LeadershipCh8BASES OF POWERWord格式.docx

1、 satisfaction with their jobs, leading to lack of commitment and general employee withdrawal. In the United States, Canada, and Western Europe, coercive power has seen a decline in the last 50 years. Several reasons contribute to this, ranging from the legal erosion of employment-at-will and the awa

2、reness of employee violence or other forms of retaliatory behavior. Equally important as an effect on the receding popularity of coercion as a basis of power has been the influence of quality management theorists, such as Philip Crosby and W. Edwards Deming. They suggested that there is a decline in

3、 productivity and creativity when coercive power is employed. The use of coercive power results in an atmosphere of insecurity or fear. In spite of this insight, coercion as a base of power continues to play a role even in those organizations influenced by theories of quality management. In times of

4、 economic crisis or threats to the survival of the organization at large, coercion may come to the forefront. Coercive power may also materialize as organizations attempt to streamline their operations for maximum efficiency. If employees must be fired, those who fail to conform to the organizationa

5、l goals for survival will be the most likely candidates for termination. The threat of termination for failure to comply, in turn, is coercive power. LEGITIMATE POWER. Legitimate power rests in the belief among employees that their manager has the right to give orders based on his or her position. F

6、or example, at the scene of a crime, people usually comply with the orders of a uniformed police officer based simply on their shared belief that he or she has the predetermined authority to give such orders. In a corporate setting, employees comply with the orders of a manager who relies on legitim

7、ate power based on the position in the organizational hierarchy that the manager holds. Yet, although employees may comply based on legitimate power, they may not feel a sense of commitment or cooperation. REWARD POWER. Reward power, as the name implies, rests on the ability of a manager to give som

8、e sort of reward to employees. These rewards can range from monetary compensation to improved work schedules. Reward power often does not need monetary or other tangible compensation to work when managers can convey various intangible benefits as rewards. Huey describes Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Ma

9、rt Stores, Inc., as an active user of reward power. Walton relies heavily on these intangible awards, indicating that nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They are absolutely free-and worth a fortune. When reward power is used in a flexible ma

10、nner, it can prove to be a strong motivator, as Crosby, Deming, and others have shown. Still, when organizations rely too rigidly on rewards, the system can backfire. Employees may be tempted to unethically or even illegally meet the quotas to which overly rigid reward systems may be tied. Another p

11、roblem associated with rewards as a base for power is the possibility that the rewards will divert employees attention from their jobs and focus their attention instead on the rewards dangled before them. REFERENT POWER. Referent power derives from employees respect for a manager and their desire to

12、 identify with or emulate him or her. In referent power, the manager leads by example. Referent power rests heavily on trust. It often influences employees who may not be particularly aware that they are modeling their behavior on that of the manager and using what they presume he or she would do in

13、 such a situation as a point of reference. The concept of empowerment in large part rests on referent power. Referent power may take considerable time to develop and thus may not prove particularly effective in a workforce with a rapid turnover of personnel. One common error in applying referent pow

14、er in cross-cultural situations, however, comes in misunderstanding the ways in which employees identify with their superiors. Since identification with ones superior in the United States is hampered by symbols of legitimate power （for example, titles or dress）, those who advocate its use encourage

15、managers to dress down to the level of their employees and use terms such as facilitator and coach coupled with associatesgroup members rather than bosssubordinates. In societies such as Argentina or Mexico, symbols of legitimate power may not readily hamper identification, whereas American-style eg

16、alitarianism may diminish the respect employees feel for the manager. In short, U.S. employees are likely to identify with managers by personally liking them and feeling liked in return, whereas Argentine and Mexican employees are likely to identify with managers by respecting them and feeling respe

17、cted in return. Thus, referent power may be more cross-culturally variable than the other four bases of power laid out by French and Raven. Imberman describes how specialized training is now used in the grocery industry to train Latino immigrants in the democratic supervisory techniques of U.S. mana

18、gers. In the past, when these men and women were promoted to supervisory positions, they tended to rely heavily on the Latino model of authoritarianism under which they were raised. The managerial style hindered their ability to effectively supervise employees or to garner the respect they were seek

19、ing. To remedy this situation, specialized training programs are now utilized. The end result is effective and confident supervisors, motivated workers, higher productivity, less waste, and better customer service. EXPERT POWER. Expert power rests on the belief of employees that an individual has a

20、particularly high level of knowledge or highly specialized skill set. Managers may be accorded authority based on the perception of their greater knowledge of the tasks at hand than their employees. Interestingly, in expert power, the superior may not rank higher than the other persons in a formal s

21、ense. Thus, when an equipment repair person comes to the CEOs office to fix a malfunctioning piece of machinery, no question exists that the CEO outranks the repair person; yet regarding the specific task of getting the machine operational, the CEO is likely to follow the orders of the repair person

22、. Expert power has within it a built-in point of weakness: as a point of power, expertise diminishes as knowledge is shared. If a manager shares knowledge or skill instruction with his or her employees, in time they will acquire a similar knowledge base or skill set. As the employees grow to equal t

23、he managers knowledge or skills, their respect for the superiority of his expertise diminishes. The result is either that the managers authority diminishes or that the manager intentionally chooses not to share his or her knowledge base or skill set with the employees. The former choice weakens the

24、managers authority over time, while the latter weakens the organizations effectiveness over time. MULTIDIMENSIONAL POWER Traditional theories such as those of French and Raven, as well as the empowerment advocates of the 1980s, such as Crosby and Deming, have tended to approach power and authority a

25、s one-dimensional. By contrast, several experts have more recently begun to reconfigure how power is viewed to a more multidimensional interweaving of relations or conflicting needs. For example, Robert Grant et al. described TQMs consumer-focused goals and traditional managements economic model of

26、the firm as two inherently opposed paradigms. Because these two paradigms are grounded in two independent sources of authority, they produce different but coexisting dimensions of power. It has also been argued that authority is culturally based. Geert Hofstede, in one of the most thorough empirical

27、 surveys on cross-cultural influences on work-related values, delineated marked differences in what he called power distance.For Hofstede, power distance is the degree to which members of a culture feel comfortable with inequalities in power within an organization; that is, the extent to which ones

28、boss is seen as having greater power than oneself. Thus, views regarding both power and leadership shape the conception of authority within an organization. And because both these facets of authority conception differ drastically from culture to culture, authority itself is conceived of differently

29、from society to society. Consequently, no single dimension of authority and power is likely to hold equally for all managers and employees in a multicultural domestic setting or in the multicultural milieu of the multinational corporation. Finally, one can also argue against the one-dimensional view

30、 of authority and power when they are viewed not as independent elements in the abstract, but as intrinsically derived from relations within the organization. Power and authority are multidimensional because relationships are by nature multidimensional. The ways in which managers influence their emp

31、loyees and encourage them to be productive depend on many variables, including the personality of the leader, the skills of the group/employees, the task or assignment at hand, or the group dynamics and personalities of group members. As with leadership styles, each base of power has its place in management and can prove effective in the right setting and right circumstances.