Political Frame Basics
This frame views organizations as arenas where individuals and groups compete for scarce resources and pursue different interests.
What is the Political Frame?
A vice president can approve or reject your proposal because of the authority attached to her job title.
What is position power?
An employee develops relationships throughout the organization so that people will support her when she needs help.
What are alliances and networks?
Employees, managers, customers, investors, suppliers, government agencies, and community groups can all become these when they have an interest in organizational decisions.
What are stakeholders?
The Political Frame considers this a normal and inevitable part of organizational life rather than automatically a sign of dysfunction
What is conflict?
Your department keeps losing budget requests. Before writing another proposal, the Political Frame says you should identify who wants what and who possesses this.
What is power?
According to the Political Frame, organizations are not unified families but collections of individuals and groups with different interests.
What are coalitions?
A department chair controls who receives travel funding, desirable assignments, and other valued benefits.
What is control of rewards?
A manager gets employees to support a change by defining it as an opportunity rather than a threat.
What is framing?
Marketing and Operations temporarily work together to convince senior leadership to fund a new product launch.
What is a coalition?
Two departments both request the same $200,000 remaining in the annual budget. This Political Frame condition makes conflict especially likely.
What is scarcity of resources?
A manager keeps telling employees, “This is what senior leadership decided,” even though employees know several executives opposed the decision. The manager is using this Political Frame tool to shape how people understand the situation.
What is framing?
Differences in values, beliefs, information, interests, and perceptions of reality are expected to do this rather than disappear.
What is persist or endure?
Everyone turns to Carlos when the computer system crashes because he is the only employee who really understands how it works.
What is expertise or information power?
Everyone wants Jordan on their project because Jordan is likable, persuasive, energetic, and seems able to get people excited about an idea.
What is personal power?
HR agrees to support Operations' equipment request if Operations supports HR's request for additional employee-training money.
What is bargaining or negotiation?
Engineering wants additional testing while Marketing wants the product released immediately. Neither side is necessarily wrong; they simply have these.
What are different interests or priorities?
You need approval from someone who doesn't report to you. Ordering them to cooperate probably won't work, so you begin identifying shared interests and possible exchanges. You are preparing to do this.
What is negotiate or bargain?
Budget dollars, desirable positions, office space, employee time, and access to leadership all illustrate this condition that makes organizational politics inevitable.
What are scarce resources?
Maria has no impressive title, but after 25 years with the organization, senior leaders trust her judgment and employees listen when she speaks.
What is reputation?
A manager doesn't control the budget or have a powerful title, but possesses data that senior leadership desperately needs before making a major decision.
What is information power?
The IT department's proposal has little support until IT convinces Finance and Operations that a cybersecurity failure threatens them too. IT has successfully done this.
What is build a coalition?
A leadership team eliminates open disagreement by requiring everyone to publicly support the CEO's preferred option. From the Political Frame, eliminating visible disagreement does not necessarily eliminate this.
What is conflict?
The CEO announces, “We're all on the same team, so everyone should want the same thing.” The Political Frame would challenge the statement because organizations contain these.
What are enduring differences among coalition members?
Rather than assuming organizational goals simply come from the top, the Political Frame argues that goals and decisions emerge through this process among competing stakeholders.
What are bargaining and negotiation?
An executive assistant cannot approve your proposal, but she controls which issues reach the CEO's desk and which meetings get on the calendar.
What is access and control of agendas?
Two managers have identical titles on the organizational chart, but one has far greater influence because she has stronger relationships, greater expertise, a better reputation, and regular access to senior leadership. This illustrates this Political Frame principle.
What is that authority and power are not the same thing?
A manager has an excellent proposal but repeatedly loses budget decisions because she focuses entirely on the quality of her idea and ignores relationships, competing interests, and potential allies. From the Political Frame, she has failed to do this.
What is develop a political strategy/build a support base?
Finance, Marketing, and Operations vigorously disagree about a new product but ultimately discover risks none of them recognized individually. This demonstrates that conflict can sometimes have this effect.
What is be productive or improve decision making?
A manager says, “I don't play politics. I just let my work speak for itself.” Her excellent project repeatedly loses funding to competing initiatives with stronger executive support. From the Political Frame, what important organizational reality is she overlooking?
What is that good ideas still require power, support, coalition building, and political skill to gain resources and approval?