Introduction
Companies are made up of both material and human resources. Human resources have the responsibility of converting the material resources into consumable or finished products. When the human resources are attempting to convert or transform the different material resources into consumable products, various decisions have to be made. Some of the decisions include the kind or type of product that will be made, material resources that will be combined to produce the desired product, the kind of machines to be utilized to achieve production effectiveness, the sources of funding, and many other choices. All the decisions that are made involve some form of power or politics with the assistance of a group or a team. Therefore, the impact of politics, power, groups, and teams is essential to the existence of corporates. The essay will seek to analyze the effect of power, politics, teamwork, and group on organizational culture in XYZ.
All corporates are organized bodies of some systems or people. Furthermore, the survival of all organization is based on political acts and the implementation of the decisions by a team or group. Within time, how the organization is influenced and conducts its activities becomes its culture. The structure of an organization is often influenced by conscious political decisions that are made by certain interest groups and actors. Some of the main groups include coalitions, work groups, interest groups. Work groups are often described in the organizational hierarchy and departments (Johnson, 2001, p.45). Interest groups involve a group of actors brought together by common fate and goals and are aware of their interdependence. On the other hand, a coalition refers to the assembly of certain interest groups who are working towards a certain goal and work against other interest groups.
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Work Groups and Teams
They are often composed of a minimum of two individuals, are involved in the organizational context, perform organizational related tasks, manage and maintain boundaries, share common goals, exhibit task interdependency, and interact socially. Teamwork often holds a crucial position in all corporate. Group and team work among employees among colleagues is as significant as collaboration within the members of any sporting team. Despite the fact that teamwork has immense advantages in the organization XYZ, the senior management should provide adequate oversight to encourage a team culture. Teams or groups where the members are disunited may quickly disintegrate into working units that are ineffective. Organizational leaders should be quick to recognize disunity or discord and make the necessary rearrangements. Moreover, the senior management should realize that team or group work des not relieve them of their responsibilities but allows them to have a better implementation of efforts through common effort (Kouzes and Posner, 2002).
According to various studies, employees who are good team players and work well together tend to have better communication skills (Haddock, 2005, p. 13). When employees work in a group or team, they tend to realize the major and minor variations in communication exhibited by other colleagues. Team members who are close can easily pick up nonverbal cues or subtle inflections that would have gone unnoticed. Enhanced communication within an organization has a positive effect on the overall organization performance. Organizations where employees are lone rangers often discover a decreased efficiency in comparison to companies where teamwork is highly valued. In individualistic companies, certain people focus on attaining the best resources such as parking spaces, office supplies, and talented employees and they may even block other colleagues from achieving such benefits. On the other hand, in a team oriented organization, everyone cooperates to enhance the overall objective at the expense of their own.
Group and teamwork are essential in eliminating redundancy. When colleagues work in groups, they easily understand each other’s responsibilities (Johnson, 2001, p.12). Furthermore, when one of the members is sick or unavailable, the other team members can easily absorb the undone work. A member can be absent if they get a transfer, get another job elsewhere, promotion, vacation, or gets sick. It also assists in collection and analysis of information regarding various responsibilities. Teamwork is important in cost savings because it minimizes the need for expensive leadership structures. In a team oriented company, the members can easily manage and lead themselves, and a single manager can more easily deal with a group of team leaders instead of all employees. Member activities and interaction are essential to the failure or success of the team. Since team leaders often require fewer salaries than organizational leaders, the team structure can easily minimize costs in the organization, especially on wages.
Group and teamwork lead to higher quality outcomes that make efficient use of the available resources and offer richer ideas in company XYZ. The company can easily attain efficiency because the combined effort of individuals can accomplish better tasks than individual effort (Schein, 2004, p. 226). Assignments can be more easily achieved in a team because it utilizes the effort of many contributors and can spend minimized time to complete tasks. Teams bring more thoughtful ideas because all individuals who work on the responsibilities comes with additional knowledge and different information that often leads to better solutions and different approaches that would not have been identified. There should be adequate training, explanation, an implementation of teamwork to achieve efficient working teams and groups at XYZ.
It also offers a better context for individuals. The social and economic attributes of teamwork offer superior work experience for the members. It also offers mutual support because they can depend on other members with the shared goals and receive encouragement and help as they carry out their responsibilities. The shared assistance often encourages the team members to reach targets that would have been more challenging to achieve on their own. Group work provides a greater sense of accomplishment. When group members collaborate and receive collective responsibility for the common outcome, they feel more accomplished if they achieved a goal that would have been more difficult to achieve if they were alone. The overall value that is provided by teamwork is dependent on the total efficiency of the group effort. All in all, the fundamental advantage of group and team work is because it allows the company or organization to achieve goals that an individual who was a lone wolf would not achieve. Despite the fact that achieving the set objectives is dependent on teamwork, the benefits extend to the individual by allowing the employees to value the value of other individuals outside the office.
Power and Politics
Power can be explained as the ability to mobilize and employ force, information, and energy t achieve a certain objective. It gives an individual or a group of persons the ability to change the probabilities and behaviors of other people towards certain stimuli. Power is utilized to attain certain objectives. Proper utilization of power results to the achievement of desired objectives and goals. However, if used inappropriately, it leads to major defects in the organizational system. Improper use of power is quite pronounced in the senior management because it has a top down effect on the Corporation (Kleiner, 2002, p.89). Furthermore, when the individual attempts to utilize power they do not possess, has detrimental effects. Some improper decisions by the senior management can be reversed due to public pressure, labor relations, arbitrators, board decisions, and courts. Therefore, the effective and judicious use of power by managers is quite crucial to all senior and middle-level management (Gunn, 2004, p.3).
Bases of power allow certain individuals to manipulate the behaviors of others. The bases of power include information, coercion, reference, expertise, legitimacy, and rewards. The bases of power result to three types of power: normative, coercive, and remunerative. Normative power is achieved through the control of certain symbolic rewards. Coercive power emanates from the ability to utilize the threat of a physical sanction while remunerative power originates from the control of various material rewards and resources. The power in an organization has various sources such as opportunity, structural position, expertise or personal characteristics. There should be a proper balance between power (ability) and authority (right) in every organization otherwise it may result in an unstable organization or conflict. In some situations, the disequilibrium may lead to the collapse of the organization. For organizational stability, there should be a workable authority and legitimate power at all levels (Kramer, 2003, p. 65).
Politics, on the other hand, is basically the struggle and attainment of positions of influence and power that allows them to make fundamental decisions regarding the lives of various citizens within the country. Therefore, politics can be implemented by all people in organizations and governments with an aim for consensus, power, resolution, influence, reconciliation, conflict, and bargaining. Organizational politics involve various behaviors that take a certain position against or for regarding certain decisions within the organization. Organizational politics often focus on individual or group objectives and may also involve behaviors that may be detrimental to the firm. It may create ambivalent responses because people may have either positive or negative perception based on their attitude towards the groups. In most situations, individuals who are successful in organizational politics are often viewed positively (Johnson, 2001, p.12).
Some of the most common organizational politics revolve around transfers, interdepartmental coordination, promotions, and delegations of authority. The cause of concern is when a certain individual who is less qualified for a position is promoted because of favoritism. Some other politicized situations are during performance evaluations where the competitors are evaluated negatively, and power struggles between subordinates and supervisors, and the different work unions. It is essential to realize that organizational politics are more important and prevalent as an individual advances upwards in the organizational hierarchy (Collins, 2001, p.136). Some of the important decisions in the senior management are often influenced politically. For instance, the location of a new company headquarters may be affected by the ambitions of top politicians regarding how it would affect their political standing. Furthermore, a certain company project or CSR may be conducted in certain areas due to the influence of various politicians. The main characteristics of good politicians in an organization are intelligence, sensitivity, aggressiveness, articulate, and ambitiousness.
Some of the influential politicians in the organization XYZ often ensure various decisions support their goals. They should often disguise their true objectives as long as possible so that they are not seen as excessively eager. They should always focus on the competitors' weakness and ensure that they are publicized especially when an assembled coalition has distinct weaknesses. Furthermore, they should establish alliances with subordinates, superiors, and peers, especially in major decisions. When selecting a team, it should be made up of loyal, competent, dependable and reliable subordinates. The politician should focus on their strengths while striving to improve their weaknesses. Furthermore, the politician should focus on ensuring that they should not form enmity with colleagues and should focus on explaining a stand on various issues instead of infighting. Furthermore, the individual should be strategic and know when to support the aggressive efforts of a colleague and when to take the lead. Moreover, the communications with the adversary should always be open.
Organizational Culture
The effect of power, politics, team and group work on organizational culture are quite influential and are often long lasting. The organizational politics in XYZ are rarely discussed in the management planning or training sessions. Nevertheless, power is fundamental in all influential attempts and evaluating and understanding it allows all leaders to effectively utilize it (McClelland and Burnham, 2003, p. 125). The senior management at XYZ should focus on building a more effective culture by having specific objectives, being goal oriented and ensuring that individuals focus on concerted and coordinated effort that can achieve greater productivity in comparison to individual effort. The leaders at XYZ have drawn on various bases and sources of power to influence various activities and decisions in the company. The company has mainly focused on reference and expert power. Expert power focuses on the certification, knowledge, education, and skills of their employees while reference power focuses on the admiration (role models) of the various individual in XYZ.
The culture of XYZ is made up of shared assumptions, beliefs, and values that were developed after years of existence. Within time, how the organization is influenced and conducts its activities becomes its culture. Some activities and values were frequently enshrined into company activities that they became part of the culture for instance teamwork. The company leadership has tremendous power in developing, orienting, and continuing the culture at XYZ (Kleiner, 2002, p.89). The impact of positive power has influenced the company to have distinct assumptions, beliefs, and values from other companies in the industry. The senior should be aware that staff is cautious of the influence of power and their relationship with individuals in power.
The company has two main power principles. The first is belief where most employees at XYZ believe they are often being supervised. The power principle is acquired during the employee compact and supervisor-employee relationship. The second is fear which is often coercive and can be manipulated by the relevant supervisors. It is where the employee space is strategically planned or used. The employee space is often planned in a way that it produces some unbalanced flow of information which is a two way. The company supervisor usually decides the amount of information, content, and knowledge. Nevertheless, the two power principle has not been extreme at XYZ. However, if the two power principles were extreme, it would have encouraged compliance to rules and regulations at the expense staff retention and high productivity (Gunn, 2004, p.3). Most management trainees are often driven by the desire for power. It is their key motivation as they aim for various executive activities. Positive power in the company has allowed the company to thrive despite the stiff competition. It is crucial for the senior management to enhance the organizational structure so that it can be more inclusive to employees.
Teamwork has had an impact on organizational culture because the members are usually committed to the overall success and promotion at XYZ. The commitment within the team often results in team development where a team has enough power to conduct its responsibilities and meet the annual objectives and targets (McClelland and Burnham, 2003, p. 126). It is often an emotional and mental preoccupation that motivates the different employees to assist each other to act responsibly and achieve group objectives. It has also increased working creativity and job satisfaction at XYZ. Attention and focus to the efficiency of the working groups need teamwork spirit so that all members participate in all team activities. Member activities and interaction are essential to the failure or success of the team. Teamwork was part of the organizational culture at XYZ, and it influenced the management to have working groups that would enhance employee participation and productivity. Teamwork and working groups are a prerequisite for the success of XYZ in the increasingly competitive industry.
Power is a leadership aspect affect the leaders and employees who wield its influence and subordinates who are associated with the powerful individuals at XYZ. All leaders should be aware of power temptations and how it influences their leadership aspects and the people or employees who fall under their influence (Kramer, 2003, p. 65). If used properly, it is the most effective tool in the creation and maintenance of a productive culture. Positive power motivates while empowering the employees to enhance the greatness of XYZ. Furthermore, it minimizes the occurrence of negative politics within the offices. Institutionalizing of teamwork within XYZ will enhance the teamwork culture through the working groups. There should be adequate training, explanation, an implementation of teamwork to achieve efficient working teams and groups at XYZ. Studies conducted indicate that companies where teamwork culture is inbuilt, the employees are often more committed and have job satisfaction.
Conclusion
The essay analyzes the effect of power, politics, teamwork, and group on organizational culture in XYZ. Work groups and teams are often composed of a minimum of two individuals, are involved in the organizational context, perform organizational related tasks, manage and maintain boundaries, share common goals, exhibit task interdependency, and interact socially. Power can mobilize and employ force, information, and energy to achieve a certain objective while giving an individual or a group of persons the ability to change the probabilities and behaviors of other people towards certain stimuli. Politics explains the struggle and attainment of positions of influence and power that allows them to make fundamental decisions regarding the lives of various citizens within the country. Organizational politics involve various behaviors that take a certain position against or for regarding certain decisions within the organization (Ready and Conger, 2003). Therefore, the impact of politics, power, groups, and teams is essential to the existence of corporates. The company leadership at XYZ has a responsibility in developing, orienting, and continuing the culture. The impact of positive power has influenced the company to have distinct assumptions, beliefs, and values from other companies in the industry.
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