THE MAIN PURPOSE OF A LABOR UNION / TUTORIALOUTLET DOT COM THE MAIN PURPOSE OF A LABOR UNION / TUTORIALOUTLET | Page 13

Organizations are not just political entities. All of the components
listed
here are both important and essential. But for our purposes today, I
would like
to focus on the political subsystem and its implications for change.
Much of
what we do as human resource professionals involves change. Every
time there's a
reorganization, or a change in the succession plan, or a modification
of the
performance appraisal system, or a change in personnel policies, or
the incentive compensation plan, or whatever we attempt to change,
the political subsystem becomes active. Vested interests are almost
always at stake and the distribution of power challenged.
There has been an increasing interest in organization power and
politics
over the past five years. Jeff Pfeffer (1981), for example, believes that
power
exists in organizations to resolved the conflict which arises from
interdependence and from differing interests and needs. Henry
Mintzberg (1982) sees political
behavior as both informal and illegitimate, and which arises when the
formal
organization is not working well. Noel Tichy (1983) outlines a
number of political strategies for change. I would like to define power
very simply as "—the
ability or capacity to influence organizational activities or outcomes,
or to get
one's own way." It's your ability, my ability, the manager's
ability to influence
outcomes or to get what we want from the organization. Where does
power
come from? I believe that it's important to understand what the
sources of
power are in an organization. It will help us in our analysis of how we
go about
implementing change and how we go about doing our jobs. Most