Page 176 - DMGT519_Conflict Management and Negotiation Skills

Conflict Management and Negotiation Skills

Notes 8.13.2 Power

 A person that helps someone else in distress has power
 Giving someone a better procession in the organization constitutes a sign of power

 A person that can go greater than budget limitations without warning
 A manager acquires raises beyond standards for employee’s
 Raise issues for action
 Having information before anyone
 Top manager asking questions to lower level managers, hence The lower manager has
power
 In doing something for someone else, one receives power

Powerless

 Excessively close administration
 Firm loyalty to regulations

 Doing a job themselves and not training an employee to do it
 People that have high profile positions
 Opposes change

 Safeguard their territory
 Focuses on cutting cost
 Penalizing others
 Overbearing others
 Better than communication

 Negative events result in accusations against others
“Making external attribution of negative events, though often considered “self- serving”, also
implies that the attributor is not in control of critical resource. We hypothesized that making
external attributions for negative events will lead to impressions of powerlessness.” (Lee and
Tiedens 2001)

8.13.3 Three Symbols of Power

Michael Korda has ideas of what power looks like; he writes about three of them. Objects in
organizations such as furniture, clocks, watches, cell phones, and pagers are all symbols of
power.

The proposal that he give on “Furniture” is that a manager that has filing cabinets that are
locked, confirm a critical and restricted files in the office. Conference tables that are rectangular
demonstrate that the most important person sits at the head of the table, instead of a round table.
Also, desk size displays the quantity of ones power; most executives have large expensive desks.

The second approach, he calls it “Time power” what this suggest is that if an executive and or
manager that removes their watch and puts it on your desk face down illustrates that he or she
has their time. As well as managers that do not wear watches shows that no one will start

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