Influencing Group Communication
Influencing Group Communication
your name
XBCOM/230
University of Phoenix
In any organization today, one will be able to see the five basis of power at work. Some of these powers will be evident in some individuals and it may take longer to see them in other within the organization. The five basis of power that we will discuss are, coercive, reward, legitimate, expert, and referent. These five basis of power are broken down into two separate groups, one being formal and the other being informal. The formal group will consist of three of the five basis of power and they are: coercive, reward and legitimate. Obvious this leaves expert and referent as ...view middle of the document...
Coercive power will usually lower moral and not produce a highly productive work environment.
Reward power or authority, I feel is the opposite of coercive power but will also make the employee strive to get the work done quicker but sometimes not efficient or productive. Reward power is just as it states, this is when an employee is rewarded for completing a task or reaching a goal. In my experience in retail wireless sales I have seen this type of power used frequently. Sales managers will set a monetary reward for any salesperson that reaches a certain number of sales. Although this does boost morale and tends to create friendly competition within the company, productivity and quality is more than likely hindered. By giving someone a reward for reaching these sales goals, most sales people will do anything to get that extra money that is being offered. This in turn does not produce clean sales. I feel that using this type of reward will tend to have repercussions in other areas of what is trying to get achieved. .
Legitimate power or authority comes with the position or title that they may have with the company or organization. The experience I have with this power is when our sales division was impacted by the hiring of an outside Vice President of sales. No one has ever heard of this individual but because of his title and position within the company, this person was feared and the entire sales department was instantly made to listen and abide by this persons rules and guidance. A supervisor having legitimate power will more than like to use other basis of power to run his or her department.
We will now discuss what I feel are the basis of powers that will have a better effect on the productivity of a department of even the entire company. The informal basis of power are expert and referent. These powers are more personal in nature and will have more respect from the employees than will the formal basis of power. Most employees tend to follow and have better attitudes when these two powers are utilized more than the formal powers....
