Power and Hierarchy

August 20 2007 Lecture 3

Hierarchy means of coordinating within an organization
Power: central aspect of social organization but play down

Concept of power is problematic, relative and intangible
Power isn’t everything
Troublesome for socialization of manager and practices of management

What is power?
Simply way to consider between individuals; Persona A acting party, person B the receiving party

Type of Power

- Reward
- Coercive
- Legitimate
- Referent
- Expert – people who have special knowledge, or expects on certain fields become powerful to others.

Characteristic of Power:
o Relationship among social actors within certain relationship
(Note: A social actor refers to organization, sub-units from individuals to sub-units to organization;

A given social actor has more power than some and less than others
(e.g.: sub-unit with NTU, the different school, has different power_
o Multi-dimensional power
Hierarchical power – the power of supervisors, bosses over employees
Structure power- created by the division of labour, e.g. different schools at NTU

Power and authority

Transformation of power into authority, if practice of power be accepted by both parties.

Power that is legitimated in a particular social setting is know as authority
Legitimating of power evolves into authority. which is desired in any social organisation.

Critical role of legitimacy
o Exercise of power has costs
o Exercise of authority is expected and desired in social context
o Exercise of authority may enhance authority; the decision track record will enhance or decrease authority.

(Note: consider the relationship between supervisor and subordinates, structure power, managers depend on lower lever workers to follow their instructions, lower level workers have specialized knowledge and access to information, they can show their power by strike)

From Power to authority
Institutionalization of social control; a social of process of individual as group behaviour regulated, individual’s behaviour is regulated by organizational rules and norm

Add stability to the situation and make the exercise of power easier and more effective.

Decision making process governed by either Rational Choice Model or Politics Model

Rational choice Model,

Assumption that:
o behaviour reflects purpose or intention
o Behaviour is not accidental, random but rationalized after the fact, goal decides behaviour
o Rationality cannot be defined apart from the existence of a set of goals.

Assume that every one in organization shares the same goal.
o A set of decision making alternatives obtained from a search process
o Search continued until a satisfactory alternative found (boundary rationality), a rational choice is made to select a courser of action to maximized achievement of goal.

However, Power and Politics (when goals different)

Organization politics, power as a store of potential influence, politics as the activities that develop power and those that use power.

Politics Model
o Criticism of rational choice model – fail to take into account diversity of interests and goals within organization,
o Politics model see actions as a result of compromise between different interests and goals
o Powers of the various social actors determine the outcome.
(Note: it is not necessary to choose between these two models, better understanding of organization by trying all models)

Common practise in most of organizations
o Rational model, especially issues of non-significant use Standard operation procedure and rules and norm.
o Rules and norms have implication for the distribution of power and authority.

Law of political entropy
-given the opportunity, an organization will tend to seek and maintain a political character.
-once politics are introduced into a situation, it is very difficult to restore rationality.

Why power and politics are down played in organization?
o purpose of discussion,
o Easier to provide explanation for career progress for employees by using rational model
o Easier for public to accept image of rational and efficient organization.