Power in organizations Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Power in organizations - Essay Example With reference to this aspect, the paper will discuss about the importance of power within an organization in a more diversified manner. Additionally, the paper also ensures a discussion regarding steps that the organization takes in order to encourage its employees and management to adopt and maintain an ethical and legal approach in their activities within organizational operations. Discussion Importance of power in an Organization The significance and the strong presence of power within an organization depict the fact that in the absence of it, proper execution of the operational activities of the organization will be highly uncertain. In precise, it can be depicted that power, which is mostly associated with the top level management and leaders of organizations is utilized as a major resources towards directing and accomplishing the goals and activities set by the organization for long and short term. Furthermore, the possessor of power in an organization will have the authority to manage various resources of the organization to ensure optimization of the benefits acquired from the same. Contextually, it will be vital to mention that effective use of these resources will further result in accomplishment of the organizational objectives, ensuring overall efficiency of the organization. Apart, from this vital aspect, power of a leader and a manager implies about their ability to influence higher authorities of an organization for accomplishment of the desired goals. Additionally, power of leaders and mangers assist them in promoting and reforming advanced strategies prevailing within an organization. This will enhance the probability of getting positive results from the utilization of the aforementioned resources. In addition to that, the possessor of power (leaders or managers) in any organization will also have the privilege to decide on the size of the organization, incorporation of latest technologies, operational approaches of the organization and alloca tions of the resources among other. Hence, it can be affirmed that a person acquiring maximum power in any organization will have his/her presence and influence in almost every sector of the organization with which he/she will be accountable to steer the overall performance of the organization towards a positive direction (Clegg, Courpasson & Phillips, 2006). Types of Power The above discussion apparently depicts the importance of power in an organization. However, to gain a comprehensive understanding regarding the facet of power in any organization, the various forms and sources of power will be vital to illustrate. In general, there are five types of power in any organization which further include coercive, legitimate, reward, referent and expert power among others. Coercive power, also regarded as the most primitive form of power in workplace that provides a person with the authority to punish or threaten the subordinates owing to non-completion of any task or inefficiency in th e same. This kind of power is implemented in scenarios where business is in a deteriorating position (Morgan, 2006). Subsequently, legitimate power refers to the formal rights of the top level leaders related to their designation within an organization. This type of power is quite universal and applied in ensuring proper functioning of the business through