Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Behavior, 8e
Schermerhorn, Hunt, and
Osborn
Prepared by
Michael K. McCuddy
Valparaiso University
Study questions.
– What is power?
– How do managers acquire the power needed
for leadership?
– What is empowerment, and how can managers
empower others?
– What are organizational politics?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 3
Chapter 15
Power and Politics
Study questions.
– How do organizational politics affect
managers and management?
– Can the firm use politics strategically?
Position power.
– Derives from organizational sources.
– Types of position power.
• Reward power.
• Coercive power.
• Legitimate power.
• Process power.
• Information power.
• Representative power.
Reward power.
– The extent to which a manager can use
extrinsic and intrinsic rewards to control other
people.
– Success in accessing and utilizing rewards
depends on manager’s skills.
Coercive power.
– The extent to which a manager can deny
desired rewards or administer punishments to
control other people.
– Availability varies from one organization and
manager to another.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 8
What is power?
Legitimate power.
– Also known as formal hierarchical authority.
– The extent to which a manager can use
subordinates’ internalized values or beliefs
that the “boss” has a “right of command” to
control their behavior.
– If legitimacy is lost, authority will not be
accepted by subordinates.
Process power.
– The control over methods of production and
analysis.
– Places an individual in the position of:
• Influencing how inputs are transformed into
outputs.
• Controlling the analytical process used to make
choices.
Information power.
– The access to and/or control of information.
– May complement legitimate hierarchical
power.
– May be granted to specialists and managers in
the middle of the information system.
– People may “protect” information in order to
increase their power.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 11
What is power?
Representative power.
– The formal right conferred by the firm to
speak as a representative for a potentially
important group composed of individuals
across departments or outside the firm.
– Helps complex organizations deal with a
variety of constituencies.
Personal power.
– Derives from individual sources.
• Rational persuasion.
• Referent power.
Expert power.
– The ability to control another person’s
behavior through the possession of
knowledge, experience, or judgment that the
other person needs but does not have.
– Is relative, not absolute.
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.
– Much of a supervisor’s daily activity involves
rational persuasion.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 15 15
What is power?
Referent power.
– The ability to control another’s behavior
because the person wants to identify with the
power source.
– Can be enhanced by linking to morality and
ethics and long-term vision.
– Empowerment view.
• Emphasis is on the ability to make things happen.
• Power is relational in terms of problems and
opportunities, not individuals.
• Defending turf.
Organizational governance.
– The pattern of authority, influence, and
acceptable managerial behavior established at
the top of the organization.
– Significantly determined by the effective
control of key resources by members of a
dominant coalition.