The notion of authority also gives the supervisor the power to exercise coercive power, which refers to the supervisors’ ability to punish and discipline their subordinates. All five of French and Raven’s bases of power can be identified within Steve Job’s documentary. However, the most prominent base that the film highlighted within Steve Job’s leadership style was Steve’s inaccuracy of referent power.
In the film Steve Jobs the Man in the Machine, there are individual examples of each of French and Raven’s 5 bases of power. Throughout the film Jobs uses the 5 bases of power both accurately and inaccurately on several occasions. First, I will outline examples of the Jobs’ accurate experiences with French and Raven’s bases of power in the documentary. I will determine accuracy by the positive influence that the particular use of power had on Jobs’ employees. Jobs’ accurately fed into his subordinates’ notion that he had the power to reward them by providing his executives with opportunities to buy into major stocks within the company. Steve Jobs’ most accurate use of the 5 bases of power was probably his expert power. Jobs’ expertise was a notion that could not be questioned. The film highlights how Jobs’ had possessed technological expertise since elementary school. As a teenager, Jobs’ and his childhood friend Wok often built advanced technological machines that allowed people to have free telephone calling both locally and internationally. In his early 20s, Steve
power in their own hands. He explains that workers have the power to decide and dictate the
Power is reported to be "relative, situational" and of the nature that can shift. (Eliades, 1999, p.1) Even where one individual has power over another individual, each individual possesses some degree of power.
The five sources of powers that managers use are: legitimate power, reward power, coercive power, expert power and referent power. Legitimate power is an inherent power that all managers have simply because they are the manager and have authority over their subordinates. Reward power is a power that all managers have where they can promise or give rewards to
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life” (253). The man who changed the world of technology said this in front of thousands of Stanford graduates. All of the interesting work and his life was written in a biography called Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different by Karen Blumenthal. Blumenthal included everything about Jobs from birth to death in this book. The title of the book came from Apple advertisements that said “Think Different.” The main character of the book was obviously Steve Jobs. Jobs was the co-founder of Apple Inc., NeXT, and Pixar and he was able to do all that because he was the man who thought different. Anyone who owns an Apple product or has seen many of the famous movies
When looking at French and Raven’s Five Forms of Power in this situation, you can understand where the power comes from in this workplace (French, Raven, 1960). I see only four of the five forms being actively used in the RetailMax scenario. The CEO, who helped put the company back into a positive growth, has legitimate power since he believes that he has the right to make demands and get compliance from others in the organization. This can be seen as he authorizes another department to make an offer to Cam. Vince Mangini, Vice President of Professional Services (PS), has reward power and is able to compensate Cam for joining his department with a higher salary and a larger bonus. Cam Archer has the expert power and he wields is well. He has become a more-rounded team player and is continuing to gain credibility and experience in the company. And Regan Kessel has the referent power since he has gained the respect of other workers. With over twenty years of experience in the industry, he is a trusted leader. This has been shown by the relocation of the marketing team under his purview.
According to Tubbs, of the five types of powers that he discuss are Reward, which is the power an individual hold to reward someone be it financial or emotional (flattery), Coercive, the power an individual hold to punish ( Also known as Scrooge Power, (Tubbs, 2012)), Legitimate, the power an individual hold derived from the power given from others over themselves ( Think president in USA or Parliament in the Europe, or even the Boss you are working for.
Leadership is defined in many ways, but what it is in common in each definition is the emphasis on influence over other’s thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and attitudes. According to Spector (2012), power is “the extent to which one person can influence another to do something” (p. 321). This means that that power is what inspires subordinates to follow an employer. There are five sources of power. Expert power is given when there is a perception that the person has knowledge or expertise in an area. Referent
Power is the emphasis is an employment situation. While employed you have a certain amount of power, both over your work environment and your own life.
Power refers to the ownership of power and impact over others. Contingent upon how power is utilized, it can prompt positive or negative conclusions in an association. Control in individuals is similar to power in batteries; the higher the voltage of battery, the more electromotive energy it can convey; subsequently, it can have more noteworthy effect. Likewise, individuals with more prominent wellsprings of force are better ready to lead and impact others than individuals with less and lesser wellsprings of force. The all the more influential you are, the more impact you ought to have. Persons can have master force; referent force; prize force; coercive power or true blue force.
Power has been addressed in academic literature in several ways but most commonly describing “power as the ability to control valued resources and administer rewards and
For weber power is determined as something that when imposed, then a person has to follow it. For Weber domination is the probability that persons will obey commands. Weber mentioned power as being ‘ sociologically amorphous’. (Roth and Wittich, 1968) The probability of a command being accepted mainly relates to the surroundings of domination. An example of this is that, a supervisor could expect his colleague to obey his sayings but when they meet outside the business then the supervisor is unlikely to have such an expectation (Watson, 2003).
It is important for managers to understand the sources of power and influence as they must rely upon the cooperation of subordinates in order to be successful. Strong managers rely upon more than just authority they also use leadership skills and power to obtain the most productivity from their staff. According to French and Raven (1959) there are five sources of power. Referent power seems to be the most influential and the least affected by change. To quote Paul Argenti,
Steve Jobs was a computer designer, executive and innovator, as well as an all-around role model for many people in both their businesses and their personal lives. As the cofounder of Apple Computers and former CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, he revolutionized the computer and animation industries, amassing a fortune worth $10.2 billion at the time of his death. Jobs intuitively understood the power of cultural influence in sustaining the strategic capabilities implicit in his perpetual vision of creating.
Leadership comprises of a leader and their followers, and their interactions, where the leader utilizes their influence on their followers. Clawson states, "Leadership is about managing energy, first in leaders and then in their followers" (Clawson, 2006). The influence that a leader has on their followers is power. A leader can express their power in various manners, in French and Raven’s (1959) Five Base Model of power, a characterization of power in leadership and management, defined in five bases and citied by Hinken and Schrieshiem, (Bass, 1990) as followed:
The management can use this power to demote, transfer, fire or deny raises to their employees. The third power base of Position is legitimate power. This power stems from the level of hierarchy in which the subordinates report directly to the authority over them for decisions. Process Power controls the input and output of organizations to make sure that the processes are carried out efficiently and effectively within. Information power is the control of information or access to it within an organization. Information can be controlled to a ?need to know? basis and/or just limited to the upper management. This type of power compliments the legitimate power. Finally, there is Representative power in which an organization uses an individual to be there spokesperson both within the organization and when dealing with people outside of the organization.