INSEAD Period 2/5
MBA PROGRAMME October-November 1998
Page 1
POWER AND POLITICS IN ORGANIZATIONS
Prof. Martin Gargiulo
(EW-022, -x4323)
Secretary: Christine Merle (x4174)
Overview
Organizations exist to facilitate cooperation among interdependent people. Yet,
the realities of the complex social machines in which most of our life takes place are
far from the consensual environment suggested by this image. While interdependence
can¡ªand should¡ªbring people to cooperate, it is also one of the main sources of
political conflict and power struggles in organizations. In this course, we examine the
sources of power and the strategic responses to interdependence in organizations, as
well as how these factors on the performance of individual managers and the
organization. You will learn how to analyze an organization from a political
standpoint, how to identify your key dependencies, and how to gain leverage on those
dependencies in order to make and to implement decisions.
Methodology
Power and Politics in Organizations is based on cases, videos, a textbook
(Jeffrey Pfeffer: Managing with Power, Harvard Business School Press, 1992), and
in-class discussion of your own ¡°cases.¡± For this purpose, you will have to write a
report describing and analyzing a case where organizational politics had a
consequential impact on the outcome of the situation. Ideally, your report would be on
a situation in which you were personally involved. If this is not possible, you should
write about a situation you know well, either directly or through the key player(s).
You may change people and company names if you prefer to do so. I will select the
best reports to discuss in class and to illustrate various points of ...