Organisational Politics

Abstract

We are writers and practitioners in the field of management and organisation development. Over the last five years we have had the opportunity to work, or at least talk, in depth with perhaps as many as 5000 managers. These managers have come from all the continents of the world, from a very broad array of backgrounds and cultures, industries and jobs. Our relationship with them arises because, by and large, they are all looking for answers to what they consider to be difficult, and sometimes intractable, management problems. They can easily appear to be confused, disillusioned and disempowered, sometimes unrealistically confident and buoyant, but they almost always seem to be looking for models, tools and techniques to make their managerial and leadership roles easier and more fulfilling. It is not that they expect us to provide definitive answers. After all, they are usually experienced, thinking people who know that organisations are too complex to be reduced to simple recipes for solving all managerial problems. No — it is as though there is a piece of the organisational jigsaw puzzle missing, something that they are not taking account of, a core assumption they are making that does not hold.