What Goes Wrong
It's Impersonal yet Personal
Each is a method to get another to act in a particular fashion in accord with a specific rationale. It therefore depends on judgements about situations, practicality and receptivity: i.e. the method must be operated by a person.
For (the organization):
- Control should be oriented to duties and activities—not to gratify extraneous personal impulses or to micro-manage delegated tasks.
- involves ensuring employees see the rationale and can act decisively in their own right.
For (the person):
- Influencing should be about involving other employees to get things done properly.
- provides organizational legitimacy for the exercise of personal influence for work purposes.
How it Goes Wrong
Things go terribly wrong when control is diffusely targeted to persons rather than focused on rationales, duties, activities or situations. Gratification may then be derived more from using power and feeling in control than from producing results. Degeneration of influence and control is aggravated if there is intense pressure for achievement and inadequate resources, human or financial.
The danger is greatest with using a method like to - or to -. Sometimes it seems that the easiest way to get the necessary credibility is to become threatening, even abusive—and then carry out the threat (e.g. dismissal, removal of a bonus, a disliked posting). Politicians, being further away, often resort to the pendant of Petronius ploy.
Power-centredness
The desire to control others in personal interactions is the defining attribute of primarily power-centred individuals. The difficulty for the more enlightened staff in organizations is:
- there are plenty of power-centred people in organizations,
- power-centred people actively seek status and leadership and so get into such posts,
- power-centredness cannot be satiated,
- members of cabals and cliques nourish and warily support each other,
- dominating-controlling behaviours are often rewarded even if …
- given cash-flow and profits, a blind eye is often turned to
Moderation & Prudence
Power-centred principles, handled sensibly, are a valuable component of human interaction and personal existence and do not have to cause harm to oneself, or others, or wider society. But power-centredness as a philosophy of management can and does cause harm regularly.
So:You are either part of the problem!
i.e. you have to manage the internal temptations of power: do so!
Or: You are part of the solution!
i.e. you are ready to be firm but polite when power-centredness threatens to become anti-social and parasitic: do so!
- Further understanding of the abuse of power requires us to look at the relation between authority and the organization's hierarchy.
- Control and influence are insufficient in themselves without consideration of the purposes to which they are put: delivering results. That demands an additional means i.e. triadic structures.
Originally posted: 20-Oct-2011; last updated 16-Nov-2012