1. Organizational
Behavior, 9/E
Schermerhorn, Hunt, and
Osborn
Prepared by
Michael K. McCuddy
Valparaiso University
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
2. Chapter 12 Study Questions
What are power and influence in an
organization?
How are power, obedience, and formal
authority intertwined in an organization?
What is empowerment?
What is organizational politics?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12
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3. Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Power.
– The ability to get someone to do something
you want done.
– The ability to make things happen in the way
you want.
Influence.
– Expressed by others’ behavioral response to
your exercise of power.
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4. Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Position power derives from a person’s position
in the organizational hierarchy.
Types of position power.
– Reward power.
– Coercive power.
– Legitimate power.
– Process power.
– Information power.
– Representative power.
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5. Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Reward power.
– The extent to which a manager can use extrinsic and
intrinsic rewards to control other people.
Coercive power.
– The extent to which a manager can deny desired
rewards and administer punishment to control other
people.
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6. Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Legitimate power.
– The extent to which a manager can use subordinates’
internalized values or beliefs that the boss has the
“right of command” to control other people.
Process power.
– The control over methods of production and analysis
that a manager has due to being in a position to
influence how inputs are transformed into outputs.
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7. Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Information power.
– The access to and/or control of information. .
Representative power.
– The formal right conferred by the firm to speak for a
potentially important group composed of individuals
across departments or outside the firm.
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8. Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Personal power derives from individual
sources.
Types of personal power.
– Expert power.
– Rational persuasion.
– Referent power.
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9. Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Expert power.
– The ability to control another person’s behavior
through the possession of knowledge, experience, or
judgment that the other person does not have but
needs.
Rational persuasion.
– The ability to control another person’s behavior by
convincing the other person of the desirability of a
goal and a reasonable way of achieving it.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12
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10. Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Referent power.
– The ability to control another’s behavior because the
person wants to identify with the power source.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12
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11. Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12
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12. Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Ways to build position power.
– Demonstrating work unit relevance to
organizational goals and needs.
– Increasing task relevance of one’s own
activities and work unit’s activities.
– Attempting to define tasks so they are difficult
to evaluate.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12
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13. Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Ways to build personal power.
– Building expertise.
• Advanced training and education, participation in
professional associations, and project involvement.
– Learning political savvy.
• Learning ways to negotiate, persuade, and
understand goals and means that others accept.
– Enhancing likeability.
• Pleasant personality characteristics, agreeable
behavior patterns, and attractive personal
appearance.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12
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14. Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Ways that managers increase the visibility
of their job performance.
– Expanding contacts with senior people.
– Making oral presentations of written work.
– Participating in problem-solving task forces.
– Sending out notices of accomplishment.
– Seeking opportunities to increase name
recognition.
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15. Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Controlling decision premises.
– Executives attempt to control, or at least
influence, decision premises.
– A decision premise is a basis for defining the
problem and for selecting among alternatives.
– Executives who want to increase their power
will make their goals and needs clear and
bargain effectively.
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16. Study Question 1: What are power
and influence in an organization?
Common techniques for exercising
relational influence.
– Reason.
– Friendliness.
– Coalition.
– Bargaining.
– Assertiveness.
– Higher authority.
– Sanctions.
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17. Study Question 2: How are power, obedience,
and formal authority intertwined in an
organization?
Important practical issues in the exercise
of power and formal authority.
– Why should subordinates respond to a
manager’s authority (or “right to
command”)?
– Given that subordinates are willing to obey,
what determines the limits of obedience?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12
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18. Study Question 2: How are power, obedience,
and formal authority intertwined in an
organization?
The Milgram experiments.
– Designed to determine the extent to which people
obey the commands of an authority figure, even if
they believe they are endangering the life of another
person.
– The results indicated that the majority of the
experimental subjects would obey the commands of
the authority figure.
– Basic conclusion was that people tend to comply with
and be obedient to authority.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12
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19. Study Question 2: How are power, obedience,
and formal authority intertwined in an
organization?
For a directive from a superior to be
accepted as authoritative, the subordinate:
– Can and must understand it.
– Must feel mentally and physically capable of
carrying it out.
– Must believe that it is consistent with the
organization’s purpose.
– Must believe that it is consistent with his or
her personal interests.
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20. Study Question 2: How are power, obedience,
and formal authority intertwined in an
organization?
Zone of indifference.
– In exchange for certain inducements,
subordinates recognize the authority of the
organization and its managers to direct their
behavior in certain ways.
– A zone of indifference is the range of
authoritative requests to which a subordinate
is willing to respond without subjecting the
directives to critical evaluation or judgment.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12
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21. Study Question 2: How are power, obedience,
and formal authority intertwined in an
organization?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 12
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22. Study Question 3: What is
empowerment?
Empowerment.
– The process by which managers help others to
acquire and use the power needed to make
decisions affecting themselves and their work.
– Provides the foundation for self-managing
work teams and other employee involvement
groups.
– Empowerment emphasizes the ability to make
things happen.
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23. Study Question 3: What is
empowerment?
Changing position power.
– Moving power down the hierarchy alters the
existing pattern of position power.
– Changing this pattern raises the following
important questions:
• Can “empowered” individuals give rewards and
sanctions based on task accomplishment?
• Has their new right to act been legitimized with
formal authority?
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24. Study Question 3: What is
empowerment?
Expanding the zone of indifference.
– Management needs to recognize the current
zone of indifference and systematically move
to expand it.
– Management should show how empowerment
will benefit people and provide the needed
inducement.
– .
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25. Study Question 3: What is
empowerment?
Power as an expanding pie.
– Employees need to be trained to expand their
power and their new influence potential.
– The key is to change from a view stressing
power over others to one emphasizing the use
of power to get things done.
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26. Study Question 3: What is
empowerment?
Power as an expanding pie.
– Clearer definition of roles and responsibilities
helps managers empower others.
– All mangers need to emphasize different ways
of exercising influence.
– Special support may be needed for individuals
to become comfortable.
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27. Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Machiavellian tradition of organizational
politics.
– Emphasizes self-interest and the use of
nonsanctioned means.
– Organizational politics is defined as the
management of influence to obtain ends not
sanctioned by the organization or to obtain
sanctioned ends through nonsanctioned
influence means.
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28. Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Alternate tradition of organizational
politics.
– Politics is a necessary function resulting from
differences in the self-interests of individuals.
– Politics is the art of creative compromise
among competing interests.
– Politics is the use of power to develop socially
acceptable ends and means that balance
individual and collective interests.
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29. Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
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30. Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Subunit power.
– Line units are typically more powerful than
are staff groups.
– Units toward the top of the organizational
hierarchy are often more powerful than those
toward the bottom.
– Power differentials are not as pronounced
among units at or near the same level in an
organization.
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31. Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Political actions for influencing lateral,
intergroup relationships.
– Workflow linkages.
– Service linkages.
– Advisory linkages.
– Auditing linkages.
– Approval linkages.
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32. Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Important aspects of corporate political strategy.
– Absence of a political strategy can be damaging.
– Corporate political strategy should be targeted toward
turning the government from a regulator against
industry to a protector of it.
– Need to make decisions about when and how to get
involved in the public policy processes.
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33. Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Avoidance is quite common where the employee
must risk being wrong or where actions may
yield a sanction.
Common techniques for avoiding action and risk
taking.
– Working to the rules.
– Playing dumb.
– Depersonalization.
– Stalling.
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34. Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Common techniques for redirecting
accountability and responsibility.
– Passing the buck.
– Buffing (or rigorous documentation).
– Preparing a blind memo.
– Rewriting history.
– Redirecting.
• Scapegoating.
• Blaming the problem on uncontrollable events.
• Escalating commitment.
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35. Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Defending turf.
– Defending turf is a time-honored tradition in most
large organizations.
– Defending turf results when:
• Managers seek to increase their power by expanding the jobs
their groups perform.
• Competing interests exist among various departments and
groups.
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36. Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Agency theory.
– An important power problem arises from the
separation of owners and managers.
– Managers are “agents” of the owners.
– Public corporations can function effectively
even though its managers are self-interested.
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37. Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Key arguments of agency theory.
– By protecting stockholder interests, all the
interests of society are served.
– Stockholders have a clear interest in greater
returns.
– Managers are self-interested and must be
controlled.
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38. Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Types of controls instituted for agents.
– Pay plan incentives that align the interests of
management and stockholders.
– The establishment of a strong, independent
board of directors.
– Stockholders with a large stake in the firm
taking an active role on the board.
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39. Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Resource dependencies.
– The firm’s need for resources that are controlled by
others.
The resource dependence of an organization
increases as:
– Needed resources become more scarce.
– Outsiders have more control over needed resources.
– There are fewer substitutes for a particular type of
resource controlled by a limited number of outsiders.
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40. Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Organizational governance.
– The pattern of authority, influence, and acceptable
managerial behavior established at the top of the
organization.
– Organizational governance establishes the following:
• What is important.
• How issues will be defined.
• Who should and should not be involved in key
choices
• Boundaries for acceptable implementation.
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41. Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Negative views of organizational
governance.
– Unbalanced organizational governance by
some United States corporations may limit
their ability to manage global operations
effectively.
– Organizational governance is too closely tied
to the short-term interests of stockholders and
the pay of the CEO.
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42. Study Question 4: What is organizational
politics?
Positive views of organizational governance.
– The governance of U.S. firms extends well beyond the
limited interests of the owners.
– Organization governance should be based on three
ethical criteria.
– When the three ethical criteria cannot be fulfilled, the
criterion of overwhelming factors should be invoked.
– Choosing to be ethical often involves considerable
personal sacrifice.
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