Essay On Organizational Theory And Design

This paper aims to discuss about the critically evaluate the article by Eze, Ikechukwu Bernard and Kabiru Umar published in 2014 on the topic “Authority, Power, and Conflict in Organization: Analysis of the Impact of Their Functional Relationship in Organization Performance”; and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the article. The Organization Comprises Of The Complex Relationships Between The Managers And Their Subordinates, Where Managers Use Their Authority And Power The Managers, which sometimes results in occurring conflict, affecting the overall growth and productivity of the organization. The authors have addressed this concern in their paper. 

 

The research paper by Eze & Umar, (2014) have analyzed an impact of the functional relationship between the power, authority, and conflict in the performance of organization. The main objective of their research was to examine the functional relationship of power, authority, and conflict in the organizational management and operations; determine the nature of their relationship, whether negative or positive; and assess the implications of each of the relationships, since they relate to the total growth, functioning, and development of the entities.

 

It is not easy for any organization to work together. An organization work because of the people working it. It comprises of human beings who work together to achieve the common goals. However, in nature, human beings are unique and complex. The organization is comprising of managers and their followers. The managers are responsible for managing the organization by using their authority and power (Kanter, 2017).

Authority is referred as the right to act in a particular manner that is delegated from one person to another in the organization. The mangers use their formal rights to make the decisions as well as influence the behaviors of the subordinates based on the relationships of the organization (Belias & Koustelios, 2014). On the other hand, power is referred as the degree to which a person uses his or her influence to get another person to do something. Power is used by the managers to ensure their subordinates commitment as well as compliance in the entity (Maduenyi et al. 2015). However, the use of authority and power by the managers result in creating conflict between the people, which can negatively affect the overall growth and productivity of the entity (Abiodun, 2014). Managers play key role in resolving the overall conflicts in money, time, resources, and policy in understandable. creative, and clear ways. The balance of the power between the managers and their subordinates sometimes results in causing the key issues in the entity (Rahim, 2017).

The research by Eze & Umar, (2014) have used some literature reviews and books; and have strategically demonstrated the inter-relationship between power, authority, and conflict in the organizational performance. This relationship has been shown through a regression line that indicated the association between the worker’s performance as an outcome of the good application of the managers’ power and authority and the organizational growth and productivity. The below figure 1 is the regression line that is upward sloped from left to right. Through this figure, the authors indicated the way suitable application of power and authority by the managers increases the workers’ performance and the organization’s growth and productivity. The figure 2 shows the regression line that is sloped downward from the right to left. This indicates a decline in the performance of the workers results in creating a decline in the growth and productivity. 

 

Figure 1: Growth and Productivity of the Organization

 

Figure 2: Growth and Productivity of the Organization

 

The authors Eze & Umar, (2014) found that in practice, an overall outcome of the influence of the power and authority on the workers’ behavior can be negative or positive depending upon their multiplying effect on the organization’s growth and productivity. Further, they found that if there is increase in the organizational growth and productivity, the influence will be positive, but if the multiplying effect result in dropping in organizational growth and productivity, the outcome will be negative. 

The strength of the article is that the article has used qualitative research, where it reviewed some books and literature reviews to address the concern. The authors have formed different parameters based on which it has observed larger sets of data relating to the workers’ performance and the organizational growth and productivity, which dependent upon the extent of the application of the power and authority by the managers and the occurrence conflict. They analyzed and interpreted data through a regression analysis. Although using qualitative approach provides various benefits, there are some disadvantages that cannot be ignored.

Some of the disadvantages of the qualitative research is the issues of increased bias, lacks proper insights, and is subjective. Only limited literatures relating to the issues have been reviewed. Further, the authors have used a statistical method to analyze and interpret the findings of their research i.e., regression analysis. There are various demerits of using regression analysis. The regression models cannot properly work if there are errors in the input data. If the preprocessing of data is not well performed to prevent the redundant data or missing values or imbalanced distribution of data, the overall validity of regression model suffers. It is susceptible to the collinear issues. As the overall number of the variable increases, the regression model’s reliability decreases. It doesn’t take care of the nonlinearity automatically (Darlington and Hayes 2017). 
Also, the scope of the research is limited because of taking only power, authority, and conflict impacting the performance of the organization, into consideration. There is also an issue of generalizability because the findings of the research cannot be generalized in all kinds of organizations across the globe. The organizational performance is also influenced by the other factors. Future research needs to be conducted on the different other factors, and also the outcomes of the research need to be verified. 

Therefore, it can be concluded that the author finds and believes that the existence of a clear relationship (negative or positive) between the conflict, power, and authority in the entity, and equally on their overall impact on their workers’ performance and organizational growth and productivity. This finding of the authors can have the key implications, since it can be used by managers in predicting the outcome of the action to the other. They can also predict the organizational growth and productivity as an outcome of the performance of the workers because of the application of power and authority in the organization’s overall management. It has been found that the authors used the books and literatures to collect the data and have used the regression model for analysis and interpretation. It has serious limitations. Hence, the future research needs to adopt different factors impacting the organizational growth and development, and should adot the quantitative approach to verify and validate the data.

Abiodun, A. R. (2014). Organizational conflicts: Causes, effects and remedies. International Journal of Academic Research in Economics and Management Sciences, 3(6), 118.

 

Belias, D., & Koustelios, A. (2014). Organizational culture and job satisfaction: A review. International review of management and marketing, 4(2), 132-149.

Darlington, R.B. and Hayes, A.F., 2017. Regression analysis and linear models. New York, NY: Guilford, pp.603-611.

Eze, I. B., & Umar, K. (2014). Authority, Power, and Conflict in Organization: Analysis of the Impact of Their Functional Relationship In Organization Performance. European Journal of Business and Management, 6 (22).

Kanter, R. M. (2017). Power failure in management circuits. In Leadership Perspectives (pp. 281-290). Routledge.

Maduenyi, S., Oke, A. O., Fadeyi, O., & Ajagbe, A. M. (2015). Impact of organisational structure on organisational performance. Nigeria: Thesis Submitted to Covenant University, 354-356.

Rahim, M. A. (2017). Managing conflict in organizations. Routledge.