OFFICE USE ONLY

Submission date

ASSIGNMENT COVER SHEET (INDIVIDUAL / GROUP)

Please complete and attach this form to your assignment.
All assignments must be submitted to lecturer on the stipulated submission date.

Name 1

Kam Jichuan

Student No1

Name 2

32685149

Student No 2

Unit Code BUS240

Class Code

Unit Name

Organization Development and Human Resource

Manageme

BUS240 Full Time- A / B / C / D / E / F

Local Lecturers name

Part-Time- A / B / C

(circle yours)

Chua

Assignment No. (ie. 1,2,3) or short answer

1 / 2 (circle appropriate)

Your assignment should meet the following requirements.

Please confirm this by ticking the boxes before submitting your assignment
My/Our assignment are 1.5 or double spaced and clearly
legible
My/Our assignment is written on one side of page only
I/We have provided a wide margin (3 cm) on left-hand side
of page
The first page of my/our assignment is clearly labelled with
my/our name/s, student number/s, unit no, unit name and
tutors name.
I/We have retained a copy of my/our assignment
I/We have completed and signed the declaration below
All forms of plagiarism, cheating and unauthorised collusion are regarded
seriously by the University and could result in penalties including failure in the
unit and possible exclusion from the University. If you are in doubt, please
contact the Unit Coordinator
DECLARATION
Except where I/we have indicated, the work I/we have submitted in this assignment is my/our own
work.

Signed:

1)
4)

2)

3)

Date
submitted:

31st July 2015

CE USE ONLY
Date assignment collected:

STUDENTS SIGNATURE on collection of

assignment:

Not applicable for Kaplan Singapore

___________________________________________________________________________

BUS 240C
Organization Development and Human
Resource Management
___________________________________________________________________________

Name

Kam Jichuan (32685149)

Assignment Topic : Individual Assignment

Tutor Name

: Mr. Richard Chua

In this contemporary era, organizational politics do exist in every organization.

Organizational politics is an inevitable and inherent reality. Organizational politics is
so intricately woven with a management system that norms, performance,
relationships and outcomes are excessively influenced and affected by it (Vince,
2004). An effective organization focuses on strong power and political issues. These
two components are crucial to create a sustainable organization. As an Organization
Development (OD) practitioner, by diagnosing the use of politics and powers are
fundamental to understand the behaviour of an individual within an organization
(Cheung-Judge, 2012). OD practitioner also fully aware that power and politics can be
use as a positive tool by manager to complete the tasks, but in a negative and
cooperative way, it will also leads to destruction and erroneous of an organization
(Meisler and Vigoda-Gadot, 2014).
As an OD practitioner, he/she need to know that the power is the potential
ability to persuade others to follow or get them to do what you want them to do or the
ability to get the things done in the way you desired (Fairholm, 1993). Influence is the
exercise of power or leadership, to persuade others and organize them to follow. Both
power and influence are key factors when a manager trying to achieve organizational
goals. There are two type source of power that greatly influence both individual and
organization behaviour: position power and personal power (Shaver, 2003).
There are three bases of power under position power in which manager uses it
to motivate their employees: reward, legitimate and coercive power. As for reward
power, basically there are two types of rewards, extrinsic and intrinsic rewards which
manager can use to control and motivate other peoples. Extrinsic rewards are usually
tangible rewards given to employees by managers, such as bonus, promotions and pay
raises. In contrast to extrinsic rewards, intrinsic rewards is an intangible rewards
which individual receives directly from an accomplishment of task performance or
arise from within the person who is doing the activity or behaviour. For instance,
employee is allow to take on a task outside their normal work duties. This would
allow the employee to feel like being valued and filled a need within the company.
Coercive power can be defined as punishment power. The managers can use
this power to demote, withhold a pay raise or even fire their employees. Coercive
power able to help the managers to control the behaviour of employees by ensuring
them follow the organizations policies and norms. Legitimate power is also known as
position power. This power is stems from the hierarchy level in which the
4

subordinates are reporting directly to the higher authority for decisions. It also based
on the truth that a person holds a particular position in an organization. In this
context, subordinates agree that managers have a right of command and everyone
should do what he/she say. One of the examples of legitimate power is that held by a
companys CEO.

Process power is part of the legitimate power. Process power is

the control of the input and output of an organization to ensure that all the processes
can be carried out efficiently and effectively.
Personal power is the second source of power that influences individual and
organizations' behaviors. This power emphasizes more on individuals independent
nature within the position that he/she has been placed. There are two main bases of
personal power which are expert and referent power. Expert power basically is the
control which is based on the knowledge and experience that individual possesses in
the position that he/she holds. For instance, an employee would obey to the expert
power possessing by his/her supervisor because normally they feel the supervisor
know how to get things done within a given period. Expert power also able to control
anothers behaviour by being able to exhibit the desirable outcomes through
reasonable means within an organization. Referent power is a power to control an
individuals behaviour within an organization by permitting them to identify with the
source of power. Normally referent power comes from being respected and trusted.
Managers able to gain referent power when subordinates trust what managers do and
respect how they handle the situations.
Organisational politics is the use of power to obtain an end which is not
officially sanctioned and the use of power to search ways of balancing the individual
and collective interest in tough circumstances (Boateng et al., 2013). Organisational
politics can be defined as an activity in which managers will engage to enhance their
power to pursue goals that favor their individual and group interests. Those
employees within the organization may engage in political behaviour to obtain
promotion or utilize the power and available resources to obtain their preferred
outcomes. Power and politics are interconnected to each other. Organisational politics
always linked with conflict resolution, decision making and resource allocation within
an organization (Fleming and Spicer, 2008). Employees are recognized as being
engaged in politics when they start to convert their power into action. Individuals with
great political skills have the capability to gain more power and utilize it to have more

control over resources, more influence in the decision making process and to achieve
their individual goals.
As we know politics is a fact of life in every organization. An OD practitioner
needs to identify and understand an organizations political system in order to drive
the company towards the goal (Parumasur, 2012). The role of an OD practitioner also
should facilitate intentional change efforts based on informed diagnosis. He/she also
addresses issues with the whole system in mind. Generally OD practitioner can be
divided into two categories, which is internal and external. The internal OD
practitioner is an employee within an organization. An internal OD practitioner will
have an advantage of knowledge and experience of general political conditions
prevailing in the organization. He/she also can be a sensitive insider who know the
issues is required. The internal OD practitioner can easily establish intimate
relationships and gain trust within the organizations. As for an external OD
practitioner who is contracted or hired to come in to improve organizational
performance, he/she brought along with his/her expertise which is unavailable
internally. The external OD practitioner also able to probe difficult issue from a
different perspective.
Role of OD practitioner is irreplaceable in helping the organization to become
more effective over time. First of all, the OD practitioner need to help to identify and
diagnose performance gaps (Werkman, 2010). As mentioned earlier,the internal OD
practitioner will have an advantage of gaining insiders knowledge of how things are
executed in the organization. With this advantage, he/she can consolidate all this
information easily, and effectively in identifying and diagnosing the performance
gaps. For instance, it can observe that certain employees exhibit low engagement
compared to others. Facilitating feedback sessions can be done by administration of
employee surveys in order to identify performance gaps. Another important role of
OD practitioners is to understand the distribution of power, conflicts of interests and
value dilemmas which inherent to managing external relationships (Ferdinand, 2004).
Hence, they are able to manage their own role and values with respect to those
dynamics.
The OD practitioner needs to design a set of interventions with planned
activities or actions which will help the organization become more effective. The
main objective of intervention is to generate desired behaviour and performance
(Morris, 2008). There are few factors that will impact on the success of OD
6

intervention (Banerjeeand Rajesh, 2012). The first factor is factors relating to change
situation which including physical and human intervention. The second factor is
related to the target of change that related to the specific targets at which OD
interventions are targeted. The target of change is referring to distinct issues of the
organization and at distinct levels. There are four types of OD interventions which are
Human Process interventions, Technostructural interventions, Human Resource
Management interventions and Strategic Change interventions.
As organizational politics is involved every individual within an organization,
hence Human Process Interventions is an ideal interventions to deal with interpersonal
relationships and group dynamics. Human process interventions is one of the
interventions which will enhance interaction among individuals within an
organization and help to resolve conflict (Piotrowski and Shawn, 2006). Human
process interventions is including process consultation, third party interventions, team
building and large group interventions. These all types of interventions are very
important under human process interventions which emphasize on improving product
yield and working relationships. For process consultation, it aims is to focus on
forming a helping relationship because process consultation is a mutual understanding
between the stakeholder and OD practitioner on working together to improve
organizational performance. Basically, as an OD practitioner, he/she will helps
organization members to diagnose group functioning and design appropriate solutions
to solve the issues, such as poor communications which mostly attributed to
subordinates fear to feedback or communicate to their supervisor. Hence, no proper
communication channel established for a manager or supervisor to disseminate the
formal message to the team members and vice versa. OD practitioner is to aim to help
the members of the organization to acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to
identify and overcome the problems themselves.
The OD practitioner needs to develop their own understanding of the issues
behind of any organizational political conflict (Sayers, 2011).The diagnosis needs to
be able to discriminate between the cultural, team work, power, and values which may
contribute to the difficulty. For instance, it is not uncommon for fundamental cultural
or power to be exploited by particular employees for their own purpose that have little
if anything to do with the organizational tasks. In this circumstance, the overt issue is
not the real problem and it can be fixed easily, but some employee chooses to keep it
hot because it satisfied their need for power. This will always lead to very messy
7

negative organizational politics. The OD practitioner needs to promote positive

organizational politics. The OD practitioner can advise HR managers to provide their
own leadership by raising awareness of existing coalitions and tactfully questioning
the underlying values and purposes.
When an OD intervention is practiced successfully within an organization, the
accomplishments will directly reflect on the level of employee empowerment and
engagement. If the organization is ready for the change and the members are willing
to render their support, the leaders or managers will be more confident in leading the
change and possess a higher level of ownership over the change efforts.

References
Banerjee, Subhojit and Rajesh, Kumar Sinha. 2012. "OD Interventions for Voluntary
Organizations A Strategic Framework."Review of Management 2 (1): 4-17
Boateng, Irene Akuamoah, Albert Agyei, and Opata John Louis. 2013.
Organizational politics: It's influence on firms. International Journal of
Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences 3 (10): 295.
Cheung-Judge, Mee-Yan. 2012. Organization development - a practitioner's guide
for OD and HR. Human Resource Management International Digest 20 (1)
Fairholm, Gilbert W. 1993. Organizational power politics: Tactics in organizational
leadership. Westport, Conn: Praeger.
Ferdinand, Jason. 2004. "Power, Politics and State Intervention in Organizational
Learning." Management Learning 35 (4): 435-450
Fleming, Peter and Spicer, Andr. 2008. Beyond power and resistance: New
approaches to organizational politics.Management Communication
Quarterly 21 (3): 301-9
Meisler, Galit and Vigoda-Gadot, Eran. 2014. Perceived organizational politics,
emotional intelligence and work outcomes. Personnel Review 43 (1): 116135.
Morris, Michael Lane.2008. "Combating workplace stressors: Using work-life
initiatives as an OD intervention." Human Resource Development
Quarterly 19 (2): 95-105.
Parumasur, Sanjana Brijball. 2012. "The Effect of Organisational Context on
Organisational Development (OD) Interventions." SA Journal of Industrial
Psychology 38 (1): 1-12.
Piotrowski, Chris and Shawn, H. Plash. 2006. "Turnover and the Educational
Consultant: An OD Intervention Perspective."Organization Development
Journal 24 (1): 22-27
Sayers, Pete. 2011. Organization development - A practitioner's guide for OD and
HR. Industrial and Commercial Training 43 (7)
Shaver, Susan P. 2003. "Organizational Power and Politics: More than Meets the Eye
in Program Planning." Order No. 3103630, National-Louis University.
http://0search.proquest.com.prospero.murdoch.edu.au/docview/305230175?
accountid=12629.
Vince, Russ. 2004. Action learning and organizational learning: Power, politics and
9

emotion in organizations1. Action Learning: Research and Practice 1, (1): 63

Werkman, Renate. 2010. Reinventing Organization Development: How a
Sensemaking Perspective Can Enrich OD Theories and Interventions.
Journal of Change Management 10 (4): 421-438

10