Review Outer Experience - 1227 Words

Maha Algarni PUAD 520 Professor Burroughs 30 October 2015 Administrative Journal #1 Outer Experience In many organizations, the organizational structure becomes a bureaucracy which involves its own challenges and problems. The outlook on the issue of power in American organizations is ambivalent due to the need of a leader to be a good politician while also seeing politics as detrimental to efficiency (Pfeffer 33). Most respondents agree that workplace politics is common in most organizations, that successful executives must be good politicians, and that the higher up the ladder – the more political the climate becomes (Pfeffer 34). Pfeffer notes that power and influence can be acquired and exercised for evil purposes, but few people†¦show more content†¦Wamsley and Zald devote their article to a public administration theory using the political economy approach. The authors treat organizations as social systems - dynamic, adapting, and internally differentiated (63). The political economy approach examines legitimacy and distribution of power as they affect the propriety of an agency’s existence, its functional niche, its collective goals, and the means of task accomplishment in some cases (64). The authors argue that the power resources of actors, their willingness or ability to use them, and their skill in building coalitions are important factors in political economy. Wamsley and Zald also identify dimensions of political capacity to manipulate such as: 1) goals, ambiguity, and clarity; 2) surveillance; 3) centrality of values; 4) personnel and funding allocation; and 5) support structures and feedback loops (65-66). Reflection on Outer Experience Distribution and the use of power in organizations is an important issue since the very early existence of bureaucracy. Managers use various sources of power at their disposal to lead, motivate, and control the work of their subordinates such as legitimate, reward, coercive, and referent powers. Most of organizations are based on the hierarchy and chain of command where the title of the leader reflects the status within the organization. Based on the hierarchal status, the leader is able to exert more power on the subordinates. Legitimate