Question

Question 2.

In their work on power in organizations, John French and Bertram Raven propose five ‘bases of social power’. With reference to examples, discuss these five bases and explain how they might be seen in organizations.

Answer 1

1.Reward Power : The  leader motivates the followers and persuades them to improve their performance by offering pretty handsome incentives and perks.Richard Branson, CEO of the Virgin Group pay attention to the concerns and needs of individual followers.He excites them to put extra effort to achieve the company goals.Richard has a famous quote for it "Learn to look after your staff first and the rest will follow".

2.Legitimate Power : Its is a result of a person with a leadership position who have authority to reward or punish their subordinates .Employees often listen to and follow a person in a position of power in organizations. People generally respect the office of President of the United States, for example, so they listen to and follow that person’s leadership, regardless of political disagreements.

3.Referent Power : It is the result of the personality of a person that attracts followers.The people with this power usually are charismatic.They have great number of followers because they are influenced by the charismatic personality of the leader.The followers even try to imitate the behaviour of the leader.The best example for referent power would be Steve Jobs.He inspired creativity among his people.He always made the employee feel they’re working on the greatest product in the world.

4.Coercive Power is the exact opposite of Reward Power which means that a person can punish others for noncompliance Leaders who practice it usually penalize their employee's poor performance rather than rewarding them a good performance. It seems sometimes necessary to do it to achieve the goals but it will have a negative impact on the employees in the long run.Most of the leaders follow Coercive Power at times when needed.

5.Expert power : It is the result of the in-depth knowledge and vast experience a leader has that influences their followers.As jobs have become more specialized, employees increasingly depend on the experts within the organisation for their experience and knowledge.Mark Parker,CEO of Nike joined the company as a footwear designer.He was involved in most of Nike's innovative designs.Nike depends on Parker's expertise in product research, design and development.