Power And Politics Case Study

Power and politics in organizations is an inter-related topic that has been studied by many researchers previously. It is an interesting but sensitive topic to discuss in public because managers and the organizations which they are working for do not consider this topic as either ‘valuable corporate or personal publicity’, according to Buchanan and Badham (1999, p.615).
In this essay, we will start from the research approaches that were adopted by Buchanan and Badham as well as Buchanan himself, which would be followed by analysis of their outcomes and discussion of their viewpoint across time.
1. The research methods adopted
To begin with, the main methods which have been applied to all three studies are interviews and survey.
In their researches, Buchanan and Badham (1999) and Buchanan (1999) have adopted the interview approach, i.e. by conducting five anonymous interviews with five interviewees from different industries with different backgrounds (e.g. gender, position etc.) at different management position to study how political behaviour are exhibited in different organizations and what grounds have been taken by these five interviewees to justify their political behaviours.
Besides, Buchanan (2008) conducted a survey to investigate how British middle and senior managers perceived political behaviour in their organizations.
Results and findings from these three studies will be analysed and discussed in the later parts.
2. The research outcomes
In this part, we will begin our analysis (with our past experience as examples) from these five interviews which were conducted by both Buchanan and Badham as well as Buchanan himself and then we will turn our focus to survey outcomes provided by Buchanan in 2008.
Firstly, according...

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...rs consider playing politics in organizations. Necessary but unwilling to play political tricks is his conclusion, which is slightly inconsistent with his previous claims. The reasons for this could be:
1) Time-changed.
2) This study further revealed the difference which was not covered in the previous studies and
3) Managers sticked to their standpoint towards politics and political games.
Conclusion: As Aristotle said, ‘Man is by nature a political animal’. Within organizational contexts, we can expect political tactics would be seen and be utilized by individuals in all kinds of incidents. Through studying deeper into the nature of political tricks and purpose as well as motives behind those political behaviours, we can minimize the negative consequences and maximize the positive effects: more effectiveness, higher efficiency, less distraction and dysfunction.