Let me remind you of my boiler-plate advisory that everything discussed by your prof and what’s in your text is important… Ok, I said it, now let’s deal with what’s important.

The ability to distinguish between power sources and contingencies is often problematic for students. On a list or diagram it isn’t difficult to remember them. However, in essay situations or scenario-based questions confusion easily sets in. It’s the contingencies that determine the amount of power one has. Contingencies do not affect where the power comes from. For example, you can have a powerful engine in your car, but so what? It isn’t going anywhere, unless you step on the pedal. The pedal is like a contingency.

There is one aspect of a specific source of power many people forget. It concerns legitimate power and the requirement that followers (employees) must agree/accept that the person has power over them. This notion may seem odd at first, but it is quite important, and often overlooked. As for the other four sources of power, they don’t typically cause too much confusion. That’s probably due to the fact they are self-describing.

Remember that part in the previous section about being able to define power? That may seem like just another simple definition, but when influence and politics get compared or discussed together the distinction between them starts getting murky. Power represents the capacity (potential) to influence… On the other hand, influence, is the act (behaviour) of using that power. Let’s use the car analogy again. The engine is the source of the power, the gas pedal (throttle) is the contingency. Nothing happens until you act (behave) by stepping on the pedal. The act of stepping on the gas would represent influence.

Lastly, how do we distinguish between an influence tactic and organizational politics? That’s a tough question, but as with so many things in OB, and human behaviour in general, it’s dependant on the perception of the evaluator. In other words, it’s based on perception. Perception is reality as they say.