Power, politics and influence

Power is often treated as a dirty word, yet nothing gets done in organizations without it. Getting a budget approved, persuading colleagues to adopt a new process, protecting a team from unreasonable demands and advancing a career all involve power and influence. Power can also be abused, through bullying, harassment, self-serving politics and retaliation against people who speak up. This lesson explains where power comes from, how people use it to influence others, why organizational politics arise and how to act effectively and ethically in political environments.

What power is

Power is the capacity of one person, A, to influence the behavior of another, B, so that B acts in accordance with A's wishes. Power is a capacity, so it can exist without being used. It is also relational: it exists only in relation to someone else and rests on dependence. The more B depends on A for something B values, the more power A has over B. Leadership, covered in lesson 10, uses power to influence people toward goals, but power is broader; a junior IT specialist who is the only person who understands a critical system can have considerable power over senior managers.

Bases of power

John French and Bertram Raven identified five bases of power, and Raven later added a sixth. The first three are formal, coming from a person's position. Legitimate power is the authority to direct others that comes from one's formal role. Reward power is the ability to give things people value, such as pay increases, promotions, desirable assignments or praise. Coercive power is the ability to punish, through discipline, undesirable assignments or withholding resources. The others are personal, coming from the individual. Expert power is influence based on special skills or knowledge. Referent power is influence based on others' admiration, respect and desire to identify with a person. Information power comes from controlling access to information others need.

Research consistently finds that personal sources of power, expertise and referent power, are more strongly linked to employees' commitment, satisfaction and performance than formal sources. Coercive power is linked to resistance, lower satisfaction and turnover. Formal power produces compliance, which may be enough for routine tasks, but discretionary effort usually requires commitment. Effective managers therefore build expertise and relationships rather than relying on their title.

Dependence: the key to power

Power rests on dependence, and three factors increase dependence. Importance: the resource must be something people value, such as the ability to reduce uncertainty in a critical area. Scarcity: the resource must be in short supply; abundant resources create little dependence. Non-substitutability: there must be few viable alternatives. In a university, the faculty members who bring in large research grants often have influence beyond their rank. In a manufacturing firm, maintenance engineers who alone know how to fix aging equipment can exercise surprising power. This explains why specialists sometimes resist documentation that would make their knowledge available to others.

Networks and centrality

Power also comes from position in informal networks. People who are central, connected to many others or bridging otherwise separate groups, gain access to information, can broker resources and are seen as influential. Social network analysis maps these relationships, often by surveying employees about whom they go to for advice or information. A simple measure is degree centrality, the number of direct connections a person has. Another is betweenness, how often a person sits on the shortest path between others, which captures brokerage between groups. Organizations use network analysis to identify hidden experts, overloaded connectors and teams that are isolated from the rest of the organization.

# Advice network: who goes to whom for advice (undirected for simplicity)
from itertools import combinations
from collections import deque

edges = [("Ana", "Ben"), ("Ana", "Chen"), ("Ben", "Chen"), ("Chen", "Dina"),
         ("Dina", "Eli"), ("Eli", "Fay"), ("Dina", "Fay"), ("Fay", "Gus")]
people = sorted({p for e in edges for p in e})
nbrs = {p: set() for p in people}
for a, b in edges:
    nbrs[a].add(b); nbrs[b].add(a)

def shortest_paths(s, t):
    # count shortest paths from s to t, and how many pass through each node
    dist = {s: 0}; count = {s: 1}; order = []
    q = deque([s])
    while q:
        u = q.popleft(); order.append(u)
        for v in nbrs[u]:
            if v not in dist:
                dist[v] = dist[u] + 1; count[v] = 0; q.append(v)
            if dist[v] == dist[u] + 1:
                count[v] += count[u]
    return dist, count

betweenness = {p: 0.0 for p in people}
for s, t in combinations(people, 2):
    ds, cs = shortest_paths(s, t)
    dt, ct = shortest_paths(t, s)
    for v in people:
        if v not in (s, t) and ds[v] + dt[v] == ds[t]:
            betweenness[v] += cs[v] * ct[v] / cs[t]

for p in people:
    print(f"{p:5s} degree={len(nbrs[p])} betweenness={betweenness[p]:.1f}")

Ana   degree=2 betweenness=0.0
Ben   degree=2 betweenness=0.0
Chen  degree=3 betweenness=8.0
Dina  degree=3 betweenness=9.0
Eli   degree=2 betweenness=0.0
Fay   degree=3 betweenness=5.0
Gus   degree=1 betweenness=0.0

In the example network, Chen and Dina have only two or three direct connections each, but they have the highest betweenness because they bridge the cluster around Ana and Ben with the cluster around Eli, Fay and Gus. If either left, information would stop flowing between the two groups. Network brokers like Chen and Dina often have more influence than their job titles suggest, and they are also at risk of overload.

Influence tactics

Power is the capacity; influence tactics are how people translate it into action. Research by Gary Yukl and others identifies common tactics. Rational persuasion uses logical arguments and factual evidence. Inspirational appeals arouse enthusiasm by appealing to values and ideals. Consultation increases support by involving the target in planning. Collaboration offers assistance or resources. Ingratiation uses praise or friendliness before a request. Exchange offers a benefit in return. Personal appeals ask for support out of friendship or loyalty. Coalitions enlist others to support the request. Legitimating tactics rely on authority or policy. Pressure uses demands, threats and persistent reminders.

Effective influencers combine tactics, starting with softer ones (rational persuasion, consultation, inspirational appeals) and reserving harder tactics. They also adapt to direction: rational persuasion is the most effective tactic for influencing upward, while inspirational appeals and consultation work well downward and exchange and coalitions are common among peers. Culture matters too: personal appeals and coalition-building may be expected in more collectivist settings, while direct rational argument is valued in many North American workplaces.

Organizational politics

Political behavior consists of activities that are not required as part of one's formal role but that influence, or attempt to influence, the distribution of advantages and disadvantages within the organization. Examples include withholding information, forming coalitions, lobbying for or against decisions, leaking information, spreading rumors, exchanging favors and taking credit for others' work. Politics is not all bad; legitimate political behavior such as building coalitions and lobbying for a project is a normal part of organizational life. Illegitimate political behavior, such as sabotage, whistleblower retaliation or deliberate deception, violates the rules of the game.

Politics flourishes under certain conditions. Organizational factors include scarce resources, ambiguous roles and performance criteria, zero-sum reward systems, democratic decision-making without clear rules, high-pressure performance demands, low trust and reorganizations. Individual factors include a high need for power, high self-monitoring, an internal locus of control and Machiavellianism. When employees perceive high levels of politics, they report lower satisfaction, higher anxiety and stress, higher turnover intentions and sometimes lower performance, especially when they do not understand how decisions are made. Transparent decision processes, clear criteria and fair procedures, the procedural justice of lesson 5, reduce perceived politics.

Impression management is the process by which people attempt to control the image others form of them. Techniques include conformity (agreeing with someone's opinion), favors, excuses and apologies for negative events, self-promotion and flattery. Impression management in interviews can raise ratings, which is another argument for structured interviews that focus on job-relevant evidence. At work, self-promotion is often necessary to make contributions visible, especially in hybrid settings, but it backfires when it is excessive or not backed by results.

Political skill and ethics

Political skill is the ability to understand others at work and to use that knowledge to influence them in ways that enhance personal and organizational objectives. It combines social astuteness, interpersonal influence, networking ability and apparent sincerity. Politically skilled people tend to be more effective and suffer less stress in political environments. The ethical question is how political skill is used. Three questions help: Is the political action motivated by self-interest at the expense of the organization's goals? Does it respect the rights of the people affected? Is it fair and equitable? An action that fails these tests should be reconsidered, however effective it might be.

Abuse of power: harassment and retaliation

Power imbalances create the conditions for abuse. Workplace harassment includes unwelcome conduct, comments or actions that a person knows or ought to know would be offensive, humiliating or intimidating, including sexual harassment and bullying. Sexual harassment frequently involves power: a supervisor implying that a promotion depends on a sexual relationship, or a group of co-workers creating a hostile environment. People with less power, such as young workers, temporary workers and those without permanent immigration status, are more vulnerable and less likely to report.

In the United States, harassment based on a protected characteristic, such as sex, race or religion, is a form of discrimination under Title VII when it results in a tangible employment action or creates a hostile work environment that is severe or pervasive. Under the Supreme Court's Faragher and Ellerth decisions, employers can defend against some hostile-environment claims by showing they took reasonable care to prevent and correct harassment and that the employee unreasonably failed to use complaint procedures. The EEOC rescinded its 2024 harassment guidance in January 2026, but Title VII and the case law still apply, and many states, such as California, New York and Illinois, require harassment-prevention training. Retaliation against people who complain is itself unlawful under Title VII, and laws such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act protect certain whistleblowers.

Whatever the legal framework, organizations reduce abuse of power by setting clear expectations, providing several reporting channels that do not require going through the person accused, investigating promptly and fairly, protecting complainants and witnesses from retaliation and holding powerful people to the same standards as everyone else. Lesson 12 returns to how culture shapes these behaviors.