Politics in Organizations

Competitiveness & Ambition

Problems labelled «political» emerge in any large social body. So they are typically found in firms and government agencies.
Why?

Power-seeking is the source of problematic political activity in any large group that commands wealth. Businesses are intrinsically steeped in power because of their inherent competitiveness and the possibility of failure. Government agencies are steeped in power because of their link to society’s politics.

Organizational life differs from ordinary communal life, because work reveals differential benefits. Relevant factors include:

• Everyone in an organization receives material and intangible rewards.
• Everyone is under pressure to produce certain results.
• Competitiveness and insecurity combine to activate desire for power
• Ambition is usually valued in work-settings.
  

As a result, all of human experience and frailty can manifest at work, and often does. Organizations develop a fertile froth of struggling groups—cliques, cabals, circles, factions—within which ambition, mistakes, humiliation, arrogance, superiority, inferiority, loyalty and solidarity are rife.  This must be handled positively and pro-actively.

Cf. Management Literature

Most experts recognize politics exists but see it in terms of individual agendas or of «self-interest being placed ahead of the organization’s goals». This view is both misleading and wrong. It is a mis-statement of the dynamic duality that pervades any organization. In any case, self-interest must come first (as explained below).

See definitions from the literature with comments.

Firms are Quasi-Communities

Staff form a quasi-community once a firm reaches a certain size and complexity, and politics becomes unavoidable. In small firms ... sub-grouping can be minimal and staff may feel unified, but even here power differentials are liable to be applied.

Staff members (as individuals) have personal goals and social needs that they must gratify at work to some degree to be maximally productive; and there is a variety of distinct sub-groups that must cohere and cooperate to realize organizational goals. In political terms, the sub-groups become factions.
Examples:

• different professions (e.g. engineers, chemists, IT specialists);
• different functional divisions (e.g. production, sales, maintenance, R&D);
• different status (e.g. shop-floor workers, middle managers, top management)

As a result, power struggles develop amongst sub-groups and ambitious individuals i.e. individuals count in organizations while in society, they do not.

Tension Adjustment

The dynamic duality to energize the various Centres changes from social v private to:

Organizational = official, institutional, authoritative, managerial, bureaucratic.
v
Personal = private, professional, emergent, creative, motivated.

The OrganizationalCentre necessarily dominates at CL5 & CL6. However, the PersonalCentre necessarily dominates at CL3, because a person may be dismissed, possibly unfairly or arbitrarily, or the company may collapse.

When a person leaves, attention and energy previously given to CL3_O-formal responsibilities will be of little avail. A person must of necessity fall back on their own resources. If personal strength has been systematically neglected, the situation could become serious and damaging for the individual.

Focus Adjustment

The target of politics in an organization is any decision made by management. So «Management Decisions» replaces Government Solutions as the focus. In political battles, the goal is to ensure that any management choice favours (or at least does not disadvantage) the interests of a particular individual or faction. This goal naturally conflicts with thoughtfully determined choices to meet organizational goals.

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• Continue now to building the framework for organizations.

Originally posted: July 2009; Last updated: 12 June 2014.