Referent, Expert, Legitimate, Reward and Coercive Power: Analytical Essay

Referent Power

Definition:

“The desire for a feeling of oneness and acceptance in a valued relationship”

Explanation:

Referent power is based upon identification with, attraction to, or respect for the leader. Group members gain a sense of intrinsic personal satisfaction from identification with a referent leader. This kind of power relationship is dependent upon the inclination to work harder for someone who is liked or admired. To gain and maintain lerders approval and acceptance, a follower is likely to do what the leaders asks to do, develop a similar attitude, and even imitate the leaders behavior.

Charming and trustworthy leaders always tend to use and possess referent power more often then those with less personable. Genuine concern and demonstrating a general level of respect for other, referent power tend to increase early in the relationship between follower and leader. Referent power is easily lost when charisma of leader is not connected to genuine integrity and strength for other.

In business organizations referent power is most easily seen in the charismatic leader who excel in making others feel comfortable in his or her presence. Staff normally show their excitement about work in terms of their attraction to their own leaders charisma and personal characteristics. Because of their leaders likeability work commit their work.

Advantages:

Advantage of Referent power are mentioned below.

• With the help of effective collaboration and good working relationships bureaucratic obstacles can be reduced
• In business managers can inspire workers to work hard in their job.
• Regularly motivation the desired behavior can be cause to decreased counterproductive behavior.

Disadvantages:

Few of the disadvantages of referent power are mentioned below

• Referent power does not work in those organization where there high rate of employees turnover because it take time to build trust
• In crisis situation referral powers not appropriate
• If organization culture is strong then it will be difficult to apply referral power

Expert Power

Definition:

“The extent of specialized skills or knowledge followers attribute to a leader”.

Explanation:

A leader possesses superior skills, knowledge and abilities is expert power and derived from group members assumptions. Having expertise in specialized skills helps leaders to perform task and provides them with good understanding as compared to rest of the populations around them.

If team members or followers are dependent on the leaders due to specialized skills which leaders possesses then specialized skills are the only source of power for that leaders in the business. When followers are facing more problem in certain task but leader I have solution of the problem in this task the organization have more expert power. In the same way as referent power the expert power always come easily in short term but it hard to maintain it for long term because with passage of time expertise and skills are changed. Initial assumed expertise is normally strong, but a leader must balance expertise wisdom . He not to exaggerate the extent of his or her expertise. With passage of time followers keep leaning and increasing their knowledge and skills that why a leaders expertise are challenged and questioned so if leader fail to main the balance or difference between followers skills and his/her skill then the power of expertise can be shifted or end.

With the help of continual formal study and training the power of expertise can be maintained. On the basics of research strong way of teaching expertise is by solving problems which are important for the followers and helping them sound advice on a regular basis. To maintain expert power for leader in business he/she must have a lot of expert power and is trusted by followers as most trustworthily source for wisdom and information.

Advantages

Advantaged of Expert Power are mentioned below.

• If leader have expert power team will be more open to be guided by this leader
• Expert power provide you more chances of being promoted on the basis of expertises
• Expert power give you more chance to involvement in management decisions
• Expert power helps you to win trust and respect from team mates and seniors within and outside the organization.

Disadvantages

Some of the disadvantages of expert power are mentioned below

• Your expert power will diminish when you share your knowledge with others so it act as double edged sword.
• When the expertise gap between team members or follower came close your expert power start decreasing
• They always see thing with their lens of expertise so they miss big picture of their organization

Legitimate Power:

Definition

“The authority granted someone stemming from a position in a group or organization.”

Explanation:

Legitimate power is power from authority legitimate right to require and demand compliance. Legitimate power stems from business managers formal position in the organization based on the activities. This power can be measure with official position of person in business organization. Legitimate power may be derived from prevailing business cultural values that assign legitimate power to some employees or owner, accepted social structure that give some legitimate power to some people, or through one’s position in a hierarchy.

As expert and referent power are related to individual but legitimate power is related or basis on the postion. In this way the amount of legitimate power can be judged or measured by one’s scope of authority. For example, managers of the organization usually have more authority as compared to staff members and staff members have more legitimate power or authority as compared to the community members.

Legitimate power in business organization is measured by work environment by documents such as organizational charts, jobs description and contracts.

Advantages

• A clear hierarchy of employees or worker shows the entire organization to understand exactly who has authority over whom
• Laws and rules exist to reinforce power
• In most societies culturally legitimate power is accepted

Disadvantages

• It does not always result in effective organization
• Does not encourage employees loyalty for the organization
• When someone with this power tries to use that power over some employees they do not have formal power over

Reward Power

Definition

“The ability to reward is called reward power in business.”

Explanation:

Reward power is dependent on the belief that leader use important resources and reward that the follower are willing. There are things in the reward power first one is the Business manager control on the resources which are in demand of the followers/workers the second one is the how much these resources are important and motivation for the followers/workers . when the is good connection and motivation between reward resources and workers then the reword power act as most effectively. In Business staff is asked to perform specific task and meet the requirement then in return of their services they will be served with rewards. So the effectiveness of reward power is totally dependent connection between worker and reward. If there is strong connection between reward and worker then reward power will act as a motivation for that worker because the worker believe that if he/she complete the assigned task then he/she can fulfill his need.

Advantages

The advantages of reward power are mentioned below:

• The anticipation of a reward can motivate worker/employees to work hard to get the rewards
• Can increase the loyalty of workers to the business organization
• Create healthy competition amongst employees if rewards available can only given to a subset of employees.
• Improve retention
• Motivate teams to hit the objectives

Disadvantages

• Giving same award without any innovation and improvement again can act as demonization
• Tangible reward increase the expenses for the business organization
• Other employees may feel less motivated if they fail to get rewards
• Awarding reward to good work can cause them to expect similar reward in the future.

Coercive Power

Definition

“The ability to punish if expectation are not meet is called coercive power.”

Explanation:

This power is for those employees or workers in business who do not complete the request or demand are dispense to punishments. People measure coercive power through reliance on verbal faculty, physical strength, ability to grant or withhold emotional support or tangible resources from others. Coercive power give the leaders a option of physically harm, humiliate, bully or deny love, affection or resources to others to get work done according to request or demand of business. For example if an employees is showing lack of interest in his/her duties then boss/leader may fire him/her from job.

Coercive power can be useful for deterring behavior minimizing and in the situation of crisis. However it is most important to use coercive power with great care because it has significant negative side effect. Coercive methods have been linked to a number of dysfunctional group processes, including anger, dislike, rejection, self-esteem, decrease in motivation, conflict, and resentment.

Advantages

The key advantage of the coercive power is in its ability to face compliance from employees. As such, it is useful in some cases which are mentioned below:

• This power can be used to force the employees who is always late or taking longer then allowed lunch breaks. The managers/leader can warn that employee to removal of bonus, the use of the capability process, or even immediate dismissal to the employee to show intrest in his/her work
• Employees who create decimation and do some harassment can suspended or terminated in sense to stop them from these kind of activities in workplace by using this power.
• if department needs to be turned around otherwise the department will go bust or be shutdown this situation is called turnaround situation. Sometime some members of the department are normally resistant to that change so for those employees who are resisting to that change will be warned of job losses if they don’t change their behavior.

Disadvantages

Coercive power should only used when business managers don’t left any other option to handly the situation or employees behavior, some of the negative aspects of use of Coercive powers are given below.

• Employees or work resist it being used on them because they are always under observation.
• Employees do to use of coercive force/power are motivated to to search alternative job.
• Coercive power is only used when full attention of managers or leaders are being used to observe whole story.
• if there are strict rules and regulation and people are being observed full time then this behavior of managers killed creativity of employees.

References

1. Benton, D.A. (2003). Executive Charisma
2. Goncalves, M. (2012). The Knowledge Tornado, 2nd Ed,
3. Harden, Blaine (2012). Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West,
4. Viking Adult. Kotter, J. (1985). Power and Influence, New York City,