The Influence Of Organizational Power

The beauty that exists with power is that everyone has experienced it, everyone has been exposed to it and that everyone has a fair understanding of it (Shafritz, 2015). The realisation of power emerges as early as childhood when discovering that our teachers and parents may have instructed us not to do something if it was not permitted, by firmly saying “don’t do that!” Power is inherent in all arenas of life from family to the workplace to our relationships. We start to learn and become more exposed to power as soon as we attend school, with a certain structure in place that assures some line of authority. As university students, we should all by now have a reasonably decent gist on the basic elements of organisational power as it has become …show more content…
Influence of power can be well exemplified when looking through classical, modern and organizational environment lenses where organizations are assumed to fulfil the desired goals that they set to achieve. This view constructs the idea that organizations are deemed to be ‘rational institutions’. The organizational goals would be set by individuals in a position of formal authority. With these thought disciplines, the critical questions revolving organisational theory would be how to effectively design and sustain an organization so they can achieve their declared purposes to the best of their ability. However, participants and further employees associated with an organization are challenged by having their personal preferences restrained by a formulation of formal rules and social norms of a rational environment (Wolfinger, 1960). For example, if an employee was directed to perform an organizational task with a few external constraints, the individual itself will be likely to discover intrinsic satisfaction when accomplishing the certain task. In my experience, I feel as though being less constrained is evident through participating in sport activities, as the whole social environment of a sports team focuses more on the ‘having fun’ aspect rather than just ‘winning’ a game. If the team environment had just focused on social involvement and support, then the intrinsic satisfaction that I would have discovered is a sense of belonging and connectedness. However, if an employee had been loaded with external justifications in the process of achieving an organizational task, the individual itself would tend to lose interest and satisfaction when performing the task, and a major factor that may have contributed to a