Get full access to Principles of Organizational Behavior, 3rd Edition and 60K+ other titles, with a free 10-day trial of O'Reilly.
There are also live events, courses curated by job role, and more.
State University of New York at Albany
The concept of “power” has been very useful for understanding how people in organizations are able to influence each other (Mintzberg, 1983; Pfeffer, 1981, 1992; Yukl, 2013). Power is usually defined as potential influence over people and events. In this chapter, the focus is on the potential influence of one person (the “agent”) on the work-related attitudes and behavior of one or more members of an organization (“target persons”). There are different types of power, and an agent usually has more of some types than of other types. This chapter will describe each type of power and how it is relevant for effective job performance in organizations.
Proactive influence tactics are specific behaviors used in organizations to influence a target person to carry out a work-related request or to support a proposed change. This chapter describes 11 different types of proactive influence tactics that may be used by a leader or other member of an organization. The relevance, feasibility, and effectiveness of each type of proactive tactic depend in part on several aspects of the situation, including the influence objective and the agent's power over the target person.
Social scientists usually differentiate between position power and personal power (French and Raven, 1959; Yukl and Falbe, 1991). Position power is the potential influence .
Get Principles of Organizational Behavior, 3rd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.