Organizational Behavior What Influence Tactics and Power

Organizational Behavior

What influence tactics and power bases are evident in this case? Explain.

In the first place, the owner of the company has all of the power, if she wants it. Of course, she is bounded by her employees and the law to an extent, but when making a change such as this it would seem that she first used legitimate power. She saw a need to radically change the way the company operated because revenues were consistently dropping, so she had to find a way to arrest the free fall. Legitimate power always seems like a fall back point, but her statement regarding the receptionist of "just figure it out" points to the CEO's use threats, no wheedling, just a strong statement because she has the ultimate power in the company. It can also be said that she employed expert power also. The CEO of a company is the chief executive, and though they may not have as much specific information about individual departments as the managers of those departments have, she does have a better overall picture of the company. This means that she is expert about where the company needs to go to succeed. As an aside, this seems to be on the dividing line between social and personal power because the change is equally for herself and for the company.

Influence tactics are relatively limited in this case. On first examination, it is obvious that rational persuasion was used. There had to be a change, a radical change, and this would give the employees the freedom they wished to have while maintaining the work environment. However, there was most likely some consultation and coalition tactics also. The CEO would have to talk to other members of the management team to see how they viewed the idea. This was the coercion. She had to have some other people involved so that she could sell the idea to others in the company. But, she did not see this as enough. She hired a consulting firm, made of the individuals who had first implemented the idea at Best Buy (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2010), to make sure that the program was implemented correctly.

2. Where would you plot J.A. Counter's ROWE program on the empowerment grid in Figure 15-2? Explain.

This is actually a difficult question. The CEO decided to change the organizational face of the company independently because she had needed to somehow boost productivity. Because she had heard about the success Best Buy had implementing these employee scheduling ideas (Bloomberg Businessweek, 2006), she worked to make the change. After the initial decision to make the change, she then talked to the employees about the idea. The employees of the company were allowed to give their own input, and it seemed from the case study that it was mostly either negative, or people at least hedged about possible success of the venture. But, the end result of the experiment is somewhere between power sharing and power distribution. The CEO implemented the plan because she believed that empowering employees would work for her company, but the case of the receptionist shows that employees were not given a completely free hand. Since the receptionist's job was seen as critical, she had to have a schedule regarding her planned departures from work. She was not entirely free to leave whenever she felt like it. This is probably the case with every employee. There has to be some justification for leaving, though no one can complain about another person leaving when they choose under the ROWE program. But it seems that a small company, as the case study intimates, would have a more difficult time because people do "wear multiple hats" (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2010). So, the employees have some degree of freedom to make their own decisions, but not total freedom.

Has employee empowerment been taken too far in this case? Explain.

To people who are used to the way that work scheduling normally works, this probably seems just short of anarchy (Kidwell, Bennett & Valentine, 2010). In some cases this could be an issue. People who are not used to a traditional work environment may take advantage of the opportunity to create their own schedule, but this would probably not be the general case. Employees realize that they have a job as a result of the beneficence of their employer, or it is at the very least a mutual contract that either can breach. If an employee took advantage of the situation and was absent too much they would come in for the same disciplinary action that any lackadaisical employee could expect.

The answer to the question then is no I do not think that empowerment has been taken too far in this case. Employees, especially in these economic times, value their jobs. It seems very unlikely that many would take negative advantage of this opportunity. Since this system has worked for one company, it is not outside the realms of possibility that it would work for others. Though there may be some additional challenges because this is a small company (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2010), there is precedent of the system working in the past even for smaller firms.

What impact do you expect the ROWE program to have on organizational politics at J.A. Counter? Explain.

The given case explains that the attitude within the company was at a very low point. The case states that "Skoglund had started doing more comprehensive performance reviews, increased the company's sales goals, cut expenses, and fired a couple of employees." All of this was in the interest of reversing the trend that had started regarding the sluggish performance at the company. The atmosphere within the company had become bleak. Employees were afraid of losing their positions, so it is likely that politicking against others to maintain employment was rampant. Since organizational politics are basically self-serving (Alagse, 2010), personal interest was preeminent instead of company being the main focus.

The ROWE system is designed to give empowerment to the employee, so it is designed to be an organizational politics killer. Empowerment has to be handled correctly though or it can result in an even worse environment. Keitner and Kinicki (2010) relate that empowerment cannot be just handed to employees one day without any preparation on the part of management. Thus, employees will be given freedom by degrees rather than all at once. This allows them to be successful in the new system.

Most likely, once employees at J.A. Counter felt comfortable with the new system, they also understood the autonomy it gave them. The company in this situation is seen to understand the importance of what the employees give to the company (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2010). This means that the employee begins to change the way they regard the company; they become more invested in the company and less engaged in individual success. Basically, the success of the company is the success of the individual. Therefore, the change in office politics would be from "everyone for themselves" to "all for one."