Stephen Billing’s Blog

In situations of long-standing conflict, accusations of bullying can be a sign that relationships have broken down to such an extent that one or both of the parties can see no possibility of carrying on working together.

I have noticed when I have been asked to help organisations where people are in deep seated conflict, that the situations are often characterised by each party accusing the other of bullying them. When I mention to a new or potential new client these accusations of bullying in other conflict situations, I am struck by how they say "that happens here as well."

Chris Mowles writes an interesting post in Violence in Organisations on his blog Reflexive Practice that shed light on this for me.

He says that organisational politics consists of the daily exercise of power, involving people negotiating, discussing, being polite or impolite to each other, revealing, concealing, pulling rank, delegating and so on. Drawing on Hannah Arendt, he describes this political process as the proper exercise of power in the public space; as something that leads to the greatest of human civilising achievements. (more…)

A summary of conventional thinking about politics in organisations… the jury rules that organisational politics is guilty of diverting resources and energy from the real work

I am sure that all of us have felt at times in our careers that we have been on the losing end of a political situation. In one project I worked on I didn’t realise the close relationship between the manager and another key team member and ended up being excluded from interesting and useful work. Sometimes it seems that certain people are developing exclusive relationships, or we are not included in the decision making, or you agree one thing and then suddenly another option is on the table.

"Organisational politics is often equated with the devious, the underhand, the cunning, and the manipulative,” say Buchanan and Badham, 1999 in "Politics and Organizational Change: The Lived Experience" in the journal Human Relations (subscription required).

According to Mayes and Allen in their 1977 article entitled Toward A Definition of Organizational Politics, in the Academy of Management Review, (no link, subscription required) political behaviour is based on using influence without organisational sanction for either the means used or the ends being pursued.

Drory and Romm in The Definition Of Organizational Politics: A Review, published in Human Relations, 1990, (again subscription required) suggest that organisational politics occurs when people seek to achieve goals by informal means in the face of conflict. These self serving goals work against the organisational purposes, using covert non-job-related means to achieve concealed motives in situations characterised by conflict and uncertainty. Many change situations seem to involve conflict, or at least tension between different points of view.

In a very interesting study, Eisenhardt and Bourgeois in their 1988 Academy of Management Journal article "The Politics Of Strategic Decision Making In High-Velocity Environments: Toward A Midrange Theory," define politics as “the observable, but often covert, actions by which executives enhance their power to influence a decision”.

They identify political behaviours as being:

behind-the-scenes coalition formation, offline lobbying and cooptation attempts, withholding information, and controlling agendas… Politics contrast with the straightforward influence tactics of open and forthright discussion, with full sharing of information, in settings open to all decision makers (p738).

Their study found that these political actions are actually a feature of conflictual situations where power is centralised around a dominating chief executive rather than being associated with decentralised power. They argue that the greater the centralisation of power in an organisation, the greater the use of politics within a top management team. They also found that politics were not fluid, but became entrenched in stable alliances which were often based on characteristics such as office location or age. They concluded that politics were associated with poor organisation performance because they restrict the flow of information and are time-consuming.

All of this illustrates the poor regard in which the concept of politics is held. Do you agree?

In one way, all of this seems pretty common sense, and I think we take it for granted that politics is bad and has negative impact on real results. You don’t have to look very far to find advice that "you should not get involved in the politics," whether you are senior manager, middle manager, team leader, front line worker, technician, consultant, contractor or general dogsbody.

As you can probably guess, I want to challenge this dominant thinking about politics.

Watch for a post on this soon…

Footnote: The image depicts the Beehive, which is the building that houses the offices of the Prime Minister, cabinet and Ministers – it is an iconic building in New Zealand politics. For the US the equivalent icon would be the White House, for the UK it would be the Houses of Parliament.

Politics are a part of organisational life, including organisational change. The very decision to initiate a change project is the result of political processes. You can’t avoid it, so you may as well get good at it.

I have argued here that politics is an intrinsic part of organisational life, and change is one arena where the politics can be quite visible. Or not. If you think you can avoid organisational politics, then you are in a fantasy world.

Decisions to undertake organisational change are themselves the result of political patterns in the organisation.

Examples include decisions to undertake improvements to the employee engagement survey, or to start a lean six sigma project, or to invest in leadership training, or to restructure. These are all themselves the result of the interweaving of the intentions of important and powerful people in the organisation. Powerful people have all attempted to influence the decisions made, usually, I am sure, in service of what they see as the best interests of the organisation. 

Sometimes the influence attempts can be quite subtle. But I am sure that any experienced senior manager or consultant reading this will have seen this interweaving of intentions in action.

So as a leader of change, the fact that you are doing the project you are, and not some other project instead, is also the result of political processes. You may not have been aware of them, or you may have deliberately attempted to avoid being a part of them, but nevertheless they are operating. And you can not avoid being a part of the politics, even if you try, or even if you are not aware of the politics – they are occurring nevertheless, it’s just that it’s all taking place outside your awareness.

As a consultant, the decision to undertake a change project has usually been made prior to my involvement, but is still the result of political processes. As a good change leader, it pays to be good at the politics.

Your change efforts are inherently political, whether you intend them to be or not

The poor regard in which politics is held, and the view that it is bad to engage in politics are both indicative of a way of thinking in which it is implicit that people can either choose to engage in politics and therefore be labelled “bad” or they can choose not to engage in politics and be “good”.

Politics are also commonly seen as part of conflict, uncertainty and situations where the formal channels break down or are not effective.

However, I think that politics are an inevitable aspect of the social nature of being human and working in organisations.

I often hear people say "I don’t get involved in the politics." While this seems like an admirable aspiration, all humans are involved in politics because we all have intentions that we are trying to manifest in our organisational lives. The results of what happens in your organisation is a result of the interweaving of all the different intentions of the many people who are involved in the organisation. 

Hidden in the view of politics as the result of conflict, uncertainty and lack of effective formal communication channels, is the implication that people would not need to engage in political behaviour if there were no conflict, if the environment were predictable or if formal means of resolution were working effectively.

Like it or not, conflict, uncertainty and formal channels that break down are a part of human existence in organisations. It ain’t going to go away. Everything is political (or interpreted in a political way), including the actions of people who are not interested in organisational politics, or who think they are not being political.