Using power to gain compliance Power is used by everybody and is classified into five different types of power; legitimate, reward, coercive, expert and referent. A skilled leader should utilize a combination of these five sources of organizational power. A leader that knows when and how to use these various types of power will help the organization gain compliance. How much compliance garnered will be dependent on an employee’s interpretation of the power presented. Below I will discuss how reward power and coercive power can be used to gain compliance. Reward power is derived from the person’s ability to control the allocation of rewards valued by others and to remove negotiation sanctions. Generally, employees are motivated by those rewards and are inspired to complete the assignment skillfully. Examples of reward power include pay raises, promotions, and praise. Reward power is a great motivational tool that can greatly affect an individual’s morale. Rewards will continue to increase an employee’s professional competence level and will help the organization perform more effectively and efficiently. An employee’s moral will increase when they are recognized for their high performance. Thus, they will have an increase in internal satisfaction, resulting in further organizational development. Coercive power is the ability to apply punishment. Unlike reward power, coercive power is not a great positive motivational tool, but can be used to achieve the same
Reward, whether it is financial (in terms of a monetary bonus) or simply praise and the recognition of success, will positively impact levels of motivation within a team. For example, a sales team working towards a target, that if achieved will mean a financial bonus will be more motivated than a team without this incentive, especially if a high percentage of that team have money as a primary motivating factor. The effect of praise and recognition on staff will be a team that feels valued and appreciated by its organisation. This will help promote harmony and make for a stronger, healthier and a more motivated team. A team that is not praised and recognised will soon start to feel that their hard work is not appreciated.
5. Coercive Power refers to leaders who penalize or punish to bring about desired results. The main objective of coercion is compliance.
Coercion is demonstrated through physical force used with the intent to harm humans. This is a form of power because a person is willing to harm others in order to get people to do what is asked. Spain allowed Equatorial Guinea to become independent and organized its first election. A very insecure Macias Nguema won the elections. People spoke out about their opposition against his leadership. Macias jailed them and two were noted, “both were murdered: one first had his legs broken and was then starved” (20). Also, after “political reshuffles; ten of the dozen cabinet members in his first government were butchered” (20). Macias would kill people that he felt could take him out of power. Killing people would show that that he should not be messed with and he had the ability to take a person’s life without facing personal consequences. Since he felt like this, Macias killed thousands of people and caused many people to flee the country.
From the Personal Power Profile, it can clearly be said my preferred power base is referent power and second is expert power. On the other end of the spectrum is coercive power. These results show I prefer to influence others through esteem, respect, and demonstrating practical knowledge and skills. Conversely, I absolutely do not care to influence or exercise power over another by coercion or administering punishment.
The key components to developing effective Reward Strategy is to ensure that there are clearly defined goals to meet business objectives, that the reward programme meets the needs of both the organisation and its employees, and to ensure that this is then supported by effective HR policies. In order to ensure these criteria are met there are a number of factors which influence how reward strategy is developed which include both internal factors within the organisation itself, as well as external factors outside the organisation.
Reward power is often common in the workplace when employees are praised from meeting goals or deadlines, or just having doing something special for another coworker. Rewards can range from gift cards, commission, pay raises or even promotions depending on the case. Everyone likes being praised for their accomplishments, so this power is usually one of the common powers in large organizations with a large amount of employees. (Abudi, 2011)
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
Reward Management (RM) has been defined as the distribution of monetary and non-monetary rewards to employees in an effort to align the interests of the employees, the organisation, and its shareholders (O’Neil, 1998). In addition O’Neil (1998) also suggests that a RM system can serve the purpose of attracting prospective job applicants, retaining valuable employees, motivating employees, ensuring legal requirements relating to direct and indirect rewards are not violated, assisting the company in achieving human resource and business objectives, and ultimately assisting the organisation in obtaining a competitive advantage.
“Coercive power relies on the fact that people fear you, and reward power is only effective so long as people value the rewards you have to offer. Legitimate power relies on your rank in the company hierarchy, and recent events
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.
Coercive power: being able to punish others for not doing what needs to be done
Coercive power is an individual’s ability to influence others’ behavior by punishing their undesirable behavior as defined in Hellriegel, Slocum, Woodman (2001). In addition, Barlow had proven his expertise through his knowledge, and connection through his network. This also grant him them expert power, which is defined as one’s ability to influence other’s behavior because of competencies, talent, and specialized knowledge in Hellriegel, Slocum, Woodman (2001). Because the powers that he already obtained, Barlow seek no interest in power as a reward; therefore, Barlow was low on motivation. TA vs. Barlow Barlow’s lack of motivation had caused the TA to conflict with its goal as well. One of the main goals the TA was to improve its relation with the field offices. This goal was being under met because its accounting department was operating inefficiently. The inefficiency was due to Barlow’s attitude toward his work, which was reflected upon his work. A problem exists when the Toll Authority‘s objective was not accomplished. TA had a goal to operate a smooth efficient operation. To achieve this goal, TA had to improve its relations with the field offices, and the reason behind was to eliminate the skimming in the small accounts by the field offices. Unfortunately, the TA’s objective was under met because of Barlow’s lack of motivation, which ironically, TA was liable for because of his past performance appraisal. A predicament can also be found in the case of
Being rewarded and recognised for their work or contribution is what keeps an employee motivated to work towards achieving the organisational as well as personal goals. When the employees is motivated by rewards, they will have job satisfaction consequently increasing the productivity of the organisation. It necessitates the need of managers to pay more attention in understanding their employees and come up with suitable types of reward systems for the organisation so that the employees are intrinsically and extrinsically motivated all the time. The hypotheses that I put forward here is to support this statement that effective reward management is critical to
| When leader use his power to punish or penalise his subordinate to control their behaviour it is known as coercive power. Such power is based on the extent to which a leader can punish in order to control his subordinate. This power varies from one leader to another (Wood et al, 2010).
Coercive power is the power to enforce compliance through fear, whether psychological, emotional or physical.