The Monica Ashley Case

As the project manager of “Project Hippocrates”, Monica had formal individual power which came from her position in HEAL-INC’s . She had legitimate power which was the formal authority to use company resources as well as its people to accomplish job-related tasks and duties. This power was granted by the president, Gary Dorr, when she accepted the position of project manager. She also had information power. As the project manager, Monica had access to and control over information including various reports and data supporting the idea of purchasing digital signal processor from an outside vendor. She also had more information about the changes of customers’ needs and competitors’ reaction to the changes. Her colleagues and subordinates therefore needed to depend on her to solve the problems they faced, which gave Monica the information power.

However, Monica lacked reward power and coercive power, which were at the hand of the president Gary Dorr. Monica couldn’t give pay rises, promotion and other form of rewards to colleagues or subordinates who had done well in the project. More importantly, Monica didn’t have the power to punish the ones who hurt team morale and obstructed the progress of the project by engaging in organizational politics, such as Ralph Parker and Ed Kane. In addition, Monica also lacked informal individual power came from personal characteristics and relationship but not legitimate authority. Monica lacked expert power as she didn’t have the expertise in designing and manufacturing of signal processors before taking up the project. Moreover, she was relatively inexperienced when compared with Parker and she had neither made major contribution to the company nor built close relationship with her colleagues and subordinates. She lacked referent power as she was less respected by the others than Parker.

On the contrary, Parker had high informal individual power including expert power and referent power because of his expertise in analog signal processors and his signal processor contribution to the company. He was highly respected not only by colleagues but also the president. As Monica, who has formal power, failed to develop good working relationship with Parker, who had informal power, conflict arose as formal leader and informal leader battled for control over people and resources.

Monica didn’t use political tactic to increase her individual power. She tried to influence others by giving accurate information and explanation about the new system. She tried to use factual and proved evidences to convince other. When she was attacked by Parker, she just worked harder on the project and hoped that the others could see her hard work and supported her. On the other hand, Parker and Kane influenced others by threatening and punishing others. They yelled at Monica at meetings and made false accusations and personal attack against Monica. Parker also threatened Monica by declaring that “any kind of signal processor would be purchased outside only “over my dead body”.” Parker didn’t use evidences and reason to influence others. Instead, he did lots of behind-closed-door politics to increase his power.

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