POWER AND POLITICS

Power and Politics in Organisations

Power and Politics in Organisations

The Historical References in the Study of Power in Organisations

In the field of Organisations, the issue of power has three specific references. The first would be its anchorage in the fruitful line of research on the leadership group. The second arises from the interest that originates from Organisational culture and Japanese management practices. These are traceable in the background in the West. They are also present in the new human relations school in the fifties and sixties, and Tavistock socio-technical movement. In the actual, the theoretical model that seems to have a greater degree of acceptance is the strategic contingency. In dealing, therefore, the issue of power in Organisations tends to remit to the three basic units that constitute the matrix of emergency.

Group Leadership

In a first approximation, we can understand that leadership is a psychosocial process dynamic and permanent reconstruction, determined for individual variables, group and context from which it is generated potential influence may be enforced through the dynamics of events by different physical agents. Therefore, the leadership does not can be uniquely identified with the leader, because that depends on the responses from employees. It is a process that involves both the direction as maintaining the group's activity. In fact, the basic functions of leadership: definition of the situation, planning, action and control could hardly be effective without the cooperation of members at whom such functions. Consequently, the process of leadership cannot be understood from the leader's behaviour and activities alone, but looking at the system of relations established in this process between leader and employees, influenced both by the situation and cultural patterns of the context in which this process develops. The leadership, therefore, can be determined by the requirements of the task, the expectations, perceptions and demands of employees or members to constitute the group, the situation in which this process develops leadership and the cultural context in which organisations apply. Within psychology, there is, therefore, a profound shift in consideration by the leadership to move to highlight the distinctive features of the personality of the leader, which crystallizes in the great man theory of Galton, to put full attention on the powers that members of the group or give the leading contributors. Between the two theories will develop a number of approaches, although very briefly, we now outline (Fairholm, 2009, pp. 111).

For about four decades, the approach arises if- situation, which would displace the theory of features. This considers that the leadership qualities are not universal. Such features will be appropriate to adjust to the task and interpersonal concrete context can come through. This change was the result of research, which suggests to the behaviour of the leader and co-orientation and behavioural variables to the situation. Situationist orientation, which become the core of the prevailing interest, in the study of leadership.

However, along with the perception and behaviour relationship between leader and followers, which has become also, in one of the systems ...