List and briefly describe the political strategies that managers can use to exercise their power unobtrusively.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Political strategies for exercising power to gain the support and concurrence of others are: relying on objective information, bringing in an outside expert, controlling the agenda, and making everyone a winner.

Managers require the support of others to achieve their goals, implement changes, and overcome opposition. One way for a manager to gain this support and overcome opposition is to rely on objective information that supports the manager's initiatives. By relying on objective information, politically skilled managers unobtrusively exercise their power to influence others.

Bringing in an outside expert to support a proposal or decision can, at times, provide managers with some of the same benefits that the use of objective information does. It lends credibility to a manager's initiatives and causes others to believe that what the manager is proposing is the appropriate or rational thing to do.

Managers also can exercise power unobtrusively by controlling the agenda-influencing which alternatives are considered or even whether a decision is made. When managers influence the alternatives that are considered, they can make sure that each considered alternative is acceptable to them and that undesirable alternatives are not in the feasible set.

Politically skilled managers can exercise their power unobtrusively by making sure that everyone whose support they need benefits personally from providing that support. By making everyone a winner, a manager can influence other organization members because these members see supporting the manager as being in their best interest.