Managing With Power

Politics and Influence in Organizations

Jeffrey Pfeffer

• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Year: 1993
• ISBN:
  9781422143452
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Although much as been written about how to make better decisions, a decision by itself changes nothing. The big problem facing managers and their organizations today is one of implementation--how to get things done in a timely and effective way. Problems of implementation are really issues of how to influence behavior, change the course of events, overcome resistance, and get people to do things they would not otherwise do. In a word, power. Managing With Power provides an in-depth look at the role of power and influence in organizations. Pfeffer shows convincingly that its effective use is an essential component of strong leadership. With vivid examples, he makes a compelling case for the necessity of power in mobilizing the political support and resources to get things done in any organization. He provides an intriguing look at the personal attributes—such as flexibility, stamina, and a high tolerance for conflict—and the structural factors—such as control of resources, access to information, and formal authority—that can help managers advance organizational goals and achieve individual success.

PART I

Power in Organizations

1

Decisions and Implementation

At 5:01 P.M. on October 17, 1989, a large earthquake struck northern California. The earthquake destroyed or severely damaged several sections of freeway and a number of freeway off-ramps, as well as a portion of the San Francisco Bay Bridge. The vivid pictures of the damaged section of the bridge and the collapsed freeway section in the East Bay, which accounted for most of the fatalities, were flashed around the world. Most people recall that repairs to the bridge began immediately, and since the work was literally done around the clock, the bridge was reopened about six weeks later. What most people do not realize, even many living in the San Francisco area, is that some 18 months later, the opening of the San Francisco Bay Bridge was the only completed repair. Not one other damaged highway structure, not one off-ramp, not one other section of freeway had been repaired a year and a half after the quake. Indeed, in the case of the other two major portions of roadway that had been closed by the quake—the so-called Cypress Structure in Oakland and the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco—there was still no decision on exactly where, how, or whether to make repairs.

Technical or engineering complexities do not account for the delays, nor do they explain why the Bay Bridge was repaired while nothing else was. San Francisco’s and California’s response to the earthquake presents a situation that is repeated often in both public and private sector organizations—a paralysis that reflects an inability to mobilize sufficient political support and resources to take action. Confronted with a problem, in this case—or opportunities, in some other instances—organizations are often unable to get things accomplished in a timely manner. This inaction can have severe consequences. The continuing closure of the Oakland section of the freeway costs some $23 million per year in extra transportation costs and fuel, while the continuing indecision about the repair of the freeways and off-ramps in San Francisco has cost much more in terms of lost business in the city.

It is, perhaps, not surprising that there is delay and indecision when the issue is as inherently ambiguous as the location and repair of roadways. Even in cases of life and death, however, there are failures to effectively mobilize political support and get things done that have serious consequences. Consider the chronology of the discovery of transfusion-transmitted AIDS, and the subsequent delays in getting anything done about it:

In March 1981, an “Rh baby” received a transfusion of blood provided by a 47-year-old donor at the Irwin Memorial Blood Bank in San Francisco.

In July 1981, epidemiological evidence led many members of the medical community to conclude that the so-called Gay Cancer was a contagious disease, spread by both sexual contact and through blood.

In September 1981, the child who received the transfusion in March was sick, suffering from immune dysfunctions; the donor, also sick, went to his doctor at about the same time and noted that he was a regular blood donor.

In December 1981, Don Francis, an epidemiologist at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) wanted to put blood banks on the alert. He argued that if the disease spread like hepatitis, it would be spread by blood transfusions.

In January 1982, the CDC learned that hemophiliacs were dying from a disease with symptoms similar to those spreading through the gay community, and that transfusions seemed to be the mechanism of transmission.

In November 1982, Dr. Selma Dritz, assistant director of the Bureau of Communicable Disease Control at the San Francisco Department of Public Health, was concerned about protecting the integrity of the blood supply; she had documented, at least to her satisfaction, the first case of AIDS transmitted by blood transfusion.¹

The reaction by the blood-bank industry was denial. “The first public announcement that AIDS might be in the blood supply brought an angry reaction from blood bankers in the East. . . . Dr. Joseph Bove, who . . . served as an officer of the American Association of Blood Banks, went on network television to say flatly that there still was no evidence that transfusions spread AIDS. Privately, some blood bankers thought the CDC was overstating the possibility . . . to get publicity and, therefore, more funding.”²

On January 4, 1983 (more than a year after it was first suspected that AIDS could be spread by blood transfusions), at a meeting of an ad hoc advisory committee for the U.S. Public Health Service, Don Francis of the CDC was angry. “How many people have to die?” shouted Francis, his fist hitting the table again. “How many deaths do you need? Give us the threshold of death that you need in order to believe that this is happening, and we’ll meet at that time and we can start doing something.”³

In March 1983, the hepatitis antibody screening sought by the CDC was rejected because of opposition from the blood banks, although donor screening was introduced to try to eliminate high-risk donors.

In May 1983, Stanford University Hospital became the only major medical center in the United States to decide to begin testing blood for evidence of AIDS infection. “The rest of the blood industry was stunned. . . . Some said it was a gimmick to draw AIDS-hysteric patients to Stanford from San Francisco hospitals.”⁴

In January 1984, the blood industry was continuing to stonewall. The cost of AIDS screening would be high; moreover, the industry was afraid of what it would do to both the supply of donors and the demand for blood from nonprofit blood banks. “In early January, Assistant Secretary for Health Ed Brandt set up a conference call of blood bankers and CDC officials to discuss the AIDS problem. The upshot of all the talk was no new FDA policy; instead the blood bankers agreed to form a task force to study the issue.”⁵ The careful reader will have noted that two years have passed since transfusion-transmitted AIDS was diagnosed and one year since Don Francis asked, “How many must die?”

By late 1984, even though there was no longer any real debate about whether AIDS could be spread by blood transfusions, widespread screening for hepatitis or other blood abnormalities still had not begun.

“An estimated 12,000 Americans were infected from transfusions largely administered after the CDC had futilely begged the blood industry for action to prevent spread of the disease. ‘How many people have to die?’ Francis had asked the blood bankers in early 1983. The answer was now clear: thousands would.”⁶

The battle between the scientists and the blood bankers was far from an even match. The blood bankers were sophisticated users of language, symbols, and all the techniques of interpersonal influence. The very existence of that industry depended on motivating volunteers to support the work of organizations such as the American Red Cross. The blood banks and associated organizations had years of experience in working with the media. They had experience, too, in working the corridors of power in Washington, particularly the government health establishment. The scientists and the epidemiologists felt that truth would triumph, if the data were presented forcefully. But they were not at first influential enough to gain the upper hand in the struggle to change policies on AIDS. By contrast, the blood-bank industry cultivated allies, was shrewd in its use of language to make the risks appear negligible, and mustered all its resources to stall and delay policies that might harm the industry. Of course, those involved in these early struggles, and particularly the gay community, learned their political lessons. Today there is substantial research and public policy attention, and those fighting AIDS have mastered political skills and tactics. Indeed, the recent success—some claim disproportionate success—of efforts to obtain funding for AIDS research suggests that the early failure of the authorities to act occurred not so much because AIDS was a gay disease (although this was clearly a part of the story), but rather as a consequence of the lack of political will and expertise on the part of those fighting the traditional medical establishment. As they developed both the determination to make changes and the knowledge of how to do so, the outcome of the political struggle changed accordingly.

A distressing story, some will say, but what does this have to do with organizations in the private sector, which, after all, have the profit incentive to ensure that they make smart, rational, and timely decisions? Just this: Do you know which corporation invented the first personal computer as we know it today, the first word processing program applied in publishing, the mouse, the idea of windows on a computer screen, the use of icons rather than commands to make computers work, and which corporation was the first to run a television advertisement for a personal computer? If you answered, Apple Computer, you are partly right, in that the Macintosh, built and marketed by Apple, was the first computer to have these features and be commercially successful on a large scale. But it was, in fact, the Xerox Corporation, at its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), that accomplished all these things in the mid-1970s, years before the introduction of the Lisa in 1983 and the introduction of the Macintosh in January 1984.⁷ We all know that the first company to invent or develop a technology does not necessarily reap the economic benefits from that technology—Ampex Corporation’s development of the technology for the VCR is another commonly cited example. What we don’t often recognize is that failures to capitalize on innovations are, in actuality, failures in implementation, the same sort of failures in the ability to get things done that we saw in the case of rebuilding San Francisco roads and in protecting the nation’s blood supply. Accomplishing innovation and change in organizations requires more than the ability to solve technical or analytic problems. Innovation almost invariably threatens the status quo, and consequently, innovation is an inherently political activity.

The inability to get things done, to have ideas and decisions implemented, is widespread in organizations today. It is, moreover, a problem that seems to be getting worse in both public and private sector organizations. It has led to calls for better leadership, and laments about the absence of leadership in many spheres. It is my thesis that problems of implementation are, in many instances, problems in developing political will and expertise—the desire to accomplish something, even against opposition, and the knowledge and skills that make it possible to do so. Today more than ever, it is necessary to study power and to learn to use it skillfully, since we cannot otherwise hope to gain individual success in organizations or the success of the organizations themselves. As Richard Nixon wrote:

It is not enough for a leader to know the right thing. He must be able to do the right thing. The . . . leader without the judgment or perception to make the right decisions fails for lack of vision. The one who knows the right thing but cannot achieve it fails because he is ineffectual. The great leader needs . . . the capacity to achieve.⁸

POWER IN ORGANIZATIONS

Norton Long, a political scientist, wrote, “People will readily admit that governments are organizations. The converse—that organizations are governments—is equally true but rarely considered.”⁹ But organizations, particularly large ones, are like governments in that they are fundamentally political entities. To understand them, one needs to understand organizational politics, just as to understand governments, one needs to understand governmental politics.

Ours is an era in which people tend to shy away from this task. As I browse through bookstores, I am struck by the incursion of “New Age” thinking, even in the business sections. New Age can be defined, I suppose, in many ways, but what strikes me about it are two elements: 1) a self-absorption and self-focus, which looks toward the individual in isolation; and 2) a belief that conflict is largely the result of misunderstanding, and if people only had more communication, more tolerance, and more patience, many (or all) social problems would disappear. These themes appear in books on topics ranging from making marriages work to making organizations work. A focus on individual self-actualization is useful, but a focus on sheer self-reliance is not likely to encourage one to try to get things done with and through other people—to be a manager or a leader. “Excellence can be achieved in a solitary field without the need to exercise leadership.” ¹⁰ In this sense, John Gardner’s (former secretary of HEW and the founder of Common Cause) concerns about community are part and parcel of a set of concerns about organizations and getting things accomplished in them.¹¹ One can be quite content, quite happy, quite fulfilled as an organizational hermit, but one’s influence is limited and the potential to accomplish great things, which requires interdependent action, is almost extinguished.

If we are suspicious of the politics of large organizations, we may conclude that smaller organizations are a better alternative. There is, in fact, evidence that the average size of establishments in the United States is decreasing. This is not just because we have become more of a service economy and less of a manufacturing economy; even within manufacturing, the average size of establishments and firms is shrinking. The largest corporations have shed thousands, indeed hundreds of thousands of employees—not only middle managers, but also production workers, staff of all kinds, and employees who performed tasks that are now contracted out. Managers and employees who were stymied by the struggles over power and influence that emerge from interdependence and differences in points of view have moved to a world of smaller, simpler organizations, with less internal interdependence and less internal diversity, which are, as a consequence, less political. Of course, such stru...