Organization Power and Politics

Organizations Working to Reduce Workplace Stress and Conflict

Organizations all across the world have been working for decades to reduce workplace stress and conflict. Since years, team behavior, communication, and hierarchy have been at the heart of organizational behavior. Nonetheless, due to their implied nature, power and politics have gotten little consideration. Those who have worked in these large corporations will quickly discover that businesses are increasingly political, and power play has now become a significant factor determining workplace dynamics. Scholars have been looking for ways to reduce the effects of this unavoidable organizational drive. I was working as the youngest member in the recruitment team with one of the major recruitment consultancy. All my colleagues were postgraduates where as I had just qualified my graduation. The organization had adopted a monthly review incentive scheme wherein incentives would be added to your monthly salary according to the number of people you hire i.e. it was completely performance driven. It so happened that for consecutive 3 months of our joining in the organization my performance in terms of hiring, closing the positions and achieving the targets was better than my better qualified peers. When they realised this that their incentives were also being affected due to my better performance they stopped helping me and also the communication became less prominent. I was not communicated the profiles and other information well. While this affected my performance I also felt left out and demotivated. However, my senior understood there was some politics going on in the team and discussed about the same with me. There was an immediate team meeting that discussed the issue openly and let to certain solutions of the problem.

Individual Factors Contributing to Political Battle

In this case individual factor like expectation of success led to the political battle. Different people in the team had different views about success some wanted more monetary benefits while the others looked for appreciation. When people in the team thought their expectations would not get fulfilled due to another team mate they used politics and power of their seniority. Apart from this certain organizational factors such as unclear performance evaluation system and pressure to achieve targets and perform well made the situation worst (Robbins 1997).Apart from performance the performance appraisal also was dependent on behaviour with clients as well as other team mates. When my senior communicated this well to the team the situation pacified.

Political Behaviors and Unethical Actions

Also political behaviors like coalition tactics was used by means of gaining support of other senior team mates against the junior team mates like me. Decisive engagement by the senior team mates led to miscommunication. Apart from this blame game (Luthans 2015) was also exercised. Seniors blamed juniors for the poor performance and productivity.

Unethical Behavior and Impact on Organization

According to me the senior team mates in this situation behaved unethically. While working in an organization one should keep organization’s goals as top priority rather than seeking personal benefit. Due to miscommunication in the team and this whole politics issue the team could not meet the deadlines which affected the brand image of the organization.

Conclusion

After understanding this encounter it can be said that organizations should bring power and politics out and should discuss about the challenges and consequences explicitly. Better framework and guidelines should be formulated to understand the power and politics and its ethical dimension in today’s organizations.

References

Robbins, S. (1997). Chapter 11: Power and politics. Essentials of Organizational Behavior. Pearson Education, New York, NY, pp. 869-901. Retrieved from

www.rim.edu.bt/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/OBCDCH116.pdf

Organizational politics. (2014). Pearson Learning Solutions. New York, NY