This document discusses power and politics in organizations and factors that influence work team effectiveness. Regarding power and politics, it defines different types of power, how power can be used ethically, and the relationship between power and organizational politics. It also differentiates between work groups and teams and identifies five key factors that influence team effectiveness: team orientation, team leadership, mutual performance monitoring, backup behavior, and adaptability. The conclusion reflects on examples from the author's experience to illustrate how these concepts impacted outcomes in their organization.

1. Power and politics and Work groups and teams
Executive summary:
this is report a practical overview with a life examplesto ensure that the power and politics
are very closely to each others and is very difficult to distinguishing between them, power
is classified into personal and positional power. Some type of power tends to corruption
and there is some tactics to convert this corruption into ethical way. the use of power in
the firm could be beneficial and safe the firm from anything not matched with its
policies if has been used in an appropriate way, and this will be by the politics of the firm
which is defined as power usage by special tactics. coming by work group and teams the
two words little bit confusing for some people who think both are the same but actually
we can differentiate between them as per the objective, since the team is one or two
individuals cooperate to achieve their goal while work group sharing their experiences
and knowledge to achieve organization objective. team work effectiveness is directly
affected and related to important factors such as Team orientation, Team leadership,
mutual performance monitoring, backup behavior and adaptability. this research will show
how these factors affect my organization.
Introduction:
In this research we will study two topics the first will be: power and politicsand the second
one is: Work group and teams.
by taking about power and politics we will define what is power, politics and organization
politics, we will highlight the power sharing and effect of politics in organization culture
with life examples from real field organization.
Its very important to differentiate the organizational power from organizational politics,
The mean of Power has originated from position of authority and it’s called position power
(Silva, 2007). This definition is supported from other view, Power is mechanism or
technique used by person who's working at managerial level to solve problems and
conflicts (DUARTE, 2010). On the other hand there is another type of power called
personal power, this type hasn't originate from position of authority but its originate by

2. default from individuals(Northouse, 2012).politics are the oblique and dark side of power
, and type of corruption (Keen, 1981) and describing the political tactics as “hateful"
(Calhoon,1969), another description of politicized decision making is supported in book
on the ‘shadow side ‘ of management its destiny to the dark side (Egan’s,1994)
On the other hand work groups and teams; we will illustrate the definition and differences
between individuals,groups and work groups, we will focus on the factors that affect team
effectiveness with effective and real models from organization I belong to.
Teams (groups) always are a crucial and basic sector in organization, Professional or
Excellent people rarely work alone, professional people work with there colleagues and
managers.
Management found that teams be flexible to change more than individuals alone,
according to this data we can define team or groups as two or more persons react with
them and enhance one another for one objective, which is accomplish a common goal
Analysis:
Power and politics:
All sorts of power even absolute power tend to corruption. So, how to use power ethically
understanding and knowing your goals and your organizational objectives and target
Examine and diagnose which employee (key person) inside or outside organization can
affect and achieve your goals plan.
getting information about each employee you manage and knowing the strengths and
weaknesses of each employees
also it should to know your strengths and weaknesses points
knowing which strategy can affect your employees by way of exercising power
examine and diagnose the feel and action of your employees after your tasks or actions
Choose an ethical course of action to get something done (DUARTE, 2010).
However, the concept of power tend corruption has been criticized. Argued that power
affect positively in organization sustainability, power don't affect employees negatively or

3. make them frustrated. To prove this concept, assume that managers who have a high
level of power can work as supporter and assistant to their subordinate and vise versa
Rosabeth Kanter (1977, 1979).
Nevertheless, in high-power cultures for example China, high managers have been
figured to use their influence to help, support, and empower (Pye and pye 1985; Spencer-
Oatey 1997).
Power-sharing in organization culture:
Power sharing in organization is related closely with doing of mutual decision making and
leadership participation (Home1991), till now theoretical root are cloudy and hazy (Leana
1987). The most crucial research in this area is the research on people who are under
authority of managers (subordinates) sharing in decision making which track its
theoretical root to human relation approach to managementand to esteem of democracy,
public relationships and interactions, and power equivalence (Likert 1967). other model
of organizational power
. Other forms of organizational power participation consist of sharing in creating of policy,
participation in conflict solving, sharing in objective and goal offering, data sharing, and
participation in all touchable and non touchable outcomes ((Srivastva 1986; Yukl 1994;
Leana 1987).
Miles (1965) putting two basic arguments in assist of such beginning. First, the human
relation argument, merit that when employees sharing to team objectives, goals, and
strategies, causing high level of job commitment and satisfaction and high level of
achievement. second, human resources argument, holds that because knowledge and
expertise are widely distributed throughout work group and organizations, increasing of
employees participation cause high decision quality and value, high level of team
performance and employees satisfied with their jobs (Cohen, 1994).
Politics is the hand of power to keep safe an organization from anything against
organizational policy(Legare,1995). However, the politics definition has been criticized
Politics is unlawful and considered as black and oblique side of power (Silva, 2007)
characterized by fatal opportunism (Buchanan and Badham,2008). Finally,we can define
politics as power in work by utilizing an area of tactics and techniques, but organizational

4. politics defined as individual or team behavior that is unofficial, ostensibly parochial,
typically divisive and this is all in the technical sense, illegitimate –sanctioned neither by
formal authority, accepted ideology, nor certified expertise (Mintzberg, 1983)
here is the most common and popular view of the effects of organization politics (Buchanan and
Badham, 2008)
Antecedents personal ambition
Behaviors dirty tricks
Consequences result damaging and negative
Antecedents, Behaviors and Consequences of organization politics:
In expressionof either practice or theory, the crucial query regards the affect of political behavior,
the type of actions, and the results:
-Antecedents what is the effect of organization politics?
Individual: personality and demographic factors to get hold of personal needs, self ambition of
hidden motive desire to transfer appearance of selflessness desire to catch attribution of
legitimacy.
Contextual: structural factors to save and get team interests conflicting view and interests scale.
-Behaviors what is the way of acting politics? And what is the common tactics to do it?
Individual: Unofficial effect selective information gaining and developing assist ingratiation
alongside with effective individuals’ favoritism to make your manager happy averting criticism.
Contextual: reprimand others making a favorable image. making obligation remuneration, threat
figuring powerful coalitions inducing debate
-Consequences what are the results? Type of results positive or negative? Impact of this result
in organizational change?
If functional Individual will be confident, trustful leading to high level of self-confidence, decreasing
stress and the net result is establishing Career progression.
If dysfunctional Individual will be Frustrating, anxiety, disloyal and job dissatisfaction Individual
leading to power Damaged credibility. (Buchanan, 2008)

5. example
during business planning meeting I discussed with my managers a certain process of
allocating resources into investment of some sort of power business in which we didn't
share the same vision, he had an opinion of investing a certain side of the business while
i had different opinion, we agreed on empowering me for taking the decision and being
responsible for the end results within certain time frame (3 months) after the evaluation
period i came back with a positive sales growth that assured my manager of his right
decision to empower without using the power to force the decision taking process
Work groups and teams:
On one hand some people find that the word of team or group are the same. So, using of
these words is common and interchangeably.
on the other hand, some other people see that, the two words aren't the same. in recent
years, the word of team has been common in business community more than the word of
group. from this data we can differentiate between group and work group as follows
Groups: two or more individuals interacting with themselves to achieve particular
objectives or goals
Wok groups: a groups interact with themselves to share information’s and experiences
to achieve organization objectives
From this information we can define work team as:
positive synergy at work through coordination of effort leading to high performance of
team overall because the individual potentials results in a scale of accomplishment that’s
greater than total of those individuals chip (Cummings and Cross,2003)
Factors influence team effectiveness:
There is a big five factors influence team effectiveness
1-Team orientation:
Team orientation refers to prioritization for working and aiming to improve individual
performance by regulate of one’s action with other members during implementing team
tasks (Salas, 2005). Also team orientation helping in collaboration, coordination and
decision making through team members, which leading to raise team achievement and

6. accomplishment (EBY and DOBBINS, 1997).
2-Team leadership:
while studying of influence of team leadership on team effectiveness there are a varieties
in setting and context (Cummings and Cross,2003; Ferrante, Green, and Forster, 2006;
Hackman, 1990;Nembhardand Edmondson, 2006) The influence on team leadership rely
on the kind or nature of team and assignment at hand, Which means, for example, the
long term teams composed of members with certain expertise to do sub tasks within the
total tasks have been found to benefit from directive leadership, Specially when a task
require doing of certain subtasks in a tough order or life threatening situations (Hannah
et al., 2009). on the other hand, short term team confronting trouble that need new
creative solutions will benefit most from transformational leadership, aimed at
encouraging member empowerment and autonomy (Alimo-Metcalfe and Alban-Metcalfe,
2001).
3-Mutualperformancemonitoring:
Mutual performance monitoring means paying attention of one’s associate team
members’ work during doing one’s own work to ensure everything are at the level of
expectations and procedure in a right track (Salas, 2005). the most crucial mutual
performance monitoring will be if task have been stressful as a result of time restriction
(Porter, Itir Gogus and Yu, 2010). trust is very crucial in mutual performance monitoring
because it made a positive climate (Peterson and Behfar, 2003).
4-Backup behavior:
Backup behaviors is ability to expect other team membersnecessities by right and perfect
knowledge of their duties and to distribute workload through members to acquire balance
through periods of high level of work load or stress. Backup behavior also can be supplied
by coaching and feedback to enhance performance, supporting a team’s colleagues in
accomplishan assignments or finishinga subtask for team memberswhen work overload
is showed (Marks, Mathieu and Zaccaro, 2001).
5-Adaptability:
is the capability of an individual or team to set strategies through backup behavior and
shifting location and responsibilities of intra team resources, or by changing a way of

7. action or team repertoire in response to modifyinginternal and external situations regards
to data collected from the media (Salas, 2005). adapting to unprecedented situations
need both the presence of mutual performance monitoring and shared mental models,
specially an elaborate mental model of the final results(Casey-Campbell and Martens,
2009).
Examples from my own experience in my organization:
-during business expansionplan in 2015 there was a conflict between marketing manager
and sales manager about having a new business model in my company portfolio (spine
surgery products) based on team orientation both of them had deferent opinions, the
marketing had a long term orientation was promising end result plus adding benefit to the
brand name while the sales manager had different orientation seeing that the short term
return on investmentwas very low in terms of sales and profit hence the conflict happened
and due to not sharing team orientation from the general manger. this resulted in
disagreement on this deal and we lost this kind of business.
during my career transition in 2015 I movedto a medical company in which i was handling
orthopedic and spine surgery products and due to my previous work experience in which
I had no experience in such field, I had to go through a strong phase of adaptability where
I had to face a new organizational behavior and integrate into a team of diversified criteria
with different nationalities and ages plus different experience one of the main factor that
helped me in this adaptation is mutual performance monitoring as the two senior member
of this team kept an eye on me to monitor and observe my performance and how I'm
integrated within the team, the result of this were positive as i managed to play an
instrumental role and became a good player in term of team working within a short period
of time .
Conclusion:
we can easily figure out from these life examples that using tactical politics and power
lead to a successful result what makes us thinking about the good use and miss use of
power and politics in the organization to be in the organization favor, this ensure how power

8. and politics be defined. on the other hand there is a crucial role of work group and team was
obvious in my life experience with my organization where we were able to make use of team
orientation on a better way to avoid lose of important kind of business which had a bad impact
on my firm as they didn't pay attention to analyze there weaknesses and work on it to fix such a
problem, also we can see who adaptability, close monitoring from the work group affect
positively in my success and our success as team to achieve the company goals and objectives,
now i can confirm that the backup behavior and team leadership also can influence the
organization overall success or fail because the absence of one or more of this factor sure
leading to undesirable outcomes.
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