Week 5 tasks

Politic and MBO: A Case Study

The Case Study has much to offer in terms of politics and power in organizations. John was handed over a very important project by the governor despite of the fact that he had only a year of experience in the organization. It was mainly his excellent performance over the year that earned him this project. The project required from him to coordinate with agency staff which turned out to be a difficult task, since he was not able to attain their cooperation and also had complains from them of not giving him due respect. All this resulted in reassignment to a much lower in profile project.

It was not only John who was responsible for this outcome but also the agency staff who considered him as an 'inexperienced, naïve and intense young man' while the agency heads were also ineffective in terms of ensuring that the tasks were completed on time. The most responsible for this outcome would though be the manner in which he handled the situation. He was given the authority that required from him to ensure that he get those things done that were required by the governor. When things were not being done according to his demands he started using coercive power which ultimately resulted in resistance from the staff. If he had employed other sources of power such as expert, referent, legitimate or reward power then he might have received compliance and commitment from the other end. He employed tactics such as those of pressurizing and threatening which brought him further resistance.

Now that John has be reassigned to a lower project, he might start rethinking of the areas that he lacked and how approaching things in a different manner might have helped to his cause. The political behavior that was seen between the two parties could have been limited by the some efforts from John's end which might have been reciprocated in the form of results that he wanted from the agency staff. He needs to make it a point that communication is vital for any task to be accomplished and hence he needs to be open for communication instead of being intimidating and insensitive to others, and should be considerate to the problems that the other side might have. Instead of being overly ambitious, he needs to build a team and inculcate the spirit of being part of a team in the people. Introducing clear rules at the start of the project also help in providing a guideline for the future course of action and also help in laying out how any negligence will be dealt with in this regard. Threatening during the course of the project will be taken as offensive and tend to result only in resistance.

If I had been in place of John, effective management of power and organizational politics would have been my key priority for the assurance that the governor's goals are accomplished and that too in an atmosphere that is of ...