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Chapter 13
Power and Politics
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Understand the meaning of power.
Recognize the positive and negative aspects of power and influence.
Recognize the sources of power.
Understand and recognize influence tactics and impression
management.
Learn the definition of a social network and how to analyze your own
network.
Understand the antecedents and consequences of organizational
politics.
Understand how ethics affect power.
Understand cross-cultural influences on power use.
Video Connection
If you are interested in learning more about Steve Jobs as he describes pivotal
moments in his life, view Steve Jobs’s commencement speech at Stanford in
2005, available at the following Web site: http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc
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Chapter 13 Power and Politics
13.1 Focus on Power: The Case of Steve Jobs
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Chapter 13 Power and Politics
Figure 13.1
Source:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/
wiki/
File:Steve_Jobs_with_the_Apple_i
Pad_no_logo.jpg by Matt
Buchanan.
In 2007, Fortune named Steve Jobs the “Most Powerful Person in Business.” In 2009, the magazine named him
“CEO of the Decade.” Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), has transformed no fewer than five different
industries: computers, Hollywood movies, music, retailing, and wireless phones. His Apple II ushered in the
personal computer era in 1977, and the graphical interface of the Macintosh in 1984 set the standard that all
other PCs emulated. His company Pixar defined the computer-animated feature film. The iPod, iTunes, and
iPhone revolutionized how we listen to music, how we pay for and receive all types of digital content, and what
we expect of a mobile phone.
How has Jobs done it? Jobs draws on all six types of power: legitimate, expert, reward, information, coercive, and
referent. His vision and sheer force of will helped him succeed as a young unknown. But the same determination
that helps him succeed has a darker side—an autocracy and drive for perfection that can make him tyrannical.
Let’s take each of these in turn.
1. Legitimate power. As CEO of Apple, Jobs enjoys unquestioned legitimate power.
2. Expert power. His success has built a tremendous amount of expert power. Jobs is renowned for
being able to think of markets and products for needs that people didn’t even know they had.
3. Reward power. As one of the richest individuals in the United States, Jobs has reward power both
within and outside Apple. He also can reward individuals with his time and attention.
4. Information power. Jobs has been able to leverage information in each industry he has transformed.
5. Coercive power. Forcefulness is helpful when tackling large, intractable problems, says Stanford
social psychologist Roderick Kramer, who calls Jobs one of the “great intimidators.” Robert Sutton
notes that “the degree to which people in Silicon Valley are afraid of Jobs is unbelievable.” Jobs is
known to berate people to the point of tears.
6. Referent power. But at the same time, “He inspires astounding effort and creativity from his people.”
Employee Andy Herzfeld, the lead designer of the original Mac operating system, says Jobs imbues
13.1 Focus on Power: The Case of Steve Jobs
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Chapter 13 Power and Politics
employees with a “messianic zeal” and can make them feel that they’re working on the greatest
product in the world.
Those who work with him say Jobs is very hard to please. However, they also say that this means that Apple
employees work hard to win his approval. “He has the ability to pull the best out of people,” says Cordell
Ratzlaff, who worked closely with Jobs on OS X for 18 months. “I learned a tremendous amount from him.” Jobs’s
ability to persuade and influence has come to be called a “reality distortion field.” As Bud Tribble put it, “In his
presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything.” Hertzfeld describes his style as
“a confounding mélange of a charismatic rhetorical style, an indomitable will, and an eagerness to bend any fact
to fit the purpose at hand.” The influence works even when you’re aware of it, and it works even on “enemies”:
“No other high-tech impresario could walk into the annual sales meeting of one of his fiercest rivals and get a
standing ovation,” which is what Jobs got in 2002 from Intel Corporation (the ally of Apple archrival Microsoft in
the partnership known as Wintel: Windows + Intel).
Jobs’s power is not infallible—he was ousted from his own company in 1987 by the man he hired to help him run
it. But he returned in 1997 and brought the company back from the brink of failure. The only years that Apple
was unprofitable were the years during Jobs’s absence. Many are watching to see how Apple and Jobs succeed
with the iPad in 2010.
Case written by [citation redacted per publisher request]. Based on information from Schlender, B. (2007,
November 27). The power of Steve Jobs. Fortune, 117–118; Sutton, R. (2007). The no asshole rule. New York: Warner
Business Books; Kahney, L. (2008, March 18). How Apple got everything right by doing everything wrong. Wired.
Retrieved January 4, 2008, from http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-04/bz_apple; Hertzfeld, A.
(1981, February). Reality distortion field. Retrieved January 4, 2008, from http://folklore.org/
StoryView.py?story =Reality_Distortion_Field.txt.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Steve Jobs has achieved a great deal of success. What are some possible
negative consequences of the level of power that he holds?
2. Where does Steve Jobs’s power and influence come from?
3. How might the CEO of Apple create compliance within his organization?
4. Does a member of an organization who has the title of power, such as
Steve Jobs, need legitimacy from the members of the organization to
realize that power, or is the title enough?
5. Apple is a global company. How might the power structure within Apple
change to reflect regional differences?
13.1 Focus on Power: The Case of Steve Jobs
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Chapter 13 Power and Politics
13.2 The Basics of Power
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. Learn the meaning of power.
2. Understand how power can have both positive and negative
consequences.
3. Learn about different sources of power.
4. Understand the relationship between dependency and power.
What Is Power?
We’ll look at the aspects and nuances of power in more detail in this chapter, but
simply put, power1 is the ability to influence the behavior of others to get what you
want. Gerald Salancik and Jeffery Pfeffer concur, noting, “Power is simply the
ability to get things done the way one wants them to be done.”Salancik, G., &
Pfeffer, J. (1989). Who gets power. In M. Thushman, C. O’Reily, & D. Nadler (Eds.),
Management of organizations. New York: Harper & Row. If you want a larger budget to
open a new store in a large city and you get the budget increase, you have used your
power to influence the decision.
Power distribution is usually visible within organizations. For example, Salancik
and Pfeffer gathered information from a company with 21 department managers
and asked 10 of those department heads to rank all the managers according to the
influence each person had in the organization. Although ranking 21 managers
might seem like a difficult task, all the managers were immediately able to create
that list. When Salancik and Pfeffer compared the rankings, they found virtually no
disagreement in how the top 5 and bottom 5 managers were ranked. The only slight
differences came from individuals ranking themselves higher than their colleagues
ranked them. The same findings held true for factories, banks, and universities.
Positive and Negative Consequences of Power
1. The ability to influence the
behavior of others to get what
you want.
The fact that we can see and succumb to power means that power has both positive
and negative consequences. On one hand, powerful CEOs can align an entire
organization to move together to achieve goals. Amazing philanthropists such as
Paul Farmer, a doctor who brought hospitals, medicine, and doctors to remote
Haiti, and Greg Mortenson, a mountaineer who founded the Central Asia Institute
and built schools across Pakistan, draw on their own power to organize others
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Chapter 13 Power and Politics
toward lofty goals; they have changed the lives of thousands of individuals in
countries around the world for the better.Kidder, T. (2004). Mountains beyond
mountains: The quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a man who would cure the world. New York:
Random House; Mortenson, G., & Relin, D. O. (2006). Three cups of tea: One man’s
mission to promote peace…One school at a time. New York: Viking. On the other hand,
autocracy can destroy companies and countries alike. The phrase, “Power tends to
corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” was first said by English historian
John Emerich Edward Dalberg, who warned that power was inherently evil and its
holders were not to be trusted. History shows that power can be intoxicating and
can be devastating when abused, as seen in high-profile cases such as those
involving Enron Corporation and government leaders such as the impeached
Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich in 2009. One reason that power can be so easily
abused is because individuals are often quick to conform. To understand this
relationship better, we will examine three famous researchers who studied
conformity in a variety of contexts.
Conformity
Conformity2 refers to people’s tendencies to behave consistently with social norms.
Conformity can refer to small things such as how people tend to face forward in an
elevator. There’s no rule listed in the elevator saying which way to face, yet it is
expected that everyone will face forward. To test this, the next time you’re in an
elevator with strangers, simply stand facing the back of the elevator without saying
anything. You may notice that those around you become uncomfortable.
Conformity can result in engaging in unethical behaviors, because you are led by
someone you admire and respect who has power over you. Guards at Abu Ghraib
said they were just following orders when they tortured prisoners.CNN.com. (2005,
January 15). Graner sentenced to 10 years for abuses. Retrieved November 4, 2008,
from http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/01/15/graner. court.martial/. People
conform because they want to fit in with and please those around them. There is
also a tendency to look to others in ambiguous situations, which can lead to
conformity. The response to “Why did you do that?” being “Because everyone else
was doing it” sums up this tendency.
So, does conformity occur only in rare or extreme circumstances? Actually, this is
not the case. Three classic sets of studies illustrate how important it is to create
checks and balances to help individuals resist the tendency to conform or to abuse
authority. To illustrate this, we will examine findings from the Milgram, Asch, and
Zimbardo studies.
2. People’s tendencies to behave
consistently with social norms.
13.2 The Basics of Power
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Chapter 13 Power and Politics
The Milgram Studies
Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale in the 1960s, set
out to study conformity to authority. His work tested
how far individuals would go in hurting another
individual when told to do so by a researcher. A key
factor in the Milgram study and others that will be
discussed is the use of confederates, or people who seem
to be participants but are actually paid by the
researchers to take on a certain role. Participants
believed that they were engaged in an experiment on
learning. The participant (teacher) would ask a series of
questions to another “participant” (learner). The
teachers were instructed to shock the learners
whenever an incorrect answer was given. The learner
was not a participant at all but actually a confederate
who would pretend to be hurt by the shocks and yell out
in pain when the button was pushed. Starting at 15 volts
of power, the participants were asked to increase the
intensity of the shocks over time. Some expressed
concern when the voltage was at 135 volts, but few
stopped once they were told by the researcher that they
would not personally be held responsible for the
outcome of the experiment and that their help was
needed to complete the experiment. In the end, all the
participants were willing to go up to 300 volts, and a
shocking 65% were willing to administer the maximum
of 450 volts even as they heard screams of pain from the
learner.Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority. New
York: Harper & Row.
Figure 13.2
This is an illustration of the
setup of a Milgram experiment.
The experimenter (E) convinces
the subject (“Teacher” T) to give
what are believed to be painful
electric shocks to another
subject, who is actually an actor
(“Learner” L). Many subjects
continued to give shocks despite
pleas of mercy from the actors.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/
Image:Milgram_Experiment_v2.p
ng.
The Asch Studies
Another researcher, Solomon Asch, found that individuals could be influenced to
say that two lines were the same length when one was clearly shorter than the
other. This effect was established using groups of four or more participants who
were told they were in experiments of visual perception. However, only one person
in the group was actually in the experiment. The rest were confederates, and the
researchers had predetermined whether or not they gave accurate answers. Groups
were shown a focal line and a choice of three other lines of varying length, with one
being the same length as the focal line. Most of the time the confederates would
correctly state which choice matched the focal line, but occasionally they would
give an obviously wrong answer. For example, looking at the following lines, the
confederates might say that choice C matches the length of the focal line. When this
13.2 The Basics of Power
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Chapter 13 Power and Politics
happened, the actual research participant would go along with the wrong answer
37% of the time. When asked why they went along with the group, participants said
they assumed that the rest of the group, for whatever reason, had more information
regarding the correct choice. It only took three other individuals saying the wrong
answer for the participant to routinely agree with the group. However, this effect
was decreased by 75% if just one of the insiders gave the correct answer, even if the
rest of the group gave the incorrect answer. This finding illustrates the power that
even a small dissenting minority can have. Additionally, it holds even if the
dissenting confederate gives a different incorrect answer. As long as one
confederate gave an answer that was different from the majority, participants were
more likely to give the correct answer themselves.Asch, S. E. (1952b). Social
psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall; Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of
independence and conformity. A minority of one against a unanimous majority.
Psychological Monographs, 70(9), Whole No. 416. A meta-analysis of 133 studies using
Asch’s research design revealed two interesting patterns. First, within the United
States, the level of conformity has been decreasing since the 1950s. Second, studies
done in collectivistic countries such as Japan showed more conformity than those
done in more individualistic countries such as Great Britain.Bond, R., & Smith, P. B.
(1996). Culture and conformity: A meta-analysis of studies using Asch’s (1952b,
1956) line judgment task. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 111–137.
The Zimbardo Study
Figure 13.3
Philip Zimbardo, a researcher at Stanford University,
conducted a famous experiment in the 1970s.Zimbardo,
P. G. Stanford prison experiment. Retrieved January 30,
2009, from http://www.prisonexp.org/. While this
experiment would probably not make it past the human
subjects committee of schools today, at the time, he was
Participants were asked one by
authorized to place an ad in the paper that asked for
one to say which of the lines on
male volunteers to help understand prison
the right matched the line on the
focal line on the left. While A is
management. After excluding any volunteers with
an exact match, many
psychological or medical problems or with any history
participants conformed when
of crime or drug abuse, he identified 24 volunteers to
others unanimously chose B or C.
participate in his study. Researchers randomly assigned
18 individuals to the role of prisoner or guard. Those
assigned the role of “prisoners” were surprised when
they were picked up by actual police officers and then
transferred to a prison that had been created in the basement of the Stanford
psychology building. The guards in the experiment were told to keep order but
received no training. Zimbardo was shocked with how quickly the expected roles
emerged. Prisoners began to feel depressed and helpless. Guards began to be
aggressive and abusive. The original experiment was scheduled to last 2 weeks, but
Zimbardo ended it after only 6 days upon seeing how deeply entrenched in their
13.2 The Basics of Power
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Chapter 13 Power and Politics
roles everyone, including himself, had become. Next we will examine the
relationship between dependency and power.
The Relationship Between Dependency and Power
Dependency
Dependency3 is directly related to power. The more that a person or unit is
dependent on you, the more power you have. The strategic contingencies model
provides a good description of how dependency works. According to the model,
dependency is power that a person or unit gains from their ability to handle actual
or potential problems facing the organization.Saunders, C. (1990, January). The
strategic contingencies theory of power: Multiple perspectives. Journal of
Management Studies, 21(1), 1–18. You know how dependent you are on someone
when you answer three key questions that are addressed in the following sections.
Scarcity
In the context of dependency, scarcity4 refers to the uniqueness of a resource. The
more difficult something is to obtain, the more valuable it tends to be. Effective
persuaders exploit this reality by making an opportunity or offer seem more
attractive because it is limited or exclusive. They might convince you to take on a
project because “it’s rare to get a chance to work on a new project like this,” or
“You have to sign on today because if you don’t, I have to offer it to someone else.”
Importance
3. Directly related to power. The
more that a person or unit is
dependent on you, the more
power you have.
4. In the context of dependency,
refers to the uniqueness of a
resource.
5. The value of the resource.
6. One’s ability to find another
option that works as well as
the one offered.
13.2 The Basics of Power
Importance5 refers to the value of the resource. The key question here is “How
important is this?” If the resources or skills you control are vital to the
organization, you will gain some power. The more vital the resources that you
control are, the more power you will have. For example, if Kecia is the only person
who knows how to fill out reimbursement forms, it is important that you are able to
work with her, because getting paid back for business trips and expenses is
important to most of us.
Substitutability
Finally, substitutability6 refers to one’s ability to find another option that works as
well as the one offered. The question around whether something is substitutable is
“How difficult would it be for me to find another way to this?” The harder it is to
find a substitute, the more dependent the person becomes and the more power
someone else has over them. If you are the only person who knows how to make a
piece of equipment work, you will be very powerful in the organization. This is true
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