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Learning Outcome 4

Examine how power, politics and culture

can be used to influence employee
behaviour and accomplish organisational
UNIT 20 goals.
ORGANIZATIONAL
BEHAVIOR
 Topics
Influence of:
Power
Politics
Culture

Go Top
Influence of Power and Politics
Power
and
Politics
 Learning Objectives
Contrast leadership and power.
Explain the three bases of formal power and the two bases of
personal power.
Explain the role of dependence in power relationships.
Identify power or influence tactics and their contingencies.
Identify the causes and consequences of abuse of power.
Describe how politics work in organizations.
Identify the causes, consequences, and ethics of political behavior.

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Define Power and Contrast
Leadership and Power
◦ Power refers to a capacity that A has to influence the
behavior of B, so that B acts in accordance with A’s
wishes.
◦ Power may exist but not be used.
◦ Probably the most important aspect of power is that it is
a function of dependence.
◦ A person can have power over you only if he or she
controls something you desire.

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 Define Power and Contrast
Leadership and Power
◦ Leaders use power as a means of attaining group goals.
◦ Goal compatibility
◦ Power does not require goal compatibility, merely
dependence.

◦ The direction of influence

◦ Leadership focuses on the downward influence on one’s
followers.

◦ Leadership research emphasizes style.

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Explain Formal Power
and Personal Power
◦ Formal Power
◦ Coercive Power
◦ Reward Power
◦ Legitimate Power
◦ Personal Power
◦ Expert Power
◦ Referent Power

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Explain Formal Power
and Personal Power
Which Bases of Power Are Most Effective?
Personal sources are most effective.
Both expert and referent power are positively
related to employees’ satisfaction with
supervision, their organizational commitment, and
their performance, whereas reward and legitimate
power seem to be unrelated to these outcomes.
Coercive power usually backfires.

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Explain the Role of Dependence
in Power Relationships
The General Dependency Postulate
When you possess anything that others require but that
you alone control, you make them dependent upon you
and, therefore, you gain power over them.
Dependence, then, is inversely proportional to the
alternative sources of supply.

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Explain the Role of Dependence
in Power Relationships
◦ What Creates Dependence?
◦ Importance
◦ Scarcity
◦ Nonsubstitutability

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 EXPLAIN THE
ROLE OF
DEPENDENCE
IN POWER
RELATIONSHIPS

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Identify Power or Influence
Tactics and their Contingencies
Influence tactics:
Legitimacy Personal appeals
Rational persuasion Ingratiating
Inspirational appeals Pressure
Consultation Coalitions
Exchange

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Identify Nine Power or Influence
Tactics and their Contingencies
Some tactics are more effective than others.
Rational persuasion, inspirational appeals, and consultation
are most effective when the audience is highly interested in
the outcomes.
Pressure tends to backfire.
Both ingratiation and legitimacy can lessen the negative
reactions from appearing to “dictate” outcomes.

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Identify Nine Power or
Influence
Tactics and their
Contingencies

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Identify Nine Power or Influence
Tactics and their Contingencies
 People in different countries prefer different power tactics.
Individualistic countries see power in personalized terms and as
a legitimate means of advancing their personal ends.
Collectivistic countries see power in social terms and as a
legitimate means of helping others.

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Identify Nine Power or Influence
Tactics and their Contingencies
Applying Power Tactics
People differ in terms of their political skill: their
ability to influence others to enhance their own
objectives.
Cultures within organizations differ markedly:
some are warm, relaxed, and supportive; others are
formal and conservative.

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Causes and Consequences of Abuse of Power
Does power corrupt?
 Power leads people to place their own interests ahead
of others.
 Powerful people react, especially negatively, to any
threats to their competence.
 Power leads to overconfident decision making.
 Power doesn’t affect everyone in the same way, and
there are even positive effects of power.
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 Causes and Consequences
of Abuse of Power
◦ Sexual harassment: any unwanted activity of a sexual nature that
affects an individual’s employment and creates a hostile work
environment.
◦ Organizations have generally made progress in the past decade toward
limiting overt forms of sexual harassment.
◦ Managers have a responsibility to protect their employees from a hostile
work environment, but they also need to protect themselves.

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 Causes and Consequences
of Abuse of Power
Mangers should:
 Make sure an active policy defines what constitutes sexual
harassment, informs employees they can be fired for sexually
harassing another employee, and establishes procedures for
how complaints can be made.
 Reassure employees that they will not encounter retaliation if
they issue a complaint.

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 Causes and Consequences
of Abuse of Power
 In addition, managers should:
 Investigate every complaint and include the legal and
human resource departments.
 Make sure offenders are disciplined or terminated.
 Set up in-house seminars to raise employee awareness
of the issues surrounding sexual harassment.

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 Describe How Politics
Work in Organizations
◦ Political behavior: activities that are not required as part of one’s
formal role in the organization, but that influence the distribution of
advantages within the organization.
◦ Outside of one’s specified job requirements.
◦ Encompasses efforts to influence decision- making goals, criteria,
or processes.
◦ Includes such behaviors as withholding information, whistle-
blowing, spreading rumors, and leaking confidential information.
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Describe How Politics
Work in Organizations

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Causes and Consequences
of Political Behavior

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Causes and
Consequences
of Political
Behavior
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Causes and
Consequences
of Political Behavior

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 Causes and Consequences
of Political Behavior
Impression management (IM): the process by which individuals
attempt to control the impression others form of them.
 Mostly high self-monitors.
 Impressions people convey are not necessarily false – they might
truly believe them.
 Intentional misrepresentation may have a high cost.
The effectiveness of IM depends on the situation.

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 Causes and Consequences
of Political Behavior
The Ethics of Behaving Politically
Questions to consider:
 What is the utility of engaging in politicking?
 How does the utility of engaging in the political
behavior balance out any harm (or potential harm) it will
do to others?
 Does the political activity conform to standards of
equity and justice?
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Causes and
Consequences
of Political
Behavior
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 Implications for Managers
To maximize your power, you will want to increase others’ dependence on
you. You can, for instance, increase your power in relation to your boss by
developing knowledge or a skill she needs and for which she perceives no
ready substitute.
You will not be alone in attempting to build your power bases. Others,
particularly employees and peers, will be seeking to increase your
dependence on them, while you are trying to minimize it and increase their
dependence on you. The result is a continual battle.
Try to avoid putting others in a position where they feel they have no
power.
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 Implications for Managers
By assessing behavior in a political framework, you can better predict the
actions of others and use that information to formulate political strategies that
will gain advantages for you and your work unit.
Consider that employees who have poor political skills or are unwilling to
play the politics game generally relate perceived organizational politics to
lower job satisfaction and self-reported performance, increased anxiety, and
higher turnover. Therefore, if you are adept at organizational politics, help
your employees understand the importance of becoming politically savvy.

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Influence of culture
Influence of culture:

Culture as key variable affecting organisational success and factors that influence it, e.g. nature of business,
company goals, employee behaviours, diversity. Culture promoting organisational values and expectations
of how work should be undertaken and behavioural expectations of employees.
Organizational
Culture
 Learning Objectives
Describe the common characteristics of organizational culture.
Compare the functional and dysfunctional effects of organizational culture on
people and the organization.
Identify the factors that create and sustain an organization’s culture.
Show how culture is transmitted to employees.
Describe the similarities and differences in creating an ethical culture, a
positive culture, and a spiritual culture.
Show how national culture can affect the way organizational culture is
transported to another country.

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Common Characteristics of
Organizational Culture
A Definition of Organizational Culture

Organizational culture refers to a system of

shared meaning held by members that distinguishes
the organization from other organizations.

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Common Characteristics of
Organizational Culture
Primary characteristics that capture the essence of
an organization’s culture:
 Innovation and risk taking
 Attention to detail
 Outcome orientation
 People orientation
 Team orientation
 Aggressiveness
 Stability
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 Common Characteristics of
Organizational Culture
Culture as a Descriptive Term
Organizational culture is concerned with employees’ perceptions
of the characteristics of the culture, not whether they like them.
Does it encourage teamwork?
Does it reward innovation?
Does it stifle initiative?
It differs from job satisfaction:
Job satisfaction is evaluative.
Organizational culture is descriptive.
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 Common Characteristics of
Organizational Culture
Do Organizations Have Uniform Cultures?
Most organizations have a dominant culture and numerous
sets of subcultures.
The dominant culture expresses the core values a majority
of members share and that give the organization distinct
personality.
Subcultures tend to develop in large organizations to
reflect common problems, situations, or experiences that
members face.
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Common Characteristics of
Organizational Culture
Strong versus Weak Cultures
 Strong culture: core values are intensely held
and widely shared.
Culture versus Formalization
 High formalization creates predictability,
orderliness, and consistency.
 Formalization and culture are two different
roads to the same destination.

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 What Do Cultures Do?
The Functions of Culture
 Boundary-defining role.
 Conveys a sense of identity for members.
 Facilitates the generation of commitment.
 Enhances the stability of the social system.
 Serves as a sense-making and control mechanism.
 Defines the rules of the game.

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 What Do Cultures Do?
 The trend toward decentralized organizations makes
culture more important than ever, but also makes
establishing a strong culture more difficult.
 Individual-organization “fit”— whether the applicant’s
or employee’s attitudes and behavior are compatible with
the culture — strongly influences who gets a job offer, a
favorable performance review, or a promotion.

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 What Do Cultures Do?
Culture Creates Climate
Organizational climate is shared perceptions about the
organization and work environment.
Team spirit at the organizational level.
Climates can interact with one another to produce
behavior.
Climate also influences the habits people adopt.

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 What Do Cultures Do?
The Ethical Dimension of Culture
Organizational cultures are not neutral in their ethical
orientation, even when they are not openly pursuing ethical
goals.
Over time, the ethical work climate (EWC), or the
shared concept of right and wrong behavior in that
workplace, develops as part of the organizational climate.
The ethical climate reflects the true values of the
organization and shapes the ethical decision making of its
members.
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 What Do Cultures Do?
 Ethical climate theory (ECT) and the ethical climate index
(ECI) categorize and measure the ethical dimensions of
organizational cultures.
Five climate categories: instrumental, caring,
independence, law and code, and rules.
Each explains the general mindset, expectations, and
values of the managers and employees in relationship to
their organization.
 Ethical climate powerfully influences the way its
individual members feel they should behave.
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 What Do Cultures Do?
Studies of ethical climates and workplace outcomes
suggest that some climate categories are likely to be found
in certain organizations.
By measuring the collective levels of moral sensitivity,
judgment, motivation, and character of our organizations,
we may be able to judge the strength of the influence our
ethical climates have on us.

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 What Do Cultures Do?
 Sustainability: practices that can be maintained over very long
periods of time because the tools or structures that support the
practices are not damaged by the processes.
 Social sustainability practices.
 Sustainable management doesn’t need to be purely
altruistic.
 To create a truly sustainable business, an organization
must develop a long-term culture and put its values into
practice.
 Like other cultural practices we’ve discussed, sustainability
needs time and nurturing to grow. 16-48
 What Do Cultures Do?
Culture and Innovation
The most innovative companies have open,
unconventional, collaborative, vision-driven, and
accelerating cultures.
Startup firms often have innovative cultures.
They are usually small, agile, and focused on solving
problems in order to survive and grow.

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What Do Cultures Do?
Culture as an Asset
Culture can significantly contribute to an
organization’s bottom line in many ways.
There are many more cases of business success
stories because of excellent organizational cultures
than there are of success stories despite bad cultures,
and almost no success stories because of bad ones.

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What Do Cultures Do?
Culture as a Liability
Institutionalization
Barriers to Change
Barriers to Diversity
Strengthening Dysfunctions
Barriers to Acquisitions and Mergers

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 Influence of culture: Schein’s Culture Levels

Artifacts
◦ The first level is the characteristics of the organization which can be easily viewed, heard and felt
by individuals collectively known as artifacts.
Values
◦ The next level according to Schein which constitute the organization culture is the values of the
employees.
◦ The values of the individuals working in the organization play an important role in deciding the
organization culture. The thought process and attitude of employees have deep impact on the
culture of any particular organization.
Assumed Values
◦ The third level is the assumed values of the employees which can’t be measured but do make a
difference to the culture of the organization.
◦ There are certain beliefs and facts which stay hidden but do affect the culture of the organization.
The inner aspects of human nature come under the third level of organization culture.
Influence of culture: Major Types of Culture

Adhocracy culture – the dynamic, entrepreneurial Create Culture.

Clan culture – the people-oriented, friendly Collaborate Culture. 
Hierarchy culture – the process-oriented, structured Control
Culture.
Market culture – the results-oriented, competitive Compete
Culture.
Influence of culture: Employee Life Cycle

the recruitment process and recruiters

employee onboarding into the organization and business units
performance management
skills development
how employees are disciplined
the decisions made from the results of employee pulse surveys.
Influence of culture: HR Functions

Providing feedback
Embracing Diversity, Inclusion & Equity
Being change champions
Developing & applying policies
Influence of culture: Sample Cross Culture Differences
Individualism vs. Collectivism: In some cultures, the individual is emphasized while in others the
group is emphasized.
Power distance: The culture that believes that organizational power should be distributed
unequally.
Uncertainty avoidance: Hofstede found that some cultures tend to accept change as a challenge
while others don’t.
Masculinity vs. Femininity: Hofstede himself tends to reject the terms “masculine” and
“feminine”. These two terms should be overlooked in order to value other issues which are more
important to the organization such as achievement and assertiveness.
Long-Term Orientation - Long Term Orientation stands for particular, perseverance and thrift
Influence of culture: Frameworks to understand Org

Systems theory is fundamental to understanding the dynamics of

the complex social systems of concern to policy makers.

Network theory gives insights into social phenomena such as the

spread of information and the way people form social groups which
then constrain their behaviour.
 Creating and
Sustaining Culture
How a Culture Begins
Ultimate source of an organization’s culture is its
founders.
Founders have the vision of what the organization
should be.
Unconstrained by previous ideologies or customs.
New organizations are typically small, which facilitates
the founders’ imparting of their vision on all
organizational members.

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Creating and
Sustaining Culture
Culture creation occurs in three ways:
Founders hire employees who think and feel the
way they do.
Employees are indoctrinated and socialized into
the founders’ way of thinking.
Founders’ own behavior encourages employees to
identify with them and internalize their beliefs,
values, and assumptions.

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Creating and
Sustaining Culture
Keeping a Culture Alive
Selection
 Identify and hire individuals with the
knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform
successfully.
Two-way street.
Top Management
Establish norms of behavior.

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CREATING
AND
SUSTAININ
G CULTURE

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CREATING
AND
SUSTAININ
G CULTURE

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 CREATING AND
SUSTAINING CULTURE
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Show How Culture Is
Transmitted to Employees
How Employees Learn Culture
Culture is transmitted to employees through:
Stories
Rituals
Symbols
Material symbols
Language

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Influencing an
Organizational Culture
 How can management create a more ethical
culture?
Be a visible role model.
Communicate ethical expectations.
Provide ethics training.
Visibly reward ethical acts and punish unethical
ones.
Provide protective mechanisms.

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Influencing an
Organizational Culture
 There is a trend today for organizations to attempt
to create a positive organizational culture:
Emphasizes building on employee strengths.
Rewards more than it punishes.
Emphasizes individual vitality growth.
Positive culture is not a cure-all.

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Influencing an
Organizational Culture
What Is Spirituality?
 Workplace spirituality is not about organized
religious practices.
 It is not about God or theology.
 Workplace spirituality recognizes that people
have an inner life that nourishes and is nourished
by meaningful work that takes place in the
context of community.

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 INFLUENCING AN
ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
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Influencing an
Organizational Culture
◦ Characteristics of a Spiritual Organization
◦ Cultural characteristics present in spiritual
organizations include:
◦ Benevolence
◦ Strong sense of purpose
◦ Trust and respect
◦ Open-mindedness

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Identify Characteristics
of a Spiritual Culture
Achieving a Spiritual Organization
Many organizations have grown interested in
spirituality but have had difficulty putting its
principles into practice.
Leaders can demonstrate values, attitudes, and
behaviors that trigger intrinsic motivation and a
sense of calling through work.
Encouraging employees to consider how their work
provides a sense of purpose through community
building also can help achieve a spiritual workplace.
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Identify Characteristics
of a Spiritual Culture
 Critics of spirituality in organizations focus on:
 The question of scientific foundation: what
really is workplace spirituality?
 Are spiritual organizations legitimate? Do
organizations have the right to impose spiritual
values on their employees?
 The question of economics: are spirituality and
profits compatible?

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The Global Context
 Organizational cultures often reflect national
culture.
 One of the primary things U.S. managers can do is
to be culturally sensitive.
 The management of ethical behavior is one area
where national culture can rub up against
corporate culture.

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 IMPLICATIONS FOR MANAGERS
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 Implications for Managers
Realize that an organization’s culture is relatively fixed in the short term. To
effect change, involve top management and strategize a long-term plan.
Hire individuals whose values align with those of the organization; these
employees will tend to remain committed and satisfied. Not surprisingly,
“misfits” have considerably higher turnover rates.
Understand that employees’ performance and socialization depend to a
considerable degree on their knowing what to do and not do. Train your
employees well and keep them informed of changes to their job roles.

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 Implications for Managers
 You can shape the culture of your work environment, sometimes as
much as it shapes you. All managers can especially do their part to
create an ethical culture and to consider spirituality and its role in
creating a positive organizational culture.
 Be aware that your company’s organizational culture may not be
“transportable” to other countries. Understand the cultural relevance of
your organization’s norms before introducing new plans or initiatives
overseas.

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