Educational Administration EDU 547 Chapter VI Power and Politics in School

1. Educational AdministrationEDU 547Chapter VIPower and Politics in School Presented by: Kathleen Merchant Instructor: Dr. Lauren Larsen

2. Power

3. Sources of Authority: Legitimate Power • Authority is distinguished from other kinds of influences or power in that the subordinates “holds abeyance his own critical faculties for choosing between alternatives and uses the formal criterion of the receipt of a command or signal as his basis of choice” • There are two criteria of authority in schools that are imperative in the relationships of superior-subordinate • Three primary characteristics of authority in schools: • Willingness of subordinates to comply • Suspension of the subordinates’ criteria for making a decision before a decision • Power relationship legitimized by the norms of a group

4. Sources of Authority-Sources of Authority

5. Authority and Administrative Behavior in Schools • Authority is a basic element of life in schools because it provides legitimate control for the following individuals; administrators, teachers, and students • Once administrators, teachers and students join a school organization they accept the formal authority relation

6. Sources of Power • Even though authority implies legitimacy, not all power is legitimate Individuals/groups can utilize power in many different ways

7. Sources of Power

8. Administrative Use of Power • An enormous portion of any administrator's time is directed at “power oriented” behavior that is- “behavior directed mainly at developing or using relationships in which other people are to some degree willing to defer to one’s wishes” (Kotter, 1978, p. 27). • Empowerment –is the process by which administrators share power and assist others with the utilization of constructive ways to make decisions Note*evidence is starting to emerge to demonstrate that teacher empowerment as it relates to curricular matter is connected to student performance

9. Mintzberg’s Perspective on Power

10. Effective Administrators

11. A Comparison and Synthesis of Power Perspectives

12. Power, Rationality, and Rationalization • Power often blurs the difference between rationality and rationalization • Rationality-is the application of evidence and reason to make decisions • Rationalization-is an attempt to make a decision seem rational after it has already been made • In short-we cannot get away from the fact that a great deal of organizational behavior is irrational and power frequently undermines rationality **Refer to the questions in the text on page 235, which were raised by Flyvbjerg

13. Organizational Power and Politics • Organizational politics-is “individual or group behavior that is informal, ostensibly, parichial,typically diverse, and above all, in the technical sense, illegitimate-sanctioned neither by authority,accepted ideology, nor certified expertise”(Mintzberg, 1983a, p. 172) • Even though there are powerful individuals, the political ring of organizations are composed of coalitions of persons-groups who negotiate amongst themselves to make a determination on how to distribute power

14. Organizational Power and Politics Coalitions

15. The Power Game • Power is an elusive of negotiating advantages and then when willingly and skillfully exploiting those bargaining advantages • There is no guarantee that those persons who gain power will utilize it in a rational or justified manner, however; power and politics are not always demeaning and destructive

16. Power Game

17. Power Games

18. Conflict Management • Since power and organizational politics certainly produce conflict-it is important to effectively manage conflict when it arises • Conflict is neither bad or destructive, on the contrary conflict can produce positive organizational change

19. Conflict Management Styles • Kenneth Thomas provided a useful topology for examining conflict management styles, he also identified two basic dimensions of behavior that may produce conflict: • Attempting to satisfy one’s concern(organizational demands in the case of administrators • Attempting to satisfy others’ concerns(individuals needs of the members)

20. Conflict Management Styles

21. Words for Thought • A man who neglects what is actually done for what should be done learns the way to self-destruction.” Machiavelli ( 1994) We need to see and understand organizational life as it is so that we have some chance to move toward what we believe it should be; hence, power and politics cannot be neglected.