MGT2382 Week 8 Learning Journal: Power, Influence, and the Ethics of How Work Really Gets Moved

Date: Calendar week: June 30-July 6, 2026

Category: Field Lab Learning Journals > MGT2382 Learning Journal

Course link: MGT2382 Organizational Behaviour – Week 8: Power and influencing; McShane Chapter 10.

Lens: Critical lens: power is not automatically abusive, but hidden or unaccountable power becomes dangerous quickly.

Opening reflection

This week’s material on power and influence is uncomfortable because it strips away one of the polite myths of organizational life: that work moves only through job descriptions, policy, formal authority, and clean decision charts.

That is not how organizations actually function. Work moves through authority, expertise, relationships, reputation, access, gatekeeping, information, pressure, persuasion, alliances, timing, and politics. Some of that is normal. Some of it is useful. Some of it is corrosive.

The problem is not that power exists. The problem is when power is hidden, denied, abused, or detached from responsibility. When that happens, people are still being influenced, but they are not being treated honestly.

Power is a tool, not a virtue

Formal power can help coordinate work. Expert power can improve decisions. Referent power can build trust. Reward power can encourage effort. Coercive power can stop harmful behaviour when used carefully and lawfully. But none of these power bases are automatically ethical just because they are available.

The ethical question is not simply, “Do I have power?” The better question is, “What does this power do to the people under it, and can I justify using it this way if the power difference were made visible?”

That visibility test matters. A lot of questionable power survives only because it is informal, indirect, or difficult to prove. People can feel the pressure, but the organization can deny the pressure because it was never written down.

Influence tactics and the line between persuasion and pressure

Influence tactics sit on a spectrum. Rational persuasion, consultation, collaboration, and inspirational appeal can respect the other person’s agency. Pressure, coalition tactics, manipulation, and selective information can cross into something more damaging.

Hard tactics may sometimes be necessary, especially when safety, legality, or serious accountability is involved. But hard tactics become ethically dangerous when they are used to win convenience, silence dissent, or force agreement from someone with less power and fewer options.

The difference is not only the tactic. It is the purpose, the context, and the power gap. A direct instruction from a supervisor does not land the same way as a suggestion from a peer. A request attached to job security does not land the same way as a request that can be safely refused.

Organizational politics: not always evil, never harmless

Organizational politics is often treated as a dirty phrase, but politics simply means that people are trying to shape outcomes in a social system where interests, resources, and status are not evenly distributed. The question is whether that political behaviour serves the work or merely protects personal position.

Healthy political skill can help people build support, move good ideas, protect vulnerable projects, and navigate competing priorities. Unhealthy politics turns the organization into a private game: information is hoarded, relationships are weaponized, accountability becomes selective, and people learn that truth matters less than proximity to power.

The danger is that political behaviour can become the hidden operating system of the workplace. The formal chart says one thing. The real chart says something else. The formal process says decisions are objective. The real process says influence depends on who has access, who is protected, and who can be ignored.

Knowledge sharing and power

The knowledge-sharing material matters because information is one of the quietest forms of power. A person who controls information can slow work, protect status, create dependence, or shape what others believe is possible.

Good organizations make important knowledge visible and transferable. Weak organizations allow knowledge to become a private kingdom. When that happens, the system becomes fragile. The work may depend too heavily on one person, one department, one informal channel, or one gatekeeper who cannot be questioned without consequences.

Knowledge hoarding is not always malicious. Sometimes it grows from poor documentation, rushed training, unclear ownership, or a culture that rewards being indispensable. But whatever the cause, the result is the same: the organization becomes less transparent, less resilient, and more vulnerable to internal power games.

Servant leadership as power under discipline

Servant leadership is often softened into a slogan, but the deeper idea is demanding. It asks leaders to treat power as stewardship rather than possession. The leader still has authority, but the authority is disciplined by service, responsibility, listening, and the development of others.

That does not mean a leader becomes passive. It means the leader does not use people merely as instruments. A servant leader can still make hard decisions, set standards, address misconduct, and say no. The difference is that the power is aimed at the health of the work and the people carrying it, not the leader’s ego.

This is the part that matters most: service does not remove authority. It moralizes authority. It asks whether the people under that authority are safer, clearer, stronger, and more capable because of how power is being used.

Managing up without surrendering honesty

Managing up is another concept that can be useful or dangerous depending on how it is practiced. At its best, managing up means communicating clearly, understanding priorities, bringing solutions, and helping a supervisor make better decisions. At its worst, it becomes flattery, avoidance, or self-protection.

The line is honesty. Managing up should not require pretending problems are smaller than they are, hiding bad news, or translating every concern into something safe enough that power never has to be uncomfortable.

A healthy version of managing up respects the role without surrendering reality. It says what needs to be said in a way the other person can hear, but it does not erase the truth to protect comfort.

Working application

My working test for power is simple: who benefits, who pays, and would this tactic survive daylight? If the answer is clear, fair, and connected to the work, the use of power may be defensible. If the answer depends on secrecy, fear, selective accountability, or plausible deniability, something is wrong.

That test can be applied in small moments. Who controls the schedule? Who controls access to information? Who can say no without punishment? Who gets believed? Who is expected to absorb pressure quietly? Who is given authority without responsibility, or responsibility without authority? These questions show where the real power sits.

Closing reflection

The main lesson this week is that power should be made visible enough to be accountable. Hidden power creates confusion. Unchecked power creates fear. Denied power creates gaslighting, because people can feel the force being applied while being told nothing is happening.

A healthy organization does not eliminate power. It disciplines power. It connects authority to responsibility, influence to transparency, politics to purpose, and leadership to service. When power is handled that way, it can move work forward without turning people into casualties of the process.

Field card

• One receipt: Power is not automatically abuse, but unaccountable power becomes dangerous quickly.
• One next step: When influence is being used, ask who benefits, who carries the cost, and whether the tactic would survive daylight.
• One boundary sentence: “I can respect authority without pretending every use of power is ethical.”