Topic about Organizations as Political Systems

Every organization consists of different people.

All the previous metaphors viewed the organizations as integrated enterprises whose members have common interests. Unfortunately, all those metaphors are unitary phenomenon and they oversimplify the interaction between human-beings. However, in the reality it is not like that. All the individuals have divergent interests and those have to be taken into account.That is why having a look at the organizations as political systems is of high importance, because politics is about divergent interests and is mainly about gaining a control, defining the rules and policies and determining who has right to command others.

All the different interests cannot be taken into account, that is why coalitions should be formed and only in this way the power can be acquired.In order to see how the organizations deal with the divergent interests of its members and how the divergent interest groups gain the power we will go through the six functions of management - planning, organizing, controlling, leading, motivating, and change - and see what it means to look at the organizations as political systems. Planning is the first step towards gaining the power and the control. At this stage each interest group sets its goals and its agenda.

Agenda itself is highly dependent on the power structure of the organization.If the power is concentrated than agenda is set at the top and then distributed to others. However, if the power is more widely dispersed then the negotiations and compromises take place. However, setting an agenda is not an easy task, because it is not a straight-forward thing, but it is divergent interests brought together. In this way there is no clear, coherent set of initiatives, it is more messy and that is why one cannot be sure that the agenda is rational.

Once the agenda was set, the main goal of each party is to get as much control as possible in order to be a leader over others and follow its own interests.In this way organizing process is mostly about building the coalitions between different groups through negotiations. Usually the main question in the organizing process is “Which party has what power? ”, because the more power has a party the more likely other parties will build a coalition with it. In this way the bigger coalition is better because it becomes more powerful. Moreover, if the power is concentrated than it has a positive impact on the coalition, because then the coalition gets clearly aligned and in this way it is easier to control it.

However, to build a coalition is a challenge because of the limitations due to the different interests. That is why the parties usually have to sacrifice some of their interests in order to build a coalition and to become more powerful. Control function in the organization as a political system is about exercising the power and controlling the agenda. The main task of control function is to keep the coalition together in different ways.

In this way, there should be an enforcer in the coalition, who gets the people together and keep the coalition aligned.In order to keep the coalition an enforcer can apply different rules e. g. , if someone does not stay in the coalition there is a penalty they will get.

Leadership function is a central, key function in the organization as a political system. There is always one leader within each party. The leader gains the power through building as bigger coalition as possible, bringing the people together and exercising the power. In this way, an effective leader is the one who is able to build a power on the multiple sources, retaining it and expanding it.Moreover, apart from the multiple sources of power, the ability to negotiate and solve the conflicts are the key skills in the exercising the power.

What makes the motivation function interesting is that it is based on the interests of individuals or coalitions. The main goal of everyone is to be the most powerful. Exactly this motivates them to perform better and better. Change function in the organization as a political system includes shifting the agendas and restructuring the coalitions in order follow the main interest.

To sum it all up, this metaphor shows that the organizations are not that simple.The individuals there have their own interests and opinions that can be contradictory to others’. In this way, the role of the managers is to acquire skills in forming the coalitions and finding the compromises when negotiating with competing coalitions. Thus the ability to negotiate effectively and to manage conflicts are essential management skills. However, power also has to be taken into consideration, because in the end, power determines who gets what, when and how. In this way, another essential task of the manager is to be able to build power on the multiple sources.