Organizations as Political Systems
“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
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