Page 337 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Chapter 17 ■ Culture models and organization change
Thus power is not simply a matter of position; people appear to vary in their
motives for power and can thus exert personal power. Power is inherent in bar-
gaining, negotiation and political processes. The effective use of power is cen-
tral to effective management and leadership. Kotter (1978) suggests that
individuals who make effective use of power are likely to possess the following
characteristics:
■ Be sensitive to what others consider to be legitimate behaviour acquiring and
using power.
■ Have good intuitive understanding of the various types of power and the
methods of influence.
■ Tend to develop all the types of power to some degree, and use all methods of
influence.
■ Establish career goals and seek out managerial positions that allow them to
develop and use power successfully.
■ Use all resources, formal authority and power to develop more power.
■ Engage in power-orientated behaviour in ways that are tempered by maturity
and self-control.
■ Recognize and accept as a legitimate fact that, in using these methods, they
clearly influence other people’s behaviour and lives.

Coping with conflict

What can managers do to cope with conflict? We can look at this question by
considering first what a middle manager can and cannot do, what top managers
can do directly and how top managers can support implementation indirectly.

Some things that managers cannot do much about

Decision making is neither a rational nor an orderly process

This is particularly so in periods of change, characterized as they are by uncertainty
and involvement of emotions. We now know a considerable amount about the
process of decision making, enough to know that a wide range of individual, group
and organizational factors can affect the process (see Janis and Mann, 1976; Hickson
et al., 1986). Selective perception, uncertainty, organizational politics and time pres-
sures are but some of these factors. Moreover, decisions are not discrete events; they
are fluid. A group of people ‘decide’ but in implementation the decision is often
modified, scaled down or delayed. Decisions have both intentional and uninten-
tional consequences. These may occur rapidly and the latter may lead to changes to
the original decision. Decisions are part of a ‘stream of decisions’, connected either
directly or indirectly, because they are part of the same programme or project or
because implementation demands that those involved compete for scarce resources.
Add to this the tendency of many to dissociate themselves from failure and we begin
to get a picture of the real-life complexity involved.

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