Learning Outcomes

• Name five "soft" and four "hard" influence tactics, and summarize the practical lessons from influence research.
• Identify and briefly describe French and Raven's five bases of power.
• Define the term empowerment, and explain how to make empowerment succeed.
• Define organizational politics, explain what triggers it, and specify the three levels of political action in organizations.
• Distinguish between favourable and unfavourable impression management tactics.
• Explain how to keep organizational politics within reasonable bounds.

Chapter Summary

1. Name five "soft" and four "hard" influence tactics, and summarize the practical lessons from influence research. Five soft influence tactics are rational persuasion, inspirational appeals, consultation, ingratiation, and personal appeals. They are more friendly and less coercive than the four hard influence tactics: exchange, coalition tactics, pressure, and legitimating tactics. According to research, soft tactics are better for generating commitment and are perceived as more fair than hard tactics.

2. Identify and briefly describe French and Raven's five bases of power. French and Raven's five bases of power are reward power (rewarding compliance), coercive power (punishing noncompliance), legitimate power (relying on formal authority), expert power (providing needed information), and referent power (relying on personal attraction).

3. Define the term empowerment, and explain how to make empowerment succeed. Empowerment involves sharing varying degrees of power and decision-making authority with lower-level employees to better serve the customer. Empowerment requires active sharing of key information, structure that encourages autonomy, transfer of control from managers to teams, and persistence. Trust and training also are very important.

4. Define organizational politics, explain what triggers it, and specify the three levels of political action in organizations. Organizational politics is defined as intentional acts of influence to enhance or protect the self-interests of individuals or groups. Uncertainty triggers most politicking in organizations. Political action occurs at individual, coalition, and network levels. Coalitions are informal, temporary, and single-issue alliances.

5. Distinguish between favourable and unfavourable impression management tactics. Favourable upward impression management can be job-focused (manipulating information about one's job performance), supervisor-focused (praising or doing favours for the boss), or self-focused (being polite and nice). Unfavourable upward impression management tactics include decreasing performance, not working to potential, withdrawing, displaying a bad attitude, and broadcasting one's limitations.

6. Explain how to keep organizational politics within reasonable bounds. Techniques to keep organizational politics within reasonable bounds include: making sure every employee knows how the business works and has a personal line of sight to key results, with corresponding measurable objectives for individual accountability; establishing formal conflict resolution and grievance procedures; and publicly recognizing and rewarding people who get real results without political games.