POWER, POLITICS AND

CONFLICTS IN
ORGANIZATIONS
Aseem Agrawal (11C)
Kumar Abhishek (24C)
Nishal Patil (32C)
Prakhar Agarwal (34C)
Siddharth Chakraborti (45C)

UNDERSTANDING THE TERMS:

Power : The ability to influence others behavior. In organizational context, power
can be viewed in a positive sense.
Need of Power : Without powers in organizational context, managers could not
achieve organizational objectives.
Politics: The process of gaining and using power. Like power, politics often has a
negative connotation due to people who abuse political power.
A positive way to view politics in an organization is to realizing that it is simply a
medium of exchange.
Conflict: The situation coming to play whenever people are in disagreement and
opposition.
Arises because of two primary reasons:
(1) When a party fail to make explicit our own expectations and fail to inquire into
the expectations of the other parties.
(2) The party further assume that the other party(ies) have the same expectations
.

Power, Politics and Conflicts in Organizations

8/17/16

BASES AND FURTHER CLASSIFICATIONS (1/2):

Power :

Coercive power: Involves threats and/or punishment to influence compliance.

Coercive power is appropriate to use in maintaining discipline when enforcing rules.
Connection power: Based on the users relationship with influential people.
Reward power: Based on the users ability to influence others with something of
value to them
Legitimate power: Based on the users position power given by the organization.
Referent power: Based on the users personal power relationship with others.
Identification stems from the employees attractiveness to the persons in context.
Information power: Based on the users data desired by others.
Expert power: Based on the users skill and knowledge. Being an expert makes
other people dependent upon the manager in power.

Power, Politics and Conflicts in Organizations

8/17/16

BASES AND FURTHER CLASSIFICATIONS (2/2):

Politics:

Networking: It is the process of developing relationships for the purpose of socializing

and politicking.
Reciprocity: Using reciprocity involves creating obligations and developing alliances
and using them to accomplish objectives
Coalitions: A coalition is a network of alliances that will help the manager achieve an
objective.

Conflict Management:

Avoiding Conflict Style: In avoiding conflict style employee attempts to passively

ignore the conflict rather than resolve it by being unassertive and uncooperative.
Forcing Conflict Style: In forcing conflict style employee attempts to resolve the
conflict by using aggressive behavior.
Negotiating Conflict Style: In negotiating conflict style employee attempts to
resolve the conflict through assertive give-and-take concessions.
Collaborating Conflict Style: In collaborating conflict style employee assertively
attempts to jointly resolve the conflict with the best solution agreeable to all
parties.

Power, Politics and Conflicts in Organizations

8/17/16

Workplace Bullying, Power and Organizational

A
Case Study (1/2):
in Portuguese Banking Sector
Politics
Objective: The following were the two objectives:
1. To explore the meanings of bullying behaviors in terms of power, political behaviors,
internal competition and conflicts.
2. To explore in what extent workplace bullying is perceived as being an instrumental
activity prosecuted in order to promote efficiency and reduce organizational costs.
Methodology and Results:
Quantitative analysis: 561 valid responses containing 64 stories of bullying episodes.
Consisting of 65.6% men and 34.4% women, being the mean age 42 years old.
Respondents were asked how often they have experienced a set of 38 negative and
potentially harassing acts within the past 12 months; secondly, respondents were
introduced to a definition of bullying, based on prior research.
Results:
Observations

Political
Behavior

Work Overload

Correlation Coeff
.306
.234
Perception of different behaviors vs workplace bullying
( Sub)
Power, Politics and Conflicts in Organizations

Internal
Competition
.142
8/17/16

Workplace Bullying, Power and Organizational

Qualitative (2/2):
Analysis:
Politics

The focus was on accounts by employees.

The results were based on three main themes that emerged from a discursive
analysis of results : Political Behavior, Work Overload, Internal Competition.
Accounts presented to support the connection between workplace bullying and
political behavior, like:
1) Influential groups, no one crosses
2) Dont speak up for fear of retaliation
And organizational practices as:
3) Stay at work after timetable (and not being paid for overtime)
4) Denying of promotion
Discussion of Results:
The quantitative results revealed a positive relationship between a high degree of
perceived organizational politics and bullying and also a positive relation between a
high degree of internal competition and bullying.
The accounts written down by respondents reveal both examples of bullying as an
interpersonal issue and as an organizational practice, while showing an ambiguous
notion of the concept.
In terms of power, through the analysis of the short stories, it was seen that
bullying is mainly enacted through coercive measures, namely disciplinary
procedures, and negative reward power, through performance related pay and
Power,
Politics and Conflicts in
Organizations
8/17/16
promotions
policies.

THE POWER OF POLITICS ON ORGANIZATIONAL

LEARNING AND KNOWLEDGE CREATION (1/2):
THE INNOVATION PROCESS IN A LARGE PULP AND PAPER PLANT IN NORWAY
Objective:
1. It is argued that political processes, within and between organizations, need to be
included in discussions about knowledge generation. Acquisition of new knowledge is
always associated with different interests from a variety of actors. The learning processes
are to a large extent governed by political ideology, prescribing what is valuable learning
and what is not. To explore in what extent workplace bullying is perceived as being an
instrumental
activity prosecuted in order to promote efficiency and reduce organizational
Case
Brief:
costs.
The
case is taken from Peterson Linerboard AS, a paper and pulp processing plant in
Norway with approx. 400 employees at the time of investigation.
A decision to develop a new product was taken by the MD of the company, with condition
of utmost secrecy to prevent similar new products and formed two teams; Project group,
involving personnel's from various departments, and a Steering group consisting of Top
management along with signing up secrecy agreements with two chemical companies to
develop a new prototype.
As the project proceeded, top management lost interest in project but failed to
communicate the same to other coordinating parties. Subsequently they assigned a
technical director to the project as steering group, who again reconstituted the project
group and established himself as main point of communication required for project.
Sometime after a meeting was called where MD announced project as shelved due to high
Power of politics on organizational learning
cost
and
risk,
also
blaming
project manager of poor work and hiding
to much information,
Power, Politics and Conflicts in Organizations
8/17/16
which they seemed as unreasonable.

THE POWER OF POLITICS ON ORGANIZATIONAL

LEARNING AND KNOWLEDGE CREATION(2/2):
Qualitative Analysis: Major focus on how the power of politics within this organization can
be split into three important factors:
Influences from individuals with power certain individuals within the studied
organizations dominate what ideas and values should surface. This contributes to uphold
a division between the core and the periphery of the organisations, where periphery
encompasses employees outside managerial functions.
A political culture dominating what can be said or not, including a policy of
recruitment aimed at socialising the right applicants to an establish organizational culture
Organisational ideology is the formal strategies, routines and documentation that
further the power of politics. In the hands of individuals with power, the organisational
ideology becomes a strong enforcement of a political culture
Results and analysis: Consequences of the massive use of power and secrecy were
The top management group had created the business strategy, and was the only one
having substantial knowledge about it. This opened up for different versions of a
strategic plan based on rumours and the employees own conclusions and loss of a
unified direction regarding R&D in the company
The management was strongly controlling the project through control of the
communication channels, Decisions were seldom documented, making it difficult to
know where decisions originated from.
The secrecy regarding this project limited the knowledge which could be included in
the project
Power,The
recourses on how to keep the project secret instead
of putting focus
Politicsproject
and Conflicts inused
Organizations
8/17/16
the R&D work
The secrecy around the project, trying to uphold a division between the core and the

THE EFFECT OF ORANIZATIONAL CONFLICT ON

ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE(1/2):
Objective:
1. Investigating the causes, types, reason and strategies for managing conflicts in some
selected service organizations in Nigeria
Qualitative Analysis: Major focus on following factors:
Types of Organizational Conflict: There are two essential types of conflict in
organizations: vertical and horizontal. Vertical conflict occurs in groups of different
hierarchical levels, such as supervisors and salesmen, whereas horizontal conflict occurs
between individuals of the same level, such as managers in the same organization.

Causes of Organizational Conflicts: In general, there are six major sources: (i) the
interpersonal disagreements (ii) the problems resulting from role conflict (iii) the power
struggles (iv) the misunderstandings and disagreements from differentiation (v) the
interdependence requirements for collaboration and (vi) the external pressures from
forces outside the enterprise

Reasons of Conflicts: Some of the reasons are: (i) as departments grow, people lose
contact with other departments, or yet, members of a department start to think
differently from other areas; (ii) the increase of emphasis in the financial measures as a
tool for motivation for managers; (iii) the increasing rise of emphasis in functional
specialization, politics of promotion and recruiting; (iv) asymmetric interdependence and
Organizational
Conflict
(v) consumers demand lower prices,
better
quality in products and services, creating
Power, Politics and Conflicts in Organizations
8/17/16
pressures so that departments work more effectively which can result in conflicts among
departments.

THE EFFECT OF ORANIZATIONAL CONFLICT ON

ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE(2/2):

Methodology:
Survey research approach was adopted and the focus of this study was cross- sectional
The sample selected for this study consisted of one hundred and twenty managers from
Hotels, Airlines, Road Transport and Insurance companies in Lagos Metropolis. The
questionnaire was delivered to all the managers and ninety six (96) valid questionnaires
were returned giving 80% response rate. The respondents were supervisors or
coordinators, higher level directors or company owners.
The research instruments used was a structured and non-disguised questionnaire with
close-ended questions, designed from literature review and previous studies. The
questionnaire was pre-tested with ten managers from the sample size in order to check
and ensure that no irrelevant question was present.
Results
The analysis
of data was
usingfrom
frequency
countsindicate
and percentages
well as
verbal
and analysis:
Thedone
results
the study
that the as
major
cause
of
augmentation
organizational conflicts is lack of resources. This leads to competition for the scarce
resources. Therefore, it is pertinent on the organizations management to ensure that the
available limited resources are utilized optimally for the benefit of the organization and
other stakeholders. Some results were as follows
Causes

Lack of
resourc
es

Different
expectati
ons

Competit
ion

Lack of
cooperat
ion

Salary
Compari
son

Interdepend
ence

Communica
tion
Problems

Percentag
e

25

10.4

12.5

11.5

9.4

10.4

20.8

Power, Politics and Conflicts in Organizations

8/17/16

Thank You
Power, Politics and Conflicts in Organizations

8/17/16