Power and influence in the workplace - summary of chapter 10 of Organizational Behavior by Mcshane, S. (8th edition)

Organizational Behavior
Chapter 10
Power and influence in the workplace

The meaning of power

Power: the capacity of a person, team or organization to influence others.

• It is only the potential
• Power is based on the target’s perception that the power controller holds
• Power involves asymmetric (unequal) dependence of one party on another party
  Countervailing power: the capacity of a person, team or organization to keep a more powerful person or group in the exchange relationship.
• All power relationships depend on some minimum level of trust

Managers typically have more power, whereas employees have weaker countervailing power.
Sometimes employees have more power than their bosses.

Power is derived from four sources:

• Legitimate
• Reward
• Coercive expert
• Referent

Four contingencies of power:

• The employees or department’s substitutability
• Centrality
• Discretion
• Visibility

Sources of power in organizations

Tree sources of power originate mostly form the power holder’s formal position or informal role

• Legitimate
• Reward
• Coercive

Two other sources of power originate mainly from the power holder’s own characteristics

• Expert
• Referent

Legitimate power

Legitimate power: an agreement among organizational members that people in certain roles can request certain behaviors of others.
This perceived right or obligation originates from formal job descriptions as well as informal rules of conduct.

Legitimate power has restrictions.
It gives the power holds only the right to ask others to perform a limited domain of behaviors. This domain is the zone of indifference.
The size of the zone of indifference increases with the level of trust in the power holder.
Some values and personality traits also make people more obedient to authority.
The organization’s culture represents another influence on the willingness of employees to follow orders.

Norm of reciprocity: a felt obligation and social expectation of helping or otherwise giving something of value to someone who has already helped or given something of value to you.
It is a form of legitimate power.

Legitimate power through information control

A particularly potent form of legitimate power occurs where people have the right to control information that others receive.

• Information is a resource
• Selectively distributing information in a way that affects how those receiving the information perceive the situation compared to their perception if they received all of the information.

Reward power

Derived from the person’s ability to control the allocation of rewards valued by others and to remove negative sanctions.

Coercive power

The ability to apply punishment.

Expert power

An individual’s or work unit’s capacity to influence others by possessing knowledge or skills valued by others.
Expertise can help companies cope with uncertainty in three ways:

• Prevention
• Forecasting
• Absorption
  Absorbing or neutralizing the impact of environmental shifts as they occur.

Many people respond to expertise just as they respond to authority, they mindlessly follow the guidance of these experts.

Referent power

Referent power: the capacity to influence others on the basis of an identification with and respect for the power holder.

Associated with charisma.
Charisma: a personal characteristic or special ‘gift’ that serves as a form of interpersonal attraction and referent power over others.

Contingencies of power

Sources of power generate power only under certain conditions.

Substitutability

Power is strongest when the individual or work unit has a monopoly over a valued resource. They are nonsubstitutable.
Substitiutability refers not only to other sources that offer the resource, but also to substitutions of the resource itself.

Centrality

Centrality: a contingency of power pertaining to the degree and nature of interdependence between the power holder and others.

The power holders importance based on the degree and nature of interdependence with others.

Visibility

Power increases with your visibility.

Discretion

The freedom to exercise judgment is an important contingency of power in organizations.

The power of social networks

Social networks: social structures of individuals or social units that are connected to each other through one or more forms of interdependence.

• Some social networks are held together due to common interests.
• Other networks form around common status, expertise, kinship, or physical proximity.

Social networks exist because people have a drive to bond, but there are cultural differences in the norms of active network involvement.

Social capital and sources of power

Social capital: the knowledge and other resources available to people or social units from a durable network that connects them to others.

Social networks potentially enhance and maintain the power of its members through three resources:

• Information
• Visibility
• Referent power

Gaining power through social networks

Strong ties, weak ties, many ties

The volume of information, favors, and other social capital that people receive from networks usually increases with the number of people connected to them.
But the more people you know, the less time and energy you have to form ‘strong ties’.
Strong ties: close-knit relationships, which are evident from how often we interact with people, how intensely we share resources with them, and whether we are multiple-, or single-purpose relationships with them.
Strong ties are valuable.

Some minimal connection strength is necessary to remain in any social network, but strong connections aren’t necessarily the most valuable ties.
Having weak ties with people from diverse networks can be more valuable than having strong ties with people in similar networks.

Social network centrality

The more central person is located in the network, the more social capital and therefore more power he or she acquires.
Centralization importance in that network.

Three factors determine your centrality in a social network.

• Betweenness
  How much you are located between others in the network
  The more betweenness you have, the more you control the distribution of information and other resources to people either side of you.
• Degree centrality
  The number or percentage of connections you have to others in the network.
• Closeness
  High closeness refers to strong ties.

Structural hole: an area between two or more dense social network areas that lacks network ties.

Consequences of power

When people feel empowered, they believe they have power over themselves and freedom from being influenced by others.
Empowerment tends to increase motivation, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job performance.
This feeling of being in control and free from others’ authority also increases automatic rather than mindful thinking.

Power over others produces a sense of duty or responsibility for the people over whom the power holder has authority.

Influencing others

Influence: any behavior that attempts to alter someone’s attitudes or behavior.
Influence is power in motivation.

Type of influence tactics

Silent authority

When someone complies with a request because of the requester’s legitimate power as well as the target person’s role expectations.

Assetiveness

Involves actively applying legitimate and coercive power to influence others.
Vocal authority.

Informational control

When the power holder actually distributes information selectively so it re-frames the situation and casual others to change their attitudes and/or behavior.

Coalition formation

Coalition: a group that attempts to influence people outside the group by pooling the resources and power of its members.
A coalition in influential in three ways:

• It pools the power and resources of many people
• The coalition’s mere existence can be a source of power by symbolizing the legitimacy of the issue
• Social identity

Upward appeal

Persuasion

The use of facts, logical arguments, and emotional appeals to change another person’s beliefs and attitudes, usually for the purpose of changing the person’s behavior.

The effectiveness of persuasion as an influence tactic depends on:

• Characteristics of the persuader
• Message content
• Communication channel
• The audience being persuaded

Inoculation effect: a persuasive communication strategy of warning listeners that others will try to influence them in the future and that they should be wary of the opponent’s arguments.

Impression management (including ingratiation)

Impression management: actively shaping through self-presentation and other means the perceptions and attitudes that others have of us.

Ingratiation: any attempt to increase liking by, or perceived to, some targeted person.

Exchange

The promise of benefits or resources in exchange for the target person’s compliance with your request.

Consequences and contingencies of influence tactics

How people react when others try to influence them

• Resistance
  When people or work units oppose the behavior desired by the influencer. Levels of it. Most extreme refuse the behavior.
• Compliance
  When people are motivated to implement the influencer’s request for purely instrumental reasons.
  Involving in the behavior with no more effort than is required.
• Commitment
  People identify with the influencer’s request and are highly motivated to implement it even when extrinsic sources of motivation are not present.

General preference on soft tactics.

The most appropriate influence strategy depends on a few contingencies.

• The influencer’s strongest sources of power
• Whether the person being influenced is higher, lower, or at the same level in the organization
• Personal, organizational and cultural values.

Organizational politics

For the most part, organizational politics is in the eye of the beholder.

Organizational politics: behavior that others perceive as self-serving tactics at the expense of other people and possibly the organization.

Employees who experience organizational politics from others have:

• Lower job satisfaction
• Lower organizational commitment
• Lower organizational citizenship
• Lower task performance
• Higher levels of work-related stress
• Higher motivation to leave the organization.

Minimizing organizational politics

• Organizational politics is triggered by scare resources in the workplace
• Organizational politics are fueled by ambiguous or complex rules, or the absence of formal rules
• Organizational change tends to bring out more organizational politics
• Political behavior is more common in work units and organizations where it is tolerated and reinforced

Personal characteristics

Several personal characteristics affect an individual’s motivation to engage in self-serving behavior.

• A strong need for personal as opposed to socialized power

Machiavellian values: the beliefs that deceit is a natural and acceptable way to influence others and that getting more than one deserves is acceptable.