THE POWER GAME AND PLAYERS

ABOUT : Organizational power

ARGUMENT: Organizational Behavior as a power game

In each organization, there are key players called INFLUENCERS. This influencers
practiced authority to seek to control the organization’s decisions and actions. The organization’s
first comes into being when n initial group of influencers join together to pursue a common
mission. Other influencers are subsequently attracted to the organization as a vehicle for
satisfying some of their needs. Since the needs of influencers vary, each tries to use his or her
own lever of power - means or system of influence, that is an instruments to the influencers to be
able to use to effect outcomes.

THE EXERCISE OF POWER

In Hirshman’s book entitled EXIT, VOICE n LOYALTY each influencers have three options:
 To stay and contribute to which Hirschman calls loyalty
 those who choose loyalty over voice client who buys without question at the going rate,
the employees who do whatever they are told quietly-choose not to participate as active
influencers
 To leave, which Hirschman calls exit
 Those who exit such as the client stops buying or the employee who seeks elsewhere
cease to be influencers
 To stay and try to change the system, which Hirschman refers to as voice
 To resort to voice, rather than exit, is for the customer or member to make an attempt
changing the practices, policies, and cur of the firm from which one buys or of
organization to which one belongs.

THE GENERAL BASES OF POWER

There are five bases of power

1.Control of a resource
2.Control of a technical skill
3.Control of a body of knowledge or any critical to the organization.

To serve as a basis of power, a resource, skill or body of knowledge must

1. first of all, be essential to the functioning of the organization.
2. it must be concentrated,in short supply or else in the hands of one person or a small
number of people who cooperate to some extent.
3. it must be nonsubstitutable, in other words irreplaceable.

These three characteristics create the dependency the organization needs something, and it can
get it only from the few people who have it.

4.Stems from legal prerogatives-exclusive rights or privileges to impose choices.

Society, through its governments and judicial system creates a whole set of legal prerogatives
which grant formal power to various influencers. In the first place governments reserve for
themselves the power to authorize the creation of the organization and thereafter regulations sorts
of it. Owners or the directors of the organization with certain powers that can hire and fire top
executives.
5.Access to personal matters.
Sometimes access in this basis of power stems from favors traded. Friends and partners
grant each other influence over their respective activities. In this case, reciprocity, the gaining of
power in one sphere by the giving up of power in another.

Thus, organizational power game is characterized by two relationships, dependency/ one-sided

or asymmetrical and two, reciprocal relationships.
WILL AND SKILL

Power is not enough, one must make an effort to become an influencers. n the game of
power, it is often the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. In other words, those who barely make
an effort, gains more. Apart from that, these days, influencers pick and choose their issues,
concentrating their efforts on the ones most important to them, and, of course, those they think
they can win. Thus Patchen (1974) finds that each influencer stakes out those areas that affect
him or her most.
Aside from having some basis of power and expend some energy or efforts, political skill
is also a requisite. Political skills refers to the bases of power effectively. By by convincing those
who have access to use resources, information and technical skills to their fullest bargaining, to
exercise formal power with a sensitivity to the feeling of others, to know where to concentrate
one’s energies, to sense what is possible and to organize the necessary alliances.

THE CAST OF PLAYERS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE

There are two distinguishable influencers: internal and external influencers

 INTERNAL - are full time employees who use voice, and incharge of making decisions and
taking actions permanently and in regular basis
 EXTERNAL -nonemployees who use thei basis of influence to try to affect the behavior of
the employees.

COALITION - used for a group of people who band together to win some issue. According to
Astley(1980) described as an engineered agreements and alliances. Coalition are formed by
internal and external influencers which bond together around or within the organization to satisfy
their needs.

Two Theories of Power

 INTERNAL COALITION - formed by internal infuencer
 EXTERNAL COALITION- formed by external influencers

There are 10 groups of influencers according to the order in appearance. The first f four are found
in the EXTERNAL COALITION.

1. OWNERS- who who held the legal title to the organization. Some of them perhaps
conceived the idea of founding the organization in the first place and serve as brokers to
bring the initial infuencers together.
2. ASSOCIATES -the suppliers of the organization's input resources, the clients for its output
products and services, as well as its trading partners and competitors. It should he noted that
only those associates who resort to voice-for example, who engage in contacts of other than
a purely economic nature are counted as influencers in the External Coalition
3. EMPLOYEE ASSOCIATIONS- or the unions and professional associations. Again these are
included as influencers to the extent that they seek to influence the organization in other than
purely economic ways,that is, to use voice to affect decisions and actions directly.Such
employee associations see themselves as representatives of more than simple suppliers of
labor resources. Note that employee associations are themselves considered external
influencers, even though they represent people who can be internal influencers. Acting
collectively, through their representatives, the employees choose to exert their influence on
the organization from outside of its regular decision-making and action-taking channels,
much as do owners and clients.
4. PUBLICS- groups representing special or general interests of the public at large. We can
divide these into three:
1)such general groups as families, opinion leaders, and the like;
2)special interest groups such as conservation movements or local community
institutions; and
3)government in all of its forms-national, regional, local, departments and ministries,
regulatory agencies, and so on.
Another group of influencers are the directors of the organization. These constitute a kind of
“formal coalition." This group stands at the interface of the External and Internal.

The Internal Coalition compromises of six groups of influencers.

5. TOP OR GENERAL MANAGEMENT - an individual at the top of the hierarchy of
authority, in standard American terminology, the chief executive officer, or CEO.
6. OPERATORS - those workers who actually produce the products and services, or who
provide the direct support to them, such as the machine operators in the manufacturing plant
or the doctors and nurses in the hospital.
7. MANAGERS - who stand in the hierarchy of line authority from the CEO down to the first-
line supervisors to whom the operators formally report. We shall refer to these simply as the
line managers.
8. ANALYSTS OF THE TECHNOSTRUCTURE - these are staff specialists who concern
themselves with the design and operation of the systems for planning and for formal control,
people such as work study analysts, cost accountants, and long-range planners.
9. SUPPORT STAFF - comprising those staff specialists who provide indirect sup-port to the
operators and the rest of the organization, in a business firm, for example, the mail room
staff, the chef in the cafeteria, the researchers, the public relation officers, and the legal
counsel.
10. IDEOLOGY OF THE ORGANIZATION- the set of beliefs shared by its internal influencers
that distinguish it from other organization.

All the group mentioned above are influencers that are driven to gain power in or over the
organization, they focuses on what ends each seeks to attain, what men or system of influence
each has at its disposal, and how much power each tends to end u with b virtue of the role it plays
in the power coalition to which it happens to belong.