1. Making Sense of Organisations Organisational Politics, Power and Strategic Change

2. An Historical Perspective of Power and Politics
Maciavelli (early 1500s) “The Prince”:
The End Justifies the Means
The leader can be ruthless if necessary
Machiavellian means “characterized by cunning, duplicity, or bad faith”
Assume that people are “ungrateful, fickle, and deceitful”
The purpose of political leadership is to secure and maintain power
A good leader is independent and dominates people

3. Organisational Politics: What are they?
Politics refers to the use of power and authority to influence organizational outcomes:
Getting, developing, and using power to reach a desired result
Often appears in situations of uncertainty or conflict over choices
Often happens outside accepted channels of authority

4. Organisational Politics: How they work
Unofficial, unsanctioned behaviour to reach an intended organisational (strategic) goal
Build bases of power
Use political behaviour
Affect decisions
Get scarce resources
Earn cooperation of people outside direct authority

5. Organisational Politics: How they work
Ebbs and flows with the dynamics of power
Two characteristics: power and influence
Directed at reaching organizational goals or individual goals
Plays an important role in lateral relationships
Rarely have formal authority in such relationships

6. Sources of Political Behavior
Characteristics of political processes
Political
process
Power
Influence

7. Organisational Politics and structure
Political behavior and lateral relationships
Line-staff
Many entry positions
Marketing
Human resource management
Information systems
Competition for resources: money, people, equipment, office space
Interdependence in work flow; especially in ‘contemporary’ organisations

8. Organisational Politics and Political Maneuvering
Political strategy
Plan to reach a goal using specific political tactics
Goal: organizational or personal
Political tactics
Builds power base
Uses power

9. Organisational Politics and Political Maneuvering
Political strategy specifies combinations and sequences of political tactics
Includes plan for responding to changes in the political context
People at all levels can develop and use a political strategy
Not written; usually tacit

10. The Importance of Recognising Organisational Power
Power is the capacity to exert ‘pressure’ on others to achieve intended outcomes that one wishes and potentially prevent those one does not
Influence; the capacity to affect others.
Authority; the capacity to give commands, enforce obedience, take action, or make final decisions.

11. The Importance of Recognising Organisational Power
Three Faces of Power:
First Face: Overt Coercion
Second Face: Exclusionary Actions – avoid challenges
Third Face: Hegemonic control – convince me that what you want is what I want

12. The Importance of Recognising Organisational Power
Opportunity
Mobility
Perceived political power
Dependency
Influence
Rewards

13. Power Changing Perspectives on Workers and Organizations
A social-psychological view of power; it is not necessarily open coercion, influence, or control
Power is the perception of others that the power wielder could exercise coercion, influence, or control if he or she chose to do so
How much power you have is based on how much power think you have! Power must be granted

14. Power and its use in organisations
Power is the opposite of dependency and organisations are believed to wish to minimise dependency of workers
Use of power increases when structure is decentralized, resources are scarce, there is disagreement on goals, and there is uncertainty about technologies
In other words: When resources are limited, goals and processes are unclear, Power Politics are likely to be in existence

16. Power and Authority
Belief that organisational politics is outmoded and unproductive
Traditionally executive power is based on the idea of ownership
1990s the idea of ‘Servant Leadership’ and empowerment (TQM etc) based on the desire to get people to take responsibility for improvement through change resulting in, for example, increased customer satisfaction

18. Power Politics - Positive or Destructive Force?
Power politics help organizations to adapt and interact with the environment appropriately:
Managers are dependent upon workers
Workers have limited time, energy, and talent
Power is needed to manage these
Some use power for personal and not organizational goals
How to handle power:
Limit access to decision makers
Alter decision criteria to performance
Offer financial incentives to discourage political activity

19. Why has change management in organisations become so important?
The quality revolution of the 1980’s (‘customer as king’ argument); QA and TQM, BPR, Lean, Six Sigma
The mantra that value-adding is possible if every aspect of the organisation is analysed and improved – but what about the people
Belief that perpetual revolution becomes the norm (‘Crazy times, crazy organisations’ Tom Peters)
New technology and its impact on every aspect of organisational life and processes
Globalization
Organisations in built environment were not immune to these influences

20. Types of change
Types of change include alterations to size, structure, culture, leadership, tasks and activities
The organisation can be reactive or proactive towards change

21. The process of change
Change is the outcome of the impact of driving forces upon restraining forces
Driving forces are often economic in nature
Change invokes uncertainty in the existing workforce
Managers involved need to communicate strong justification for changes

22. Greiner’s model of the six phases of change
See next slide
It may be used to highlight the need:
for structural change
for development of key skills
to manage transfer from one phase to the next

23. Greiner’s model of the six phases of change