• Activities in which managers engage to increase their power and pursue goals that favor their individual and group interests.
• Managers at all levels may engage in political behavior to gain promotion or to influence organizational decision making in their favor.

Two main ways in which power and politics can help an organization

• Managers can use power to control people and other resources so that they cooperate to achieve an organizations current goals.
• Managers can also use power to engage in politics and influence the decision making process to promote new,more appropriate organizational goals.

• Is based on the authority that stems from a person's position in an organization's hierarchy.
• When individuals accept a position in an organization, they accept their responsibility to carry out agreed upon tasks and duties; in return, the organization gives them formal authority to use its people and other resources to accomplish job related tasks and duties

• Confers on a manager the legal authority to control and use organizational resources to accomplish organizational goals.
• Legitimate power is the ultimate source of an individual's power in an organization.
• The greater a manager's legitimate power and authority, the more accountable and responsible is the manager for using organizational resources to increase performance.

• Is the power to give pay raises, promotion, praise, interesting projects, and other rewards to subordinates.
• As long as subordinates value the rewards, a manager can use reward power to influence and control their behavior.

• The power to give or withhold punishment; the ability to reward or punish subordinates gives supervisors great power, which is sometimes abused.

• Power stemming from access and control over important organizational facts, data, and decisions.
• Sometimes managers are reluctant to share information because they fear that if their subordinates know as much as they do, their power to control and shape their behavior will be lost.

• In organizations that recognize the value of empowering employees, managers deliberately decentralize authority and make information easily accessible to everyone.
• When subordinates assume more responsibility for the organization's performance, they often feel more motivated to perform highly.

• Power stemming from personal characteristics

• Informal power that stems from superior ability or expertise in performing a specific task or role.

• Employees who gain power and influence in a group because they are liked, admired, and respected.
• People high on the personality traists of agreeableness, extraversion, or conscientiousness are often liked or admired; a willingness to help others may also lead to employees being liked or admired.
• People with referent power are liked because of who they are, not just because of their expertise or their abilities to influence people, obtain resources, or achieve their own ends.

• An intense form of referent power stemming from a person's unique personality, physical strengths, or other capabilities that induce others to believe in and follow that person.

• When charismatic power exists, legitimate power, reward power, and coercive power lose their significance because followers give the charismatic leader the right to hold the reins of power and make the decisions that define the vision and goals of an organization and how its members should behave.

• When followers fail to take personal responsibility for their actions because they come to believe the leader knows what is best for the organization.
• When charismatic power is abused by a leader who has a mistaken or evil vision, no checks or balances exist to resist the leader's directives, no matter how outrageous they may be.

• When the tasks that it performs give it the ability to control the behavior of other divisions or functions or make them dependent on it, which allows it to increase its share of organizational resources.

• if it can reduce the uncertainty they experience or manage the contingency or problem that is troubling them.
• In general, functions or divisions that can solve the organizations problems and reduce the uncertainty it experiences are the ones that have the most power in the organization.

• A function or division gains power when it is irreplaceable, that is, when no other function or division can perform its activities.
• All functions and divisions are irreplaceable to a certain degree; how irreplaceable they are depends on how easy it is to find a replacement for their expertise.

• How vital or crucial its activities are to the operation of the entire organization and the degree to which it is positioned to gain access to important information from other functions.
• Many orgs use cross functional teams to reduce the power of any one function from gaining power over other functions and to force them all to share important information to speed development.

• Ability to control uncertain contingencies
• Irreplacability
• Centrality
• Ability to Control and Generate Resources

• Activities that managers engage in to increase their power; they can use power to influence decision making so that the organization pursues goals that favor their individual, functional, and divisional interests.
• Many managers engage in this because higher paying jobs are a scarce resource.

• Tapping the sources of functional and divisional power.
• Recognizing who has power.
• Controlling the agenda.
• Bringing in an outside expert.
• Building coalitions and alliances.

• Source of power: an aspiring manager who can identify the source of the power of different managers can choose to follow the manager who has the best chance of rising to the top.
• Consequence of Power: the people who have the most power can be identified by an assessment of who benefits the most from the decisions made in an organization.
• Symbols of power: many symbols of prestige and status are associated with power in an org; job titles, for example, are a prized possession.
• Personal Reputations: a manager's reputation, and the esteem the manager is held in by colleagues within an organization, also indicates the power to influence decision making.
• Representation Indicators: the number of organizational roles a person holds and the range of their responsibilities are also indicators or power.