general approach of the origination or an organizational unit. In the context of work, management often makes demands that frustrate peoples expectations for easy answers. Politics under pressure to deliver leadership all too often make the classic error of treating adaptive challenges as if they were technical problems. Using politics and power as the main tools of influence, managers take responsibility for other employees problems and give them back ready-made solutions. Leaders gain power in the first place because they take duty and solve problems with such aplomb. Managers rarely receive power and have a possibility to develop organizational politics, as these are the main characteristics of organizational leadership.
References
Daft, R. L. (2003). Organizational Theory and Design. 9th Edition. South-Western College Pub; 8 edition.
Mintzberg, H. (1985). The organization as political arena, Journal of Management Studies, 22 (2), 133-154.
Pfeffer, J. (1992). Understanding power in organizations, California Management Review, 34 (2), 29-50.
Do you need this or any other assignment done for you from scratch?
We have qualified writers to help you.
We assure you a quality paper that is 100% free from plagiarism and AI.
You can choose either format of your choice ( Apa, Mla, Havard, Chicago, or any other)
NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.
NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.