1. Influence of Politics and Power to Wal-Mart’s Organizational culture
An organizational behaviors and values that contribute to the organization’s social and physocological environment uniqueness define the organization’s culture. Wal-Mart’s culture can be said to be hierarchical and functional based. The organization’s chain of command and authority is vertical which presents the hierarchical structure. With regard to its function-based definition, there are groups in the organization that fulfil certain functions such as the human resource department main role is the organization has enough and well-trained employees. It’s responsible for anything that concerns Wal-Mart’s employees. Other departments include the information technology department and marketing departments. Each of these departments has its unique roles in the organization.
Power and politics have a great impact on an organization’s culture. Power can be said to be the ability to influence the behaviors of others or the ability to attract others. Without power, it’s impossible to influence others to do certain roles. Organizational politics refer to the employee's self-interest in the organization. This could be the organization’s management employees or the junior employees. In Wal-Mart, authority and decision making is hierarchical, to mean that decisions are made at the top management and cascaded downwards to the employees through the line managers and the supervisors. At every level of management, the office holders are given certain levels of power of control over a certain level of employees. This helps in effective monitoring and control of employee behaviors and actions in the organization.
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Sources of power in Wal-Mart are structural and situational. These reflect the division of labor that is exercised in Wal-Mart ("POWER AND POLITICAL BEHAVIOR", n.d.). As a result of the division of labor, Wal-Mart is able to undertake its operations in an organized manner by ensuring that the employees are aligned with their areas of expertise. Wal-Mart’s culture success can be attributed by the ability to assign responsibilities to specific individuals. This creates a responsibility in each of the employees from the top management to the junior employees.
2. Sources of Power
Sources of power can be grouped into two, interpersonal sources and structural and situational sources ("POWER AND POLITICAL BEHAVIOR", n.d.).
Interpersonal Sources of Power
Issues of power in an organization mainly focus on the interrelationships between the employees. There are several sources of power with regard to an organization in this perspective:
a) Reward Power
This type of power refers to an individual’s ability to influence the behaviors of others by rewarding them for their desirable behaviors ("POWER AND POLITICAL BEHAVIOR", n.d.). For example, subordinates may value rewards offered by managers such as money, time off, promotions among others, and thus may comply with the requests and orders of the managers. Managers and supervisors in the department can, therefore, use rewards to influence the way subordinates behave or react to directives given. This will entice the employees to improve their performance with an expectation of getting a reward.
b) Coercive Power
This refers to the ability to influence the behaviors of others by punishing their undesirable behaviors ("POWER AND POLITICAL BEHAVIOR", n.d.). Subordinates may choose to comply with managerial directives given to them in order to avoid punishment for non-compliance. Some punishments could be as punitive as hiring an employee. If used correctly, the department manager has the ability to ensure that subordinates actions are aligned with improving the department’s performance.
c) Expert Power
This refers to an individual’s ability to influence the behavior of others due to his or her recognized competencies or specialized knowledge ("POWER AND POLITICAL BEHAVIOR", n.d.). Managers with certain levels of expertise can use this expertise to provide guidance to the subordinates. In most instances, expert power has a narrow scope. For expert power to be recognized, expertise has to be applied and demonstrated repetitively. Managers in the department may use their expertise to acquire the power to influence of others.
Structural Sources of Power
These sources reflect on the division of labor and positions across different teams and departments. These are:
a) Knowledge as Power
Organizations use knowledge to produce goods and services ("POWER AND POLITICAL BEHAVIOR", n.d.). In this concept, individuals possessing crucial knowledge that leads to the attainment of the organization’s goals are said to possess power. Managers in the department need to acquire knowledge regarding certain crucial matters in order to effectively influence other subordinates in the department.
b) Resources as Power
An organization’s production depends on its available resources. In this concept, individuals that can provide the necessary resources for production have power in the organization ("POWER AND POLITICAL BEHAVIOR", n.d.). By identifying the most important resources and acquiring them, managers and supervisors will be able to influence the actions of the subordinates in improving their performance.
c) Decision Making as Power
Decision making in an organization is sequential and involves different groups of individuals at different levels and departments in the organization ("POWER AND POLITICAL BEHAVIOR", n.d.). In this concept, individuals acquire the power to the extent that they can affect the process of the decision-making process. The manager can use this position to make decisions the expected level of performance from subordinates in this department. This could be in the form of targets cascaded to the employees.
3. Leadership Behavior and Culture
Power can be used effectively to the benefit of the organization or abused which could be detrimental to the organization ("The Importance of Leadership Skills to Organizational Success", 2018). The organization’s performance is pegged on how well those assigned managerial and supervisory powers apply the powers given to them ("The Importance of Leadership Skills to Organizational Success", 2018). Organizational politics have a big impact on the organizational culture. As such, power and politics can be beneficial to improving the leadership behavior and organizational culture in the following ways:
• Understanding power helps to establish an individual’s capacity to influence others’ behaviors ("POWER AND POLITICAL BEHAVIOR", n.d). Having power over others does not guarantee that this power will lead to effective influence over others. In most cases, where power is used to coerce others to perform certain duties, the results of this are resistance and underperformance by the subordinates. Leaders, therefore, need to understand how well the subordinates perform. For example, leaders need to demonstrate a certain level of expertise in their area for the subordinates to effectively comply with their directives. Acquiring further knowledge gives the leader additional power over the subordinates.
• An organization culture is highly dependent on the individuals that the organization gives power and control. For an organization to have an admirable organization culture, it needs to ensure that individuals offered managerial and supervisory positions possess the ability to exercise their power to the benefit of the organization ("The Importance of Leadership Skills to Organizational Success", 2018). As such, the organization needs to award power to individuals based on their expertise and knowledge of their respective positions that they are offered. This helps establish a division of labor and power based on an individual’s abilities.
• Understanding an organization’s political environment requires the analysis of power, coalitions and bargaining. Power guides organizational politics. Groups and individuals in an organized form coalitions which create conflicts within the organization. By understanding how power can be used effectively to guide bargain with these conflicting groups, the organization is able to solve internal issues much better and amicably ("The Importance of Leadership Skills to Organizational Success", 2018)..
4. Leadership Influence
Leadership behavior influences how the subordinates in the organization behave. The alignment of the actions of the leaders to the organization’s vision and goals is important as it guides the actions of the employees working below them ("The Importance of Leadership Skills to Organizational Success", 2018).. Leadership behavior is complex since it involves making decisions based on competing and contradicting phenomena in the organization. Leadership complexity is therefore important in addressing the competing demands and performing the roles expected of the leaders. Leadership complexity is important due to the following reasons:
• Organizations in the current world are faced by highly unpredictable and unsteady atmosphere. This requires the organizations to be highly interactive, dynamic and to possess the ability to understand the highly unpredictable atmosphere. This will help the organization to adapt and perform optimally as decisions can be made effectively.
• Leadership behavior has an impact on how employees behave or react to directives given to them by their leaders. Leaders’ behavior needs to align their behaviors with the organization’s goals and visions ("The Importance of Leadership Skills to Organizational Success", 2018).. Their actions act as guides for the employees to perform their duties with the best interests of the organization.
• The complexity of leadership behavior helps to identify employee capabilities and expertise in performing their duties. Leadership complexity is an essential tool in understanding all the dynamics that an organization is exposed to. As such, leaders are able to assign responsibilities and duties based on the employee's capabilities for efficient utilization of the organization’s resources.
• Leadership behavior helps to build the organization’s culture ("The Importance of Leadership Skills to Organizational Success", 2018). Organizations culture refers to its values and behaviors. This means that the organizations culture is built on how the leaders exercise their authority in the workplace.
References
POWER AND POLITICAL BEHAVIOR. Retrieved from http://swlearning.com/management/hellriegel/ob10e/isc/web_chapters/00-032C09.pdf
The Importance of Leadership Skills to Organizational Success. (2018). Retrieved from https://catalyst.nejm.org/importance-leadership-skills-organizational-success/
