Organizational behaviour Power Distribution in an Organization

Questions: Q 1. Why John could not be able to grab his leaders attention instead of giving the best effort towards his work in terms of power in organizational behaviour? Q 2. How leaders power is related to performance of their fellow employees? Answers: Organizational behaviour is referred to the study of the means through which team members interact within a group, for organizational purposes. Efficient organizational behaviour helps to create more efficient business organizations. The key approach of organizational behaviour is to implement a scientific approach to the management of workforce. Organizational behaviour is a broad topic, which includes several domains including leadership, power distribution, team communication as well as how efficiently an organizational change is being managed by the team leaders as well as the team members and how convincing the change is for meeting the organizational purposes (Robbins and Judge 2012). In this case study, a case related to one of the organizational behaviour context will be demonstrated and analyzed. In this case study, the key focus is the power distribution in an organization. Distribution and utilization of power in the organization is crucial for avoiding any kinds of operational or management issue as well as to meet the organizational goals through motivating employees at each and every stages of their work. Power builds a dynamic relationship within the organization and the employees working for the organization and establishes an association between the leader and his follower through positive communication, cooperation and commitment. James was an efficient software engineer, having 1 year experience in his previous company. James is about to join his new company ABC Pvt. Ltd., which he have dreamed a lot to join, as he heard a lot about the organizations goodwill, employee satisfaction and operational efficiency. Thus, he was excited to join the company. Upon his joining, he was introduced with the senior management, his co-workers, his team mates as well as to a road map of companys future growth with respect to its past performance.All the team members gave him a warm welcome. However, he was assigned with a challenging task at his first assignment. His team members helped him in dealing with the task properly. James was happy to be in that team as he was aware of his team leaders efficiency in their field. His team leader was rated as the best professional expert in the industry as he was able to mitigate every detailed issues rose during every assignment, both challenging and easy with a great efficiency. Wit h time, James started to be familiar with the organizational environment. He gave his best effort to meet his professional goal and to accustom with the organizational culture. He got some good colleagues, who helped him at every difficulty he went through his working days. However, it was significantly disaperpointing for James that after completing his probation period with efficient work, it was difficult for James to grab his team leaders attention towards him. Thus, he was becoming demotivated towards his work. James experienced and began to understand the power distribution and use in the workplace and how well people at higher positions at workplace can use it positively as well as negatively to fulfil either their own professional goal or to achieve the overall organizational goal. James learnt that as a result of organizational structures, power in workplace exists, which attributes to the organization and peoples values and behaviour for their leader or workers in the orga nization. James also understood that there are different types of professional relationships, with different characteristics, which shapes the fate of the relationship in the professional context. For instance, in manager to employee relationship, the use of power is extremely critical as well as crucial as it is the communication and interaction between the two drives the smoother work flow. After one year, James was unable to grab attention of his leader to his work and get appreciation or motivation for his work. James attempted to discuss the issue with his colleagues to gain an insight of power and control running through the organization. There are two forms of power including social and personal power, existing the organizational context. Legitimate power from the managers end, the organizational structure influences its application, while defining the role and responsibilities of employees towards it. On the other hand, leaders ability to manage rewarding system defines reward power and expert power is dependent upon the knowledge and expertise of the leader (Nahavandi et al. 2013). These are categorized as personal power. Finally, the coercive power defines the ability of the leaders to manage the team or individual upon witnessing a mistake made by them. Based on the power and other organizational attributes, some form of punishments are provided like payment cut, compensation, suspension or even termination in case of severe issue. These powers are used on the basis of employees behav iour and action; those are violating the organizational rules and culture. Besides his hard work, James wonders, why he never get recognition from his seniors and leader. He heard about his teams good performance from others, but he was unable to understand whether the power is appropriately used and influenced employees and organizational culture. In this context, his colleagues explained that power is the ability exists in a professional relationship both in the conscious and subconscious state. There are different forms of perceiving and feeling the presence of power through Manifest, Latent and Invisible power. In case of latent power, power is in a state of inaction, where the fear or complex resists the fellow worker to show superior power. The Manifest power is the visible attempts by the leader to manage the organization or team. On the other hand, the invisible power is unseen but can significantly felt (Robbins and Judge 2012). From the discussion, James understood to some extent that why he is not being recognized by the senior management. James also understood that it is hard to define a single form of power used and implemented by every people at higher positions. As a dynamic team, there were different kinds of people in Jamess team, who works towards a common goal, whereas his leaders role is also multidimensional, which seeks application of different forms of power to complete the task of the overall team. It is difficult to explain the employees roles in terms of power. Thus, James needs to get more understanding regarding the power distribution and need to stick to his professional goals, while representing his abilities and skills towards the organizational operations, especially in front of his seniors, to be rewarded and recognized. 1. The way power is being used by the leaders or others, is embedded in the organizational culture. It is an attribute of the organizational behaviour of the people having organizational power. Upon joining ABC Pvt. Ltd. James attempted to explore his skills and capabilities to meet his professional standards and achieved his objectives also, but unable to be recognized by his seniors. However, unconsciously, he was practicing the latent power, promoted by the expert power, which was being practiced by his leader. This power practice held James back to represent his expertise to the leader, for which he was not noticed by his leader. He knew that his leader had the best expertise in the industry and he did not attempted to violate the situation by showing his expertise, as he was scared to lose his job. On the other hand, the expert power of his leader dominated Jamess performance (DuBrin 2013). 2. Power is being use in the organizational context to control the performance as well as to allocate resources for maximized performance by the employees. For exploring different roles and responsibilities, leaders attempt to use different forms of power, appropriate for the situation. Employees performance is managed by different forms of power, which relates the leaders use of power and employees performance. For instance, reward power is used by the leaders to assess the ability of employee to be rewarded for his performance. In contrast, coercive power is being used by the leaders, while they need to deal with some negative organizational behaviour or performance that is hampering the organizational performance by an employee, which promote them to use negative action including punishments and penalties. On the other hand, as a guide, the leader uses expert power to promote employees performance through exploring his own expertise, which influences employees to achieve their pro fessional goals (Clegg 2013). References Clegg, S., 2013.The Theory of Power and Organization (RLE: Organizations). Routledge. DuBrin, A.J., 2013.Fundamentals of organizational behavior: An applied perspective. Elsevier. Nahavandi, A., Denhardt, R.B., Denhardt, J.V. and Aristigueta, M.P., 2013.Organizational behavior. SAGE Publications. Robbins, S.P. and Judge, T., 2012.Essentials of organizational behavior. Essex: Pearson.