Organizational Behavior, Power, and Politics: Learning Discussion

This discussion post analyzes organizational behavior, power, and politics, drawing on the student's learning from weeks 6 and 7. The student reflects on metaphors for organizations (machine, organism, brain) and the impact of power dynamics within the workplace. The post critiques the strengths and weaknesses of the learning materials, highlighting the importance of different perspectives and practical examples. The student connects these theories to their own workplace experiences, noting how power distribution, employee unity, and decision-making processes reflect these concepts. The reflection emphasizes the need for employee empowerment, ethical work culture, and the effective use of influence to foster a positive organizational environment. The student plans to apply the learnings to improve future organizational experiences, focusing on employee unity, flexibility, and implementing policies that support meaningful goals and autonomy.

Running head: LEARNING DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR, POWER, AND POLITICS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1LEARNING DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS
Organizational behavior is determined by the way people interacted within groups.
Understanding and managing human behavior is necessary for any organization to become more
efficient and fruitful in business (Pinder 2014). This phenomenon holds importance as it
determines the structure of the organization and further helps to figure out the way outer events
can affect the organization. On the other hand, power and politics within organization is also of
huge importance within any organization. The impact of power and politics depends on the
negative or positive power the employees use to influence others (Chadwick 2017). I will be
reflecting upon these two important issues power and politics within organization and metaphors
for organizations and will discuss the implications these learnings has in my work ethics. Critical
discussion of these learning with future implications will also be discussed.
Learning
In week 6, we learned about metaphors for organizations and according to it,
organizations are open systems however, each person’s perspective makes it different from
different angles. The learning demonstrates three examples of metaphors for organization such as
organization as machines, brains and organism. The machine metaphor determines the integrity
and interlocking bureaucracy, culture and clearly defines the role and responsibility within the
organization (Örtenblad, Putnam and Trehan 2016). However, it lacks the human aspects,
flexibility and pride. The second metaphor determines organization as adaptive and growing
organism that focuses on surviving within competition, but the metaphor lacks harmony the
stable structure. Further, the third metaphor, brain determines the organization as a controlled
system or library and decision making as its supreme strength. However, conflicts within two
strong thoughts became its biggest flaws (Gherardi et al. 2017). On the other hand, the week 7
learning helped me to understand the impact of power, politics and the way power should be
divided within an organization. While learning about these topics, I understood that power and
politics determines major role to mold the way one behaves within organization. Power is
important for the organization as it is the potential ability to exert influence, but misuse of power
leads entropy within organization. Therefore, higher authorities should be supportive and use
logic and data to be forceful. Further, they should seek opinion from the employees and provide
them with rewards and benefits to create an impression (Hsiung, Lin and Lin 2012). The week 6

2LEARNING DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS
learning made me understood that different metaphors explains an organization differently and
understanding the real nature of it is difficult as every employee from higher or lower authority
has different perspective about the organization and having a common idea is difficult.
Critique
The week 6 and 7 learning dealing with organizational behavior and power and politics
have several strengths and weaknesses. Every individual has different perspective of
understanding any organization. While, the metaphors of organization such as brain, machine
and organism determines the organization as strong, comprehensive and controlled transmission
system, it does not provide answers to my question (Hatch and Cunliffe 2013). The week 6
learning should be inclusive of an in-depth analysis about the metaphor, which can be applicable
to the organization. Further, the comparative discussion of the metaphors such as brain, organism
and machine, with the strength and limitations should be provided to us with practical examples.
However, the learning helped me to understand the opportunities and challenges the metaphors
present to increase the organizational understanding (Alvesson 2012). On the other hand, the
week 7 topic, power and politics presented strongly the importance of these two aspects and
mentions different forms of power such as domination, influence and authority. Further, interlink
between power and politics was presented with two metaphors such as political system and
instruments of domination. However, besides these strengths, the negative aspect of power was
not mentioned and the positives of political aspects were not mentioned in the learning (Shafritz,
Ott and Jang 2015).
Reflection
These theories and learnings of week 6 and 7 helped me to understand the working
scenario and ethics within my workplace. I understood the implication of power distribution
within an organization and the way such distribution help the organization to control the
employees, their feelings and their working ability. Within my organization, the unity within
employees and the production determines the organization as machine, growth, competitiveness
makes it organism, and decision-making ability represents it as brain (Hui 2013). However, the
limitations of all these metaphors was clearly seen within the operations. This is because

3LEARNING DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS
employees were unable to comply with the increasing working load as the organization was
growing like an organism and workers were working like a machine and providing fixed amount
of product (Burke 2017). Further, the higher authority were misusing their powers and did not
provided the employees with incentives or rewards. Therefore, distribution of power was not
following the company requirement. The power used by the authorities was not influential, as
they never rewarded any employee for his /her performance. Therefore, from the learnings of
week 6 and 7, I will be using both these aspects to make my future organizational experience a
better one. As a part of the organization, I will be focusing on employee unity and flexibility, as
these are the tools that help to restructure the faulty power distribution among higher authorities.
If any power given, I will be using my power to influence others, through my actions or
performance, so that everyone in the organization can utilize the opportunities given. On the
other hand, I will seek the opinions of each employee and will try to understand their perspective
or metaphor about the organization, so that proper steps could be taken, to overcome the
limitations of those metaphors. Furthermore, I will try to understand the organizational politics
and the limitations of the metaphors to implement work culture ethics within the organization.
Employee empowerment, reward and recognition policy will be implemented to set meaningful
goals, reinforcement of autonomy and self-efficacy with confident decision-making ability will
be encouraged so that the power and political aspect cannot influence the employees to change
their perspective about the organization.

4LEARNING DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS
References
Alvesson, M., 2012. Understanding organizational culture, 2nd Edn., pp. 129-135, Sage.
https://books.google.co.in/books?
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with+one+metaphor+is+difficult+&ots=752m7qsHHG&sig=gNouXulTTr3v4xxP_UqfTmzMQ
Mk#v=onepage&q=why%20understanding%20an%20organization%20with%20one
%20metaphor%20is%20difficult&f=false
Burke, W.W., 2017. Organization change: Theory and practice, 5th Edn., pp. 128-135, Sage
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for+organization+&ots=KWOJNuIQd9&sig=djD1y7jBPMQWSZ8Q8aDrRu-Rxw4
Chadwick, A., 2017. The hybrid media system: Politics and power, 2nd Edn, pp. 23-44, Oxford
University Press. https://books.google.co.in/books?
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%20politics%20in%20organizations&f=false
Gherardi, S., Gherardi, S., Jensen, K., Jensen, K., Nerland, M. and Nerland, M., 2017. Shadow
organizing: a metaphor to explore organizing as intra-relating. Qualitative Research in
Organizations and Management: An International Journal, 12(1), pp.2-17.
Hatch, M.J. and Cunliffe, A.L., 2013. Organization theory: modern, symbolic and postmodern
perspectives, 3rd Edn., pp. 145-156, Oxford university press. https://books.google.co.in/books?
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q=why%20understanding%20an%20organization%20with%20one%20metaphor%20is
%20difficult&f=false

5LEARNING DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS
Hsiung, H.H., Lin, C.W. and Lin, C.S., 2012. Nourishing or suppressing? The contradictory
influences of perception of organizational politics on organizational citizenship
behaviour. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 85(2), pp.258-276.
Hui, W.T., 2013. Economic growth and inequality in Singapore: The case for a minimum
wage. International Labour Review, 152(1), pp.107-123.
Örtenblad, A., Putnam, L.L. and Trehan, K., 2016. Beyond Morgan’s eight metaphors: Adding to
and developing organization theory. human relations, 69(4), pp.875-889.
Pinder, C.C., 2014. Work motivation in organizational behavior, 2nd Edn, pp. 57-66, Psychology
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Shafritz, J.M., Ott, J.S. and Jang, Y.S., 2015. Classics of organization theory, 8th Edn, pp. 245-
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