ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Organizational Behavior

Organizational Behavior

1A. Power

The given case study is about National Australia Bank's (NAB's) trader Mr. Duffy and other senior traders who had been a rogue squad that created a loss of $350 million in just an year. When discovered many officials had to be deprived of their jobs.

Sources of Contingencies of Power” Model is an approach to organizational analysis which emphasizes that the character and structure of organizations can take a number of forms, and may be related to the technology in use or the organization's environment. Organizational features can be said to be contingent on such factors. The idea of contingency is now so widely accepted in the study of organizations, and views premised on it so diverse that it is more accurate to speak of a contingency approach rather than one theory as such. The contingency approach is notable for rejecting the notion that there is one best way of structuring organizations. (McShane, 2010)

The contingency approach initially became popular in the 1960s. Technology (in itself determined by what product the firm was making) was associated with certain structural characteristics. For instance, the more advanced the technology, the longer the chain of command. Woodward argued that there was a particular form of organizational structure appropriate to each technical situation. Other writers emphasized the importance of environment. Many suggested that the greater the degree of environmental uncertainty and complexity, the greater the need for differentiation of management functions within the organization, but also the need for integrative devices to pull the organization together. Like Woodward they argued that there was an appropriate organizational form for each type of environment. A number of British writers also traced the relationship between environment and organizational form.

The most important investigation of these issues was conducted in the 1960s. This project found that the structuring of organizational activities (e.g. specialization of job roles and departments) was correlated not with technology but with the size of the organization, whilst the degree of centralization of decision-making was correlated with the degree of dependence upon other organizations, such as suppliers. Whilst most writers on organizations now adopt a contingency approach, views differ on how far certain factors, such as environment, determine organizational form and how far top managers can make a strategic choice to model their organizations in certain ways by taking account of such factors.

A major reason of organizational politics is to gain power. “Power” refers to the capacity one person has over the other person to get them to do what they want. In other word, it is the capacity that A has to influence the behavior of B so that B acts in accordance with A's wishes. There are two main bases of power, formal and personal. Formal Power is established by an individual's position in an organization. A person with formal power can utilize different power bases to accomplish their tasks. It includes; Coercive Power, Reward Power and Legitimate Power. Personal Power comes from an individual's unique characteristics - these are the ...