Pfeffer J. Managing with Power summary PDF

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Power dynamics class lecture, podcast, and exercise. Prof: Payal Sharma...

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9/20/21, 1:19 PM

PFEFFER J. "Managing with Power"

LES FICHES DE LECTURE de la Chaire D.S.O.

DAVILA Juan Pablo Mastère Génie Industriel 2000-2001

Economie industrielle Enseignant : Yvon PESQUEUX

Jeffrey Pfeffer Managing with Power Harvard Bussines School Press, 1992

Biography : Jeffrey Pfeffer is Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He received his B.S. and M.S. from Carnegie-Mellon University and his Ph.D. in business administration from Stanford. Dr. Pfeffer has served on the business school faculties at the University of Illinois, the University of California at Berkeley, and as a visiting professor at the Harvard Business School. He has directed executive programs and management development programs and has taught executive seminars around the world, in addition to lecturing in management development programs in companies, associations, and universities in the United States. He has spent his career studying people and organizations around the world in an attempt to understand why some companies win in the marketplace while others do not fare as well. He is also a member of many professional organizations, has served on the editorial boards of scholarly journals.

Bibliography : Organizations and Organization Theory, Power in Organizations, Organizational Design, and co-author of The External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependence Perspective, as well as more than eighty articles and book chapters

Postulates : The first part of the book explain the postulates that today most of organizations have, all related to politics in public and private sectors organizations some of the postulates that he describes are: Managers and employees who were stymied by the struggles over power and influence that emerge from interdependence and differences in points of view have moved to a world of smaller, simpler organizations. One of the things that we learn in childhood is that there are right and wrong answers only, wich may be more difficult to unlearn. We spend inordinate amounts of time and effort in the decision-making process rather then implementing them and dealing with their ramifications. A decision by it self changes nothing When we make a decision we cannot possibly know if it is good or bad. We spend more time living with the consequences of our decisions than we do in making them.

Hypothesis : His hypothesis postulates: A power and influence perspectives to the management process. Power is used more frequently under conditions of moderate interdependence. Those who have power typically conserve it for important issues. Power: the most precious resource. The use of interpersonal influence. One of the ways in which we can build alliances and coalitions is by helping people with whom we have ties to obtain positions of powers.

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Development of the book : The author develops his book in 18 chapters all in order to answer the question "What does it mean to manage with power" which is the title of his last chapter. The first 4 chapters are about the definition of power, decision taking, the use of power in organizations, dependence and interdependence related to power, basically is how to decide, implement and accomplish a change, when and where develop and use power and how to asses power distribution in an organization. In his very same words ‘diagnosing power and dependence’.

From chapter 4 to 11 he explains the mainly sources of power, ‘where does power come from?’ how to acquire and keep allies, our position in the communication process of an organization, authority (formal, informal) reputation, and interpersonal influence. He explains his ideas by giving different examples of cases in industry and most of all using terms of social-psychology and organizational-psychology.

The next 4 chapters (12-15) he describes the best practices to consolidate power in an organization. As the use right use of information and information sources, learning of past failures. Also changing structures to consolidate power in order to put our allies in a position of control over resources, information and formal authority. How to gain organizational territory.

Chapter 16 and 17 are focused on the lost of power and how to avoid loosing it. He talks about power shifts and its affectation to persons or person who had the power. How to manage in a changing organization an how to understands its power dynamics. The main idea of chapter 17 is ‘managing political dynamics productively’.

And finally in the last chapter of his book he concludes what is to manage with power, he gives four definitions that complement one to each other and with the precedent chapters.

Summary :

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PFEFFER J. "Managing with Power"

Chapter 1 : Decision and Implementation Accomplishing Innovation and Change To accomplish innovation and change in most of organizations requires more than the ability to solve technical or analytic problems it is that innovations almost invariably threatens the status quo, and consequently, innovation is an inherently political activity. The lack of ability to get things done, to have ideas and to implement them, is widespread in public and private sector organizations. It is, moreover, a problem that seems to be getting worse. It has led to calls for better leadership, and laments about the absence of leadership in many spheres and sectors . It is the author thesis that problems of implementations are, problems in developing political will and expertise—the desire to accomplish something, even against opposition, and the knowledge and skills that make it possible to do so. It is necessary to study power and to learn to use it skillfully, since we cannot otherwise hope to gain individual success in organizations or the success of the organizations themselves. Power in Organizations If we doubt of politics and of large organizations, we may conclude that smaller organizations are a better alternative. There is evidence that the average size of establishments in the United States is decreasing . Managers and employees who were stymied by the struggles over power and influence that emerge from interdependence and differences in points of view have moved to a world of simpler organizations, with less internal interdependence and less internal diversity, which are, as a consequence, less political. "If leaderships involves skill at developing and exercising power and influence as well as the will to do so, then perhaps one of the causes of the so-called leaderships crisis in organizations is just this attempt to sidestep issues of power" Our Ambivalence about Power The ambivalence that we have about power also from lessons we’ve learned in school. One is that life is a matter of individual effort and ability. After all, in school, if you have mastered the intricacies of cost accounting, or calculus, or electrical engineering, and the people sitting on either side of you haven't, their failure will not affect your performance—unless, that is, you had intended to copy from their papers. In a classroom, interdependence is minimized. It is always you versus the material, and as long as you have mastered the material, you have achieved what is expected. Cooperation may even be considered cheating. Another lesson we learn in school, , is that there are right and wrong answers, which may be even more difficult to unlearn. We were taught how to solve problems, and for each problem, that there is always a right answer, or at least one approach that is more correct than another. We think that the right answer is what the professors says it is, or what is hidden in our textbooks. "Life appears as a series of "eureka" problems, socalled because once you are shown the correct approach or answer, it is immediately self-evident that the answer is, in fact, correct". An Alternative Perspective on Decision Making There are three important things to remember about decisions. First, a decision by itself changes nothing : just remember how many times you "decided" to quit smoking to get more exercise, to eat healthier foods, or to lose weight. Such resolutions often fizzle before producing any results. Second, at the moment a decision is made, we cannot possibly know whether it is good or bad. We have to wait for the decision to be implemented to see the results clear. The third is that we spend more time living with the consequences of our decisions than we do in making them. Because decisions by themselves change nothing; and, at the time a decision is made, we cannot know its consequences; and if we spend more time living with our decisions than we do in making them, then it seems evident that the emphasis in much management training and practice has been misplaced. "In this sense, good managers are not only good analytic decision makers, more important, they are skilled in managing the consequences of their decisions". The Management Process: A Power Perspective The process of implementation involves a set of steps: 1. Decide what your goals are, what you are trying to accomplish. 2. Diagnose patterns of dependence and interdependence: what individuals are influential and important in your achieving your goal? 3. What are their points of view likely to be? How will they feel about what you are trying to do? 4. What are their power bases? Which of them is more influential in the decision? 5. What are your bases of power and influence? What bases of influence can you develop to gain more control over the situation? 6. Which of the various strategies and tactics for exercising power seem most appropriate and are likely to be effective, given the situation you confront? 7. Based on the above, choose a course of action to get something done.

Chapter 2 : When Is Power Used? Interdependence Power is used more frequently under conditions of moderate interdependence. It is important to develop power and influence when the people with whom you are interdependent have a different point of view than you, and thus cannot be relied upon to do what you want. Interdependence results from many things, including the way in which tasks are organized. One factor that is critical in affecting the nature and the amount of interdependence is the scarcity of resources. Slack resources reduce interdependence, while scarcity increases it. As an example, https://lirsa.cnam.fr/medias/fichier/pfefferhtml

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consider the case of promotions. If an organization is growing rapidly and there are man promotional opportunities, the competition for promotions will be less intense. Differences in Point of View "The greater the task specialization in the organization, the more like there will be disagreements. This is simply because, when work is divided into different specialties and units, it is more likely that the organization will have people who differences in background and training will cause them to take different views of the situation". Power : An Important Issue Power is a valuable resource, if something is important, it will be sought by many, making it scarce. It is necessary to recognize that importance has both a substantive and a symbolic component. "The appearance of power can actually provide power, and thus these efforts to maintain the symbols of power are significant".

Chapter 3 : Diagnosing Power and Dependence Diagnosing Power and Dependence The tasks required to assess power distribution in an organization are: The relevant sub-units or subdivisions must be identified. Have some indicators of power and apply them to the identified units to assess their relative power ranking. The patterns of dependence and interdependence among them must be considered in order to determine an effective course of action. All these tasks require judgment and experience, as well as knowledge of the particular situation, but there are some general ideas that can help. The best way to identify the meaningful political categories for a given issue is to choose categories that are: 1. As inclusive as possible 2. Internally homogeneous with respect to the issues under study. Identifying the political categories is, in other words, a problem of clustering, in which the criterion is to cluster people together to maximize their homogeneity in opinions and preferences that are relevant to the questions being studied. This involves the exercise of judgment, to discern whether the differences between given sets of people are important enough to justify considering them as separate political groups. Assessing the Power of Subdivisions To assess the relative standing of the power of various departments of an organizations, one might consider the following indicators: Departmental representation in general management positions; what proportion of all top-level managers are from that department. Departmental representation on the board of directors. Salary of the executive in charge of each department. Starting salary offered to people in each department. For positions in common across departments (e.g., secretaries), the salaries earned by people of comparable experience. Is the department locate din the headquarters building? Where in the building is the department located, and the average size of offices for people in the department. Growth in personnel in each department in the recent past. Level of the department's reporting in the formal structure. Representation of the department on important interdepartmental task forces, teams, and committees such as those involved in new product development, capital budgeting, and strategic planning. Rate of promotion for people in the department, compared to that in other units. Reputation for influence in the firm. Allocation of the budget. Diagnosing Patterns of Dependence and Interdependence In order to diagnose interdependence, it is necessary to ask the following questions: 1. Whose cooperation will I need to accomplish what I am attempting: whose support will be necessary in order to get the appropriate decisions made and implemented? 2. Whose opposition could delay or derail what I am trying to do? 3. Who will be affected by what I am trying to accomplish, in either a) their power or status, b) how they are evaluat4d or rewarded, or c) in how they do their job? 4. Who are the friends and allies of the people I have identified as influential? Where Power Comes From What is the "right place" to obtain power? A good place or position is the one that provides you with: 1. control over resources such as budgets, physical facilities, and positions that can be used to cultivate allies and supporters; 2. Control over or extensive access to information—about the organization's activities, about the preferences and judgments of others, about what it going on, and who is doing it. 3. Formal authority. Much of being in the right place comes from being in the right organizational subunit. https://lirsa.cnam.fr/medias/fichier/pfefferhtml

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Chapter 5 : Resources, Allies, and the New Golden Rule What Are Resources ? Resources can be almost anything that is perceived as valuable, from building contracts to press exposure to control over systems and analysis. Control of Resource Allocation and Use Because it is so important to control, and not merely to possess, resources in order to obtain power, there is often a great deal of hue and cry in organizations about the right to exercise discretion over resources. The control of physical space is another resource that can confer great power. Facilities people in corporations often are not powerful in a formal, organization chart sense, but they frequently exercise enormous influence because of their control over large building budgets and the allocation and use of facilities. Power is vested in us by the dependence of others, and that dependence is a function of how much others need what we control, as well as how many alternative sources for that resource there are. "Another strategy for developing power is to ensure that there are no alternative ways of obtaining access to valuable resources we control". Power : The Most Precious Resource The most precious resource in any organization is an incremental resource, not already spoken for, that can be used to solve the organization's current problems. So it is, quite possible to control, or substantially affect, the operations of a much larger entity, as long as one possesses discretionary control over a source of incremental resources. Acquiring and Keeping Allies One of the most important is the significance of finding others with common interests and building long-term relationships with them. "Coalitions survive over time because each element recognizes a commonality of interests. Deals are onetime, one-shot transactions, with no commitment on anyone's part for the future." One of the ways in which we can build alliances and coalitions is by helping people with whom we have ties to obtain positions of powers. Alliances are built not only by putting people in critical positions, but also by doing favors for others whose support what you want and need. The idea here is to capitalize on the norm of reciprocity, which says that we are obligated to future repayment of favors, gifts, invitations, and so forth. What distinguishes the development of allies through reciprocity are the following features: 1. the favors are not necessarily sought or even desired by the individual receiving them; 2. the extent of the obligation is not specified at the time the favors are granted; 1. the gift therefore creates, not a specific expectation (such as a vote in return for money), but a diffuse, generalized obligation. One needs friends and allies to: attend to the many details of implementation, which are often too much for one person. help fend off attacks from rivals for power. get things done and to build coalitions of support, as well as to find and develop resources, are essential activities. Allies and resources are important sources of power, and as such, such not be wasted.

Chapter 6 : Location in the Communication Network Measuring Your Knowledge Power Freeman has described three related conceptualizations of centrality: 1. Betweenness, is a particularly useful indicator of information control; it assesses the extent to which a person falls between pairs of other individuals on the communication paths that link them. 2. Connectedness, simply describes the number of others with whom one has contact, and it is more a measure of communication activity than of one's centrality in the network. 3. Closeness, measures the distance between the focal individual and all other individuals in the communication network, using the shortest communication paths that exist between them. Becoming Central in a Communication Network There are times when we can choose where we sit, where we work, and what types of projects we seek out or avoid. The effects of such choices on communication centrality, and consequently, on power and influence need to be considered. There are also things that we can do on our own to increase our access to influential people in the web of social relationships that constitutes an organization. Working to achieve centrality is particularly important for people or groups who would otherwise have little power. Various forms of https://lirsa.cnam.fr/medias/fichier/pfefferhtml

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discrimination against women, for instance, have been extensively documented. This means that women need to be eve...