Chapter 8: managing power, politics and decision-making in organizations
In today’s society, a decent understanding of how politics is used inside organizations, is a crucial and
necessary skill in modern organizational management. Organization politics is found everywhere, built on
the use of power at its core.
Power is used to ensure that employees act within the way they are supposed to. The existence of
power is frequently explained as the situation in which a specific person A does something to a different
person B, causing person B to do something that B would not have done otherwise.
Max Weber distinguished between the use of power through authority, requiring consent from those
who are being managed, and through domination, in which the legitimacy of authority is not accepted by the
subordinates.
Power through authority works best when it operates under the surface. If a particular organization
found a way to let its employees do the tasks expected of them, there would be no need for any use of hard
power at all. However, to let this method of legitimate authority be effective, the recognition and consent for
the use of authorial symbols, from the subordinates, must be present.
Symbols of authority are elements such as: the size of an office or the amount of salary a specific
superior obtains.
A common view in management and organization theory, regarding uncertainty within organizations,
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exercising and procuring power. However, this is not always the case since this theory depends heavily on
the context it is seen in.
‘The process of mobilizing power is the process of politics’. According to Mintzberg, organizational
politics became defined as the illegitimate use of power to attain legitimate ends, leaving subordinates with
just two options left: to obey or to resist the expectations from their superiors.
There has been a shift from the use of old-fashioned bureaucratic management to more modern
alternatives, practicing empowerment, which is the process of transferring power to individuals.
Decision-making inside organizations is a crucial part of the management’s task. This management
makes decisions, based on specific strategical steps. First, the problem or dilemma is defined. Second, the
necessary information is gathered. Third, this information gets reviewed. Fourth, a decision is made based
on this evidence. Fifth, there will be a top-down implementation of this decision.
Bibliography: (Clegg, S. R., Kornberger, M., Pitsis, T. S., & Mount, M. (2019). Managing and
Organizations Paperback with Interactive eBook: An Introduction to Theory and Practice (Fifth edition).
SAGE Publications Ltd.)
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