31 Ways

Managing power

Posted by admin | general, jobs, management | Posted on August 30th, 2009

Managing interpersonal conflicts is an essential item for managers as part of human resource tasks. Conflicts can be defined as “the parties’ awareness of opposition of goals, values, opinions, or activities.”

Conflict becomes a dynamic process where concerned parties influence each other in a vicious cycle of action and reaction. In the organization, parties often defend and promote their own interest with competitive behavior.
Empirical evidence was found for the fact that the choice of special conflict strategy depended on opponents’ previous behavior. Rubin, in his article Social Conflict, explained competitive patterns by means of the concepts of power and counter power. The dominating party uses its power base to put pressure on the other. Thus the question arises: How do managers use their power in conflicts?

The beginning of the conflict process was identified as early 1926 by Folett. He identified three primary ways for managers deal with conflict: domination, compromise and collaboration. In recent years, six conflict styles have been deduced; direct fighting, indirect fighting, collaborating, negotiating, yielding and avoiding.

Power may be defined as the individual within an organization who operates using authority, influence and strength to obtain his or her desired end. This individual has the capacity to modify another’s position by providing or withholding resources. The more dependent person is in a relationship, the less power that person has in that context.

There are many bases of power. Formal power is based an individuals position in the organization. It is a legitimate power and authority to control and use company resources based on the individual’s position. Formal power may result in a coercive power base which is dependent on the fear of negative results. The use of power in the organization will depend on other factors such as the organizational culture, individuals’ personality and availability of resources.

Role expectation and perception is embedded in the organizational culture. Each person in the organization has an associated role that consists of the expected behavior of the individual in that position. Managers who do not confront dominant subordinates may be seen as weak. Managers who do not conform to the culture may be perceived as unfit for the organization.

The perception of management in these situations may give rise to other conflicts. Perception is a cognitive process as it helps individuals to select, organize, store and interpret stimuli into a meaningful and coherent picture of their surroundings. But since each person gives a different interpretation to stimuli, different individuals “see” the same things in different ways.