Power and Politics in an Organization Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Power and Politics in an Organization - Essay Example For instance, leaders are assigned a higher level of power to enable them manage those who are below them. In principal, distribution of power in an organization is a tool to get things done. There has been a controversy as to whether there exist a clear cut boundary between organizational power and organizational politics in any particular business system. This paper will focus on the differences between organizational power and organizational politics. The role of leaders in an organizational set up is to control effectively those workers that are directly below them. Power has been identified as a critical tool that enables leaders to increase their dependability in their management roles. The best strategy for managers to optimize their power is to increase the workers' dependence on them. Dependence can be assessed on the extent to which the workers will turn to the managers for critical decisions or solutions for organizational problems. However, power can be categorized into t wo, either as ‘power over’ or the ‘power to’ depending on the purpose of its use (Clegg and Haugaard 2012, 115). The former has been used to express a negative power that is bureaucratic that is solely meant to increase the individualistic dominance. On the other hand, the ‘power to’ is provision of right to implement or act within one's capacity. In brief, organizational power can be defined as the capacity one party has to influence the behavior of another party in an organization. On the other hand, organizational politics has been often been termed as ‘power in action’ which defines informal attempt to influence the actions of individuals within an organization. The intention of a political action is to act outside the official role in an attempt to manipulate the natural balance of power within an organization. In essence, perpetrators of organizational politics are individualistic people whose intention is to define new autho rity boundaries in order to have control over the others in business set up (Mauws and Dyck 2005, 34). This kind of behavior is associated with the tendency of the key decision making tools in an organization to remain open to misinterpretation hence giving opportunists a loophole to exploit them in order to enjoy unwarranted merits. Organizational politics have been criticized as an ill motive that is meant to provide individualistic privileges that are not for the best interest of an organization. These two types of power are not only different in their motivation principles, but also the way they are acquired. The essence of management power is to promote the goals and objectives of the organization through team building and cohesive reasoning. This kind of power allows every employee to be answerable to a higher power while still acting within their power and ability to handle organizational roles that are defined by the position they hold. The motivation of this kind of power i s to ensure that there is one key of decision maker to avoid conflict of opinions within the organization. On the other hand, the political behaviour is meant to overturn the organizational power by exercising powers outside the roles defined by the organization. Its intention is to secure rights that benefit one person rather than the organization (Porter, Angle and Allen 2003, 22-27). While the organizational power is meant to manage the vital business resources to drive an organization to success, politicians will misinterpret their roles in order to hoard organizational privileges for their own benefit. Economists have identified numerous strategies that can be used for empowerment of people in a business system. One