DYNAMICS OF

GROUP BEHAVIOUR

EXERCISING INFLUENCE WITHOUT FORMAL AUTHORITY

Faculty: Dr. Saleena Khan

Submitted by: Group 4 | Section B
Adithya Ramkumar 2015072
Aman Malhotra
2015079
Chitrini Chalmela 2015091
Karan shah
2015095

Nikunj Agarwalla 2015103

Radhika Rathi
2015111
Srikant Hegde
2015118
Surbhi Kumari
2015121

INTRODUCTION
Good Managers are made and not born. This case deals with people who have currently become
managers and the challenges they face during their transformation from an individual achiever to
a peoples manager. The case also deals with how power, politics and conflict play a vital role in
the life of a manager and how good managers learn to navigate through these challenges and
embrace them.

OBJECTIVES

To understand the challenges new managers face and how they overcome them
How new managers learn that power and influence are inevitable in an organization for
resolving conflicts and achieving organizational results.

ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS

Research was conducted on 19 new managers to find out the difficulties they faced during
their first year in a managerial role and how they adapted themselves from a specialist to
generalist i.e individual achiever to agenda setter.
These managers were accountable for a broader array of financial, strategic and human
resource outcomes in the organization.
The research concluded that new managers have to master the following o Learn how to be an agenda setter rather than an individual contributor.
o Develop interpersonal judgement
o Gain self-knowledge
o Coping with stress and emotion
Managers realised that the most demanding task was concerned with understanding the
people who work under them.
People who are nave think that everything remains fair and the organization runs as a big
happy family. This assumption is unrealistic and even undesirable.
New managers link power with formal authority.
Politics is considered bad, but politics in a way gives rise to new ideas, interdependence and
eradicates hierarchy. Conflicts in the same way are productive. Elimination of politics will
lead to elimination of diversity in an organization.
Organization should not include schemers and plotters who are inconsiderate towards the
organization. But at the same time, powerlessness creates ineffective, petty, dictorial styles.
There should be a need to balance the power conflicts.

There are prevention and precipitating factors which restrict and instigate conflicts at desired
points.
Conflicts should not be eliminated but should be managed carefully.
The more freedom to exercise judgement associated with the positions the manager hold,
the more power they will have.
Managers whose performance is visible to powerful people in the organization tend to have
more power.
A managers power results from an interrelated set of positional and personal characteristics
and not just from formal authority.
For a manager Credibility is very important; without which he will not be able to exert
influence without formal authority.
A manager should learn to analyse situations in order to anticipate and prepare for the
political conflicts that arise.
Building and maintaining key relationships with people will help managers to analyse the
opportunities and threats they face in the organization.
An effective manager should be able to identify those people on whom he/she can depend
upon and also see the situation from their viewpoint to ensure there are no conflicts.
Managers need to keep themselves updated on the viewpoint of others so as to eliminate
conflict of interest in the future.

THEORITCAL CONCEPTS
Power is the potential of an individual to influence another individual or group. Influence is
defined as ability to change the behaviour, attitude and values of an individual or group. Power
and Influence are always context specific and dynamic.
Managers power is determined by two sets of factors personal and positional characteristics.
Hence we can divide the sources of power into

Personal - It consists of 4 components.

o Expertise Relevant knowledge and skills
o Track Record Relevant experience
o Attractiveness Appealing attributes
o Effort Time and energy spent

Positional It consists 5 components.

o Formal Authority Position in hierarchy
o Relevance Relationship between task and organizational objectives.
o Centrality Position in key networks
o Autonomy Discretion/Freedom/Judgement
o Visibility Degree of performance seen by others.

Politics are the activities that are not required as part of the persons formal role in the
organization but that influence or attempt to influence the distribution of advantages and
disadvantages within the organization.
Reality of politics Politics is a necessary evil and someone who never uses political behaviour
will have a hard time getting things done.

Factors contributing to political behaviour

Individual factors
o High self-monitors
o Internal locus of control
o High Mach personality
o Organizational investment
o Perceived job alternatives
o Expectations of success
Organizational factors
o Reallocation of resources
o Promotion opportunities
o Low trust
o Role ambiguity
o High Performance pressures
o Zero sum reward practices
o Self-serving senior managers

MANAGERIAL LEARNINGS

Understanding the work required to identify an organizations political dynamics and

establishing power and building influence.
Developing one on one relationships necessary to support the power and influence that has
been established.
Understanding the importance of developing the ability to manage trust, influence and
interdependencies with diverse group of individuals in an organization.