Engineering Products Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Engineering Products - sample ExampleThe theory developed by French and Raven (1958, p. 453) distinguished five bases of social power. These are the reward power, the coercive power, the referent power, the lawful power, and the expert power. EPs power policy is the combination of iii bases, namely reward, coercive, and legitimate power. The reward power is the leaders influence on his followers exerted by the dispensation of valued rewards in return for compliance with instruction. When EP established the pay plan and the new criteria for promotions, opening upward(a) mobility to compliant managers, it was wielding the proverbial carrot and trying to court obedience to central policy. Coercive power, on the otherwise hand, is based on the administration of penalties or sanctions for non-compliance with instructions. In EP, HQ wielded the stick in the form of sanctions and dismissals for managers who insisted on not abiding by HQs calibration policies. HQ also introduced punis hment in not allocating orders to plants perceived to be uncooperative with central authority. Finally, the exercise of legitimate (or position) power is based on the obligation of subordinates to accept instructions given by the leadership because of its position and title. HQ used its legitimate power by employing control mechanisms such as centralizing the decision-making functions on itself changing the companys structure to favour standardization affording rewards and imposing punishments training of personnel and imposition of policies and rules (Hellriegel, D. and Slocum, J., 1978, p. 365 ). In EP, however, the changes in the organisational structure may be viewed as a benevolent attempt to gradually inculcate standardization through collaboration. The manufacturing councils, the engineers International College, the internal consultants, and regular meetings of international HR specialists, were all meant to smooth out the diversity from localized operations to a standardize d system.