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Organizational Politics

Article · August 2018

DOI: 10.1002/9781119010722.iesc0125

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 1

Organizational Politics

Robert Hinck
Monmouth College
hinck1r@gmail.com

Charles Conrad
Texas A&M University
c-conrad@tamu.edu

Word Count: 5285 (includes main text, cross-references, references, and further readings. Total
word count does not include title, abstract, contributor bios, or keywords.

Abstract

Organizational politics is an inescapable part of organizational life. When handled well, political
action can help fulfill personal and organizational interests; when handled poorly, dysfunctional
politics can lead to lower job satisfaction and hamper an organization’s mission. The purpose of
this entry is two-fold: to explain what organizational power and politics are and how they
influence strategic communication. We argue that strategic communication aims to advance the
organization’s mission by internally aligning its members’ values, identities, and goals as well as
externally promoting the organization’s image, identity, and reputation within the political
environment it operates. Achieving and sustaining both of these alignments depends on
facilitating organizational control and on the strategic management of power and politics through
communicative action. Organizational politics can be seen as the process by which power is
overtly exercised in organizations through both its surface level and structural manifestations in
three components—dissensus, strategy, and networks. Processes operate both within and outside
of organizations shaping their environment and meaning systems upon which organizations
pursue their missions.

Key Words: organizational politics, power, strategic communication, organizational rhetoric

Organizational Politics

Strategic communication has emerged as both a significant topic of research and practice as well

as a new perspective on organizational communication. Broadly defined as “the purposeful use

of communication by an organization to fulfill its mission,” strategic communication grew out of

managerial approaches to organizational communication and included topics such as marketing,

public relations, political communication, issue management, technical communication, and

social marketing campaigns. Early models of strategic communication cast managers as rational
 2

decision-makers whose primary task was to devise ways for their organizations to handle

increasingly turbulent, uncertain, and politically-charged environments (Conrad & Terry, 2016;

Heath & Palenchar, 2009). Internally, the primary role played by communication practioners was

to persuasively communicate management’s conception of the vision and mission of the

organization to employees. Management’s goal was to maximize operational efficiencies, which

included minimizing dissension and conflict; at its core, leadership depended on developing the

political skills necessary to exercise power without prompting resistance (Hallahan et al, 2007;

Mintzberg, 1983). Economic globalization and the advent of new technologies demanded new

models, and the practice of strategic communication has become exceedingly complex. Today,

audiences are multiple, diverse, and fragmented, organizations and their stakeholders are more

dispersed over time and space, communicative interactions are both more immediate and more

distant, and communication genres and the expectations they entail are more blurred (Hallahan,

Holtzzhausen, Ruler, Vercic, & Sriramesh, 2007).

Reflecting these shifts, recent approaches to corporate/organizational communication

have become more integrated, both in terms of the role that communication plays in strategic

planning and in terms of the relationship between internal communication processes and external

communication practices. Strategic communication cuts across organizational endeavors—

interpersonal relationships, group dynamics, and networks—to focus on how the organization

presents and promotes itself through the intentional activities of its leadership and employees to

fulfill the organization’s mission (Hallahan et al., 2007). It may not be possible to create and

sustain a wholly unified organizational voice. Varied adaptations to communicative resistance

are possible and often desirable. Achieving a degree of consistency depends on achieving

alignment, internally among organizational members’ values, identities, and goals, and externally,
 3

among an organization’s image, identity, reputation, and the political environment it operates

within. Achieving and sustaining both of these alignments depends on organizational control

and on the strategic management of power and politics through communicative action (Conrad &

Poole, 2012; Mumby, 2013). The purpose of this entry is two-fold: to explain what

organizational power and politics are and how they influence strategic communication, and to

examine the role that strategic communication plays in organizational power and politics.

General Relationships: Power and Politics

More than just a skill set, organizational politics is about creating, legitimizing, and maintaining

operant rules governing organizational behavior. More than forty years ago organizational

theorist Abraham Zalzenik observed that, “whatever else organizations may be . . . they are

political structures. This means that organizations operate by distributing authority and setting a

stage for the exercise of power” (1970, p. 47). Politics is power in communicative action, and

political action creates, reproduces, and sometimes transforms power relationships (Conrad &

Poole, 2012; Mintzberg, 1983). Traditional views of power focused on its simplest form, when

individuals or groups use communicative strategies to influence others in ways that fulfill what

they perceive are their own interests, in the process imposing their wills on less powerful people.

In traditional perspectives, power is a tool that exists independent of actors’ perceptions and is

more readily available to some people than to others (Clegg, 1989). It is closely related to

“authority,” in part because a person’s position in a social and/or organizational hierarchy

influences the degree to which she or he is able to engage in surveillance of others. Surveillance

is necessary to implement traditional mechanisms of social/organizational control (that is, mete

out rewards and punishments) and it allows actors to both obtain information that is not widely

available and control its distribution (Conrad & Poole, 2012; Katz & Kahn, 1979; Sewell &
 4

Barker, 2001, 2006). Through engaging in political action, powerholders demonstrate their

formal control of resources and willingness/capacity to use them to elicit compliance, in the

process reproducing or enhancing their power. Indeed, the more a person or group’s power is

based on position/authority, the fewer resources s/he has to expend in order to use it (Mintzberg,

1983).

Within organizations, power can be exercised in both negative and positive manners.

Power can be negative if used solely to dominate others. In this sense, power is predicated on

power imbalances which can lead to poorer organizational outcomes, less satisfaction, and abuse

(Conrad & Poole, 2012). However, power can be positive, and indeed necessary, when used to

mobilize people and resources in order to get things done (Kanter, 1977). Furthermore,

understanding power and how it functions is itself empowering and thus can reduce power

imbalances. In helping organizations fulfill their missions, power becomes an important

resource rhetors draw upon in addressing issues of organizational politics. In this sense,

organizational politics can be seen as the process by which power is overtly exercised in

organizations.

In contrast, contemporary views locate power in the perceptions of members of social

groups, including organizations. Perceptions of power are created, sustained, and sometimes

transformed through communication. Power has both a surface structure and a deep structure.

Traditional models capture only one part (also called “face”) of the surface structure of power—

its overt display via threats, promises, negotiations, and other forms of persuasion or coercion.

The second “face” is hidden in actors’ decisions about which powerholders to challenge, what

topics to discuss in public, and what strategies—communicative and other—they should use if

they decide to “go public.” As a result of the hidden face of power, open discussions tend to be
 5

over topics that powerholders are willing to have considered in public, courses of action that are

acceptable to them, and justifications—values, arguments, and evidence—that are not

threatening to them. When considered only in terms of the surface structure of power, politics

consists of the communicative processes that make resistance, or even the mere deviation from

established guidelines and constraints, seem to be irrational.

Contemporary models also focus on “deep structures” of power that usually operate

below social/organizational actors’ immediate awareness. Communication is used to construct,

legitimize, and teach all of the core assumptions of a society, including those that involves power

and politics. Concepts of superiority and inferiority; behavioral rules, rights, and obligations;

definitions of what constitutes knowledge (that is, what is to be viewed as “truth” and what is

defined as “illusion”) and who creates and controls it; and the situations in which political

activity is acceptable and the ones in which it is inappropriate all are created and legitimized

through communication (Foucault, 1980; Mintzberg, 1983; Pfeffer, 1981). Through the creation

and articulation of these definitions, some members of societies/organizations are aggrandized

and some are marginalized. For example, in modern organizations employees rarely are

promoted to managerial positions because of years of experience successfully performing tasks

and developing practical experience provides. Managerial positions and the power, influence,

and upward mobility that accompany them require at least one college degree because it

symbolizes possession of the only legitimate kind of knowledge for management, regardless of

how relevant or irrelevant curricula are to the day-by-day operations of the organization.

A society’s taken-for-granted assumptions tell people who they are, what their proper

role is in their societies and its organizations, and where they fit in social and organizational

hierarchies. However, processes of legitimation typically are obscured in ways that make
 6

arbitrary assumptions seem to be natural (which means inevitable) and normal (which means

morally correct). As a result, they are a powerful mechanism of social and organizational control,

one that critical organizational communication theorists have labeled “hegemony” (Gramsci,

1971). Hegemony is embedded in everyday actions (practices) as social/organizational actors

engage in deference, resistance, and/or domination. It also is embedded in ideas, thoughts,

values, beliefs, frames of reference and meaning systems. Each of these forms of symbolic

action privilege some interpretations of events and de-value others, and obscure the varying

interests of different individuals or groups, often by depicting the interests of powerholders’ as

benefitting everyone, whether they do or not.

Taken-for granted assumptions also underlie “surface” structures of power (Conrad,

1983). People are more willing to comply with orders if they have come to believe that the

person issuing them has the right (moral, ethical, political, or relational) to issue them.

Authority is accepted, and sought after, because people have learned that it is legitimate (based

on authority figures’ presumed superior expertise, experience, vision, and /or morality). As a

result, they come to believe that deferring to it is right and proper. However, cultural

assumptions do not create hierarchy automatically, their impact depends both on the socialization

of lower-level employees and on successful image-management strategies by powerholders.

Crafting an organizationally-valued image depends on constructing a persona that accents one’s

possession of knowledge (Conrad & Poole, 2012; Goffman, 1959), often through the strategic

manipulation of symbols of expertise (college diplomas on one’s office wall, conspicuous

attendance at “managerial training” sessions offered by organizational gurus, and/or using the

key terms embedded in organizational fads) and demonstrating one’s persuasive skill (Conrad

2011; Conrad & Poole, 2012). Similarly, employees’ choices are influenced by potential
 7

rewards if and only if they believe (that is, have been persuaded) that they are significant and

scarce (that is, limited and only available through the actions of their superiors). Punishments

only do so if noncompliance is perceived as involving greater losses than the potential gains that

are available through resistance. Neither inducement is persuasive unless the target also believes

that the power-holder can and will use them to elicit compliance.

Micro-Politics

Central to organizational politics are three components—dissensus, strategy, and networks. First

is the notion of disagreement, that some members of the organization have not fully accepted the

purported mission of the organization, the roles that they have been assigned, and/or limitations

on the resources to which they have access and control. When either internal or external issues

are in play, organizations are more overtly political. Internal issues include reorganization,

personnel (re-)assignment, hirings, firings, promotions, and budget allocations. Common

external political issues include managing existing laws and regulations and/or advocating for the

creation, modification, or elimination of them. These issues are especially prone to stimulate

political discourse because they are salient to organizational members, the uncertainty and/or

ambiguity they form, and the power vacuums that result. In contrast, when organizations are

stable and uncertainty/ambiguity is low, overt political action is relatively rare (Foucault, 1979;

Mintzberg, 1983).

Ironically, the goal of all organizational control systems is to employ power in the

prevention of political action, to place dissent and conflict outside of the realm of the possible

(Mumby, 2013). But no control system is perfect; there is always some space for resistance, and

dissent is a potent form of resistance. However, resistance leads to counter-resistance (Ashforth

& Mael, 1998), usually in graduated phases. Initially, organizational power holders attempt to
 8

persuade dissenters that they are incorrect or mistaken (a process sometimes called nullification)

or that dissenting is socially and/or organizationally wrong (functionally and/or morally). If that

fails, powerholders isolate the dissenters and impose direct sanctions—defaming the dissenters

or expelling them from the organization (Conrad & Poole, 2012; Mumby, 2013).

The second component of surface power and politics is that of “strategy,” symbolic

action that involves a dialectical relationship between the not-fully-conscious enactment and

reproduction of societal and cultural assumptions and the conscious, strategic use of them in

particular rhetorical situations to pursue a rhetor’s perceived self-interests (Lakoff & Johnson,

1980; Burke 1941, 1966). As Aristotle (1991) observed millennia ago, rhetoric (strategic

communication), politics, and ethics, themselves social/communicative constructions, are

inextricably bound together. Symbolic actions define and differentiate poloi from one another,

thereby guiding and constraining policymaking in distinctive ways (Stone, 2011). In Aristotle’s

perspective, rhetoric does involve strategically adapting persuasive strategies to immediate

situations. But, it also creates rhetorical situations by naturalizing and normalizing some

meaning systems and foreclosing/closing others. Rhetoric transcends particular temporal/spatial

situations, connecting the present to reconstructions of the past and anticipations of the future

(Crick, 2014). Because rhetoric involves conscious, strategic consideration of socio-cultural

assumptions, it also carries the potential for situational or cultural transformation. Decision

premises and processes are constructed, sustained, and in some cases transformed, guiding and

constraining policymaking in various polities and rhetorical situations (Cheney & Conrad, In

Press). Examples of quasi-conscious guidelines and constraints at the organizational level

include the articulation of organizational decision-premises (Tompkins & Cheney, 1985), the

creation of “standard operating procedures,” and the development of distinctive uses of

 9

technology. Debates over Constitutions at the societal level, and over “identity” or “image” at

the organizational level, are good examples of the drawing of symbolic lines across time and

space, which includes assertions about a rhetor’s intentions and the historically/culturally

legitimacy of his or her rhetoric (Cheney, Christensen, Conrad, & Lair, 2004).

The final component of surface power is the formation and management of coalitions and

the networks that connect them. Coalitions are particularly important for employees or

departments that lack access to other bases of power. Some coalitions are formed around

individual issues, for example, the allocation of funds in the coming fiscal year budget.

Bargaining within and among issue coalitions involves the distribution of resources. Having

allies includes the additional benefits of increasing employees’ self-confidence and perceived

power and reducing their stress. But, issue coalitions are based on concrete interests, which are

ever-changing. When shifts do occur, every member has the option of defecting and joining a

different alliance. Issue coalitions also are unstable because of the dynamics of size. They are

based on the expectation that some form of spoils will be divided up if the coalition is victorious.

Each member’s reward will be increased and obligations to the other members decreased if the

alliance is of the smallest winning size. But employees also must think about the future and the

need to implement the decision once it is made. Implementation often requires the cooperation

of a large number of people. Their support will be stronger if they are part of the alliance that

got it enacted. To gain their support, coalition members must give up some of their potential

rewards to these persons. Each member of the coalition thus may be ambivalent about the

presence of each other member (Conrad & Poole, 2012).

A more stable type of coalition is grounded in bargaining about power itself and how it is

to be distributed in a society or organization. Power-centric coalitions are not static—nothing

 10

that involves political activity is—but they are more stable than issue coalitions because they are

based on relatively stable sets of perceived interests. When politicking does occur, it tends to be

over elements of organizational life that seem to be stable—routine practices, formal structures,

or organizational documents—statements of goals or bylaws or missions/visions (Cyert & March,

1963). Structures make authority relationships, behavioral guidelines, and constraints on action

concrete, which indirectly helps legitimize them. In general, concrete, unambiguous, internally-

consistent structures make overt political action less likely. When it does occur, it is focused and

usually truncated. In this sense, strategic communication plays an important role in maintaining

structures. However, documents also can be used politically, as resources for argument and

persuasion, that is, as topoi in an Aristotelian sense. Persuasion that fails to link claims to

documents is suspect, or illegitimate. But, negotiations also may be over power that is not

embedded in structures and documents—it is there for “whoever can seize it in their bargaining”

(Mintzberg, 1983, p. 17).

Coalitions do not exist in isolation of one another. They connect with one another and

form networks which often cross or transcend traditional organizational boundaries. External

coalitions include the owners of an organization (or, in the case of publicly-owned corporations,

their representatives); stakeholders (people/organizations who are associated with the

organization either for tangible reasons—because they provide it with resources or who purchase

the goods and/or services that it produces/provides—or attitudinal ones—various “publics” who

believe they have something important in common with one another and who have a stake in the

actions of the organization); and, in some cases, organizations that represent employees’ interests

(unions or other forms of employee representation). But, for most modern organizations some

members of each of these “external” groups also are part of an organization’s internal coalition,
 11

for example its Board of Directors. Similarly, internal coalitions include top management,

operators (the people who actually produce the goods and/or services provided by the

organization, first-level managers), members of the organization’s “technocratic” staff

(specialists who design systems for planning and organizational control), or its support staff

(who provide indirect support to the other members of the internal coalition ). They may have

stable relationships with members of the external coalition, or they may create temporary

relationships (e.g., whistleblowers or leakers) with them.

Globalization and the advent of the internet and social media have significantly increased

the reach, complexity, and fluidity of coalitional networks. On the one hand, multinational

organizations have become increasingly capable of coordinating their actions through networked

structures, significantly increasing their power over all but the most powerful national

governments (Stiglitz, 2003). In addition, the increasing ability of global elites to form mutually

supportive networks have increased the power gap between them and other stakeholders,

including the organizations they dominate. The internet also has allowed non-elites to connect

with one another and pressure organizations across wide swaths of time and space. At a more

microscopic level, multinational corporations’ increased reliance on the internet for political

influence and information exchange has made them vulnerable to advocacy groups, including

hackers (Braman, In Press). Age-old strategies of withholding information from the public have

become less reliable and more tenuous. As a result, networks are increasingly fluid, constantly

being programmed and reprogrammed both overall and in terms of the makeup of central nodes

(Castells, 2009; van Dijk, 2006).

Castells’ (2009) model of communication power moves beyond considerations of

coalitional politics to suggest that power holders are networks in themselves—humans organized
 12

around their projects and interests, not single actors, but complex sets of joint action larger than

coalitional alliances. Networks and networking lead to a new form of subject: the networked

subject. Networks arise from the need for coordination on a global level around common

standards. These standards become increasingly valuable as more social actors adopt them and

consequently eliminate or close off alternative standards. Thus, power becomes the relational

capacity that enables one set of social actors to asymmetrically effect others’ decisions

dependent upon two mechanisms: first, the ability to constitute networks and the goals assigned

to them; second, the ability to connect and ensure cooperation among different networks by

sharing common goals and resources while strategically fending off competing networks

(Castells, 2009).

Central to this process is the ability to build consent regarding the definition and

enforcement of rules governing the institutions and organizations of society (on a macro level)

which in turn are used to influence (on the micro level) other domains of society including

organizational life and political practices. Power arises from actors’ access to networks and the

resources embedded in them and from the imposition of rules governing and coordinating

network activities. The ability to define the values, norms, and culture around which network

rules are established is also unequally distributed. It occurs within the network’s hierarchy

whereby certain nodes are granted greater power over others (like with upper managements’

ability to influence lower managements’ organizational goals). The programming of these

rules/standards are specific to each network, but share common traits regarding their ideas,

visions, and projects they work towards, and are processed through communication making up

key assets for would-be programmers (Castells, 2011).

 13

Taken together, these three elements—dissensus, strategy, and networks—broadly

define organizational politics as game-like, but more like the unstructured games of children on

playgrounds than like official games, with rules, referees to enforce those rules, defined

beginnings and endings, and unambiguous outcomes. On the playground, the makeup of teams is

unstable as competitive dynamics and relational considerations lead some players to join with

others, and then change their affiliations as their needs and goals change. Playing fields are not

level (the player who owns the ball can threaten to “take it and go home,” a strategy that is not

available to other players); rules are constantly being negotiated and re-negotiated (as in the

adage that “if an English gentleman cannot win by playing within the rules, he merely changes

the rules”); and cultural assumptions create inequalities on playgrounds just as they do in the rest

of life (Frost, 1987). Perhaps the most important political games involve the concept of voice,

regulating who gets to speak (and who does not), what they may speak about, and how they must

speak in order to be heard (see iesc0199). The process of regulating voice occurs at an

individual level when organizations suppress dissent, but it also occurs at a broader level.

Organizational discourse tends to be discourse by and for a particular group of people—

primarily college-educated white male managers—and tends to exclude the voices of other

groups—women, non-management workers, and members of racial and ethnic minority groups.

Since these processes of discursive closure are political, it is important to think about it in terms

of organizational power relationships. Employees are expected to speak in the organization’s

(that is, upper management’s) voice, both inside and outside of the organization.

Political game-playing takes place in two inter-related contexts. Within organizations

managers and employees compete over issues salient to their work relationships, including

processes of persuading members to sacrifice their own interests in order to serve the interests of
 14

the organization. Externally, political game-playing occurs when organizations compete for the

loyalty of multiple stakeholders, including public policymakers who have the (legitimized)

power to provide some organizations/managements with financial support that is denied to others,

create rules and regulations that favor some organizations (or organizational fields) over others,

and so on. Of course, the two are inter-related. For example, internal labor-management

politicking is different in societies whose structures and practices create significant power

imbalances than in those in which power is more balanced (for example, “right to work” states in

the U.S. compared to Northern and Western European counties with strong unions and laws

mandating labor participation in organizational decision-making). Similarly, in societies that

allow organizations to be financially involved in political campaigns, the strategies used to

influence policymakers is different than in societies that place barriers between lobbyists and

politicians.

Issue Management and Public Policymaking

“Issues” occur when organizations and external stakeholders have a contestable difference of

opinion about organizational policies, procedures, or practices, or when organization violate

stakeholders’ expectations about how these topics will be handled (Heath & Palanchar, 2009).

Parties have perceived self-interests that conflict in some way, and so many socially-legitimized

values are involved that there is no obvious or easy means of resolving the difference(s). In

optimal situations, organizations and stakeholders collaborate to co-create meaning systems and

solutions. Collaborative outcomes may emerge in private, through negotiation between

representatives of the organization and groups advocating change, or in public venues that also

involve public policymakers. Typically, both activist groups and target organizations/industries

engage in both kinds of political action. Private negotiations often reveal changes in
 15

organizational operations that are beneficial in themselves. Resolving a conflict privately can be

used by organizational rhetors to strengthen their public image/identity and enhance their image

as tough-but-cooperative advocates, while allowing advocacy groups to both increase pressure

on the organization’s competitors. In addition, private resolution can forestall efforts to change

public policies in ways that restrict an organization’s operations and its management’s

prerogatives (Crable & Vibbert, 1983). However, in some cases, issue management moves

beyond organizational identity/image management to encompass public policy formation and

modification.

Organizations influence public policies by persuading policymakers to enact favorable

legislation or block unfavorable laws. Some legislation assists organizations directly by

providing government subsidies, granting preferential tax treatment, or constructing barriers for

competitors. Import quotas and tariffs disadvantage foreign competitors. Regulatory processes

often do the same for domestic competition. Indeed, throughout U.S. history it has been much

more common for regulations to be enacted in order to protect existing professions, industries, or

organizations from competition than to protect stakeholders from existing economic actors. Pro-

corporation regulations are justified through a rhetoric of "reining in excessive competition" or

rescuing an industry or the overall economy from "chaos." Other legislation has an indirect

effect. If legislators declare that a company's or industry's ethically-questionable practices are

legal, those practices are much easier to defend. If stakeholders complain about the practices,

organizational rhetors can shift attention and responsibility to the policymakers.

However, political scientists long have recognized that elite groups, including issue

managers in organizations, prefer that public policies be made in private, through constant, quiet

lobbying of regulators and policymakers, especially the chairpersons of legislative committees

 16

who control political agendas. Making policy in public is risky. It gives stakeholders and

opponents an opportunity to get organized and form coalitions with one another. It also can

undermine coalitions that organizations have formed with one another, as some members decide

that their interests are best served by abandoning their peers. Making policy in public also forces

elites to justify their positions on key issues. Although they have a number of influential

rhetorical strategies available, they may fail to persuade key audiences, who actively interpret

messages in terms of their own perceived interests. Fortunately for corporations, there are many

means of privatizing public policymaking. The simplest strategy is to press for laws that allow

them to hide information about their operations. For example, the George W. Bush

administration persuaded Congress to fund a $700 billion bailout of the U.S. financial industry

without requiring firms to reveal what they used the money for; and when the bailout created a

firestorm of protest, the new Obama administration's Treasury Secretary quietly provided at least

$2 trillion more without going through the public venue of Congress (Posner, 2009, p. xiv). In

those rare cases in which pressure is sustained over time, organizational rhetors may have to

engage in public rhetoric. Fortunately, the current dominance of neo-liberal political/economic

ideology usually enables them to define socioeconomic "problems" as "private sector" concerns,

not matters for government policy. The credibility of this argument is grounded in the cultural

assumption that free-market capitalism is inherently superior to any other economic system, and

that government "interference" in the free-market system is inherently futile and perverse

(Hirschmann, 1991).

The organizational politics of issue management and public policymaking reflect the

themes covered throughout this entry on organization politics: it is conducted for the purpose of

influencing audiences, issues arise when dissensus is present, are pursued for reasons of self-
 17

interest, and draw upon questions of legitimacy. Going public becomes increasingly risky as an

organization’s power and control over the issue is reduced leading organizations to prefer

privatizing public policymaking. Beyond responding to the immediate situation or issue,

organizations importantly shape their rhetorical situations by defining the underlying societal

assumptions and ideologies upon which its members and publics come to understand the rules

governing proper behavior in organizational/societal life. This process is tied to questions of

power upon which authority is accepted, values become morally correct, and argumentative

warrants are agreed to. From this, dissensus, and thus resistance, is minimized. Within this

context, strategic communication plays an important role in creating and maintaining these

structures of power, and/or transforming them. While often viewed negatively, moments of

organizational politics provide opportunity for change. If embraced, organizational life can

improve as new rules, policies, values, and such are embraced; if not, organizational politics can

leave us feeling silenced, unsatisfied, or oppressed.

See also: iesc0022; iesc0075, iesc0081; iesc0095, iesc0100, iesc0117, iesc0152; iesc0154;

iesc0160; iesc0199

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Authors’ Bios:

Robert Hinck (Ph.D., Texas A&M University) is an Assistant Professor of Organizational

Communication at Monmouth College. His program of research centers on organizational
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rhetoric, particularly regarding international and diplomatic rhetoric, public diplomacy, conflict
and negotiation, as well as global media. His research projects address concerns regarding the
formation and sustainment of political cooperation among distinct political communities, and the
rhetorical means by which they structure and manage internal and external stakeholders.

Charles Conrad is a Professor of organizational communication and organizational

rhetoric/strategic communication in the Department of Communication at Texas A&M
University and a past editor of Management Communication Quarterly. His research focuses on
the interface among organizational discourse, power, and politics and has appeared in the
Quarterly Journal of Speech, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Communication
Monographs, The Journal of Manufacturing Systems, and Management Communication
Quarterly. His most recent books are Global Engineering (2009), Organizational Rhetoric (2011)
and Strategic Organizational Communication, 7th ed. (2012).

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