Analyzing the Influence of Organization Culture, Politics, and power on Individual

and Team 
Organizations use human and material resources to mobilize their production function. The
function of human resources is to transform material resources into useable products. An
individual cannot work alone to enhance the productivity of the production. Hence, they have
to work in a group that can lead to enhance productivity, effectiveness, and performance. But
the consisting members of a group are not compelled to act in the same direction because
everyone has their way to treat in an organization. The organizational environment plays a
crucial part to influence the work of individuals and teams. 
The organizational environment consists of organizational culture, politics, and power. The
organization's culture is the consolidation of an organization’s expectations, experiences,
values, and philosophy that affect employee’s behavior to achieve the organization’s goal.
Moreover, the organizational culture plays an important role to gain a competitive advantage in
today’s competitive business environment. Charles Handy’s power, role, task, and person
culture model gives an insight into how organizational culture influences individual and team
performance. The role culture can be defined by the roles and responsibilities of the employees
which are delegated to them by their work performance, experience, specialization, and
interest. If we look at BHP Group, it also follows the role culture. BHP Billiton is a world-leading
resource company that eliminates and processes minerals, oil, and gas. The task culture refers
to the group or team with familiar specializations so that they can complete the task in an
innovative way. BHP Billiton also purses this special culture to get the maximum level of output
from the employees or the workers. In the person culture, the employees perceive that they
are more important than the organization. The employees only focus on their interests,
excluding organizational interest. It takes an organization a seatback and the organizations
suffer in long run. BHP Billiton is aware of this person's culture; their organizational culture is
sorted in a way that guides the employees to focus on only organizational interest over
personal interest. 
Edgar Schein's Model explained that organizational culture has three different levels. (Schein,
2010). The top-level organizational culture is “Artifacts” that includes clothing style to posters
on the wall to the volume of speech. It is considered as the tangible and visible aspect within an
organization. Moreover, it can include the behavior of the employees with each other and the
layout they are using. For example, BHP Billiton has open-door policies, specific office layout,
and official dress for the employees. The outside world can easily understand the artifacts of
BHP Billiton. The “Values” within an organization is the second level of organizational culture. It
defines the core values within an organization that is not easily observable by the outside
world. In the context of BHP Billiton, the core values of BHP Billiton are shared goals, principles,
and standards. Integrity, variety, assistance, quality, and passion are also considered as the core
values of BHP Billiton. Their employees have accepted the values and behave accordingly to
their core values. The third and last one is “Assumptions” It is intangible and difficult to
describe, but it can be understandable by the people when they are habituated to the way their
organization works. Though the employees of BHP Billiton are not clear with the assumptions,
the BHP Billiton has different ideologies, philosophies. 
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” (Lord Acton)- this quote is
also veritable in the context of an organization when it suffers from organizational politics. It is
organizational politics that can be declared as evil and immoral practice. It can include the
spreading of rumors, leaking confidential information, exchanging information with others in
the organization to increase power or gain personal targeted purposes. (Ferris et al, 2018).
Organizational politics mostly occur in high-level management because they make the policies
and decisions for the organization. The following reasons are responsible for organizational
politics- 

 Depriving oneself to work hard- Some people in the organization don’t want to work
hard but they want to get success. As a result, they use organizational politics as a tool
to gain success spontaneously. 
 Having a trust issue- As the employees in an organization came from different areas,
they cannot easily trust each other to share any information. It leads the employees to
start politics to destroy other’s reputations. 
 Changing position in upper level- In the recruitment in upper-levels, the employees get
started to prove themselves best. It sometimes creates organizational politics. 

There are many other reasons for arising organizational politics. There is hardly any company
that is involved in organizational politics. The BHP Billiton is not out of the woods. It also suffers
from organizational politics. Because of their highly efficient management, their employees
avoid organizational politics. Despite having 80,000 employees, BHP Billiton tries to provide its
employees with a friendly culture, better salaries, benefits, and work-life balance. These job
satisfaction tools lead the employees of BHP Billiton to avoid organizational politics. Moreover,
management is also active in monitoring employees. 
Another component that influences the individual and team of an organization is
“Organizational Power”. Organizational power can be described as the capacity to influence the
subordinate employees to steer them for achieving goals. (Ocasio, 2017). It doesn’t only
represent the ability to utilize the manpower but also the utilization of machines and materials.
As we are talking about the influence on the individual and team of an organization, we try to
portrait the organizational power on human resources. Both structural and functional power is
crucial for allocating the work to the employees and the growth of the organization. In the
rational power structure, the authority of power comes from the upper level to the low-level
employees where the top-level management delegates the work to the low-level employees. In
the context of BHP Billiton, they have maintained the organizational power tactically. BHP
Billiton has managed to influence and motivate their workers by using their proficient authority.
BHP Billiton has conferred the power to the ideal leadership team that leads their company to
use the full extent of performance from their individuals and team.  
Critical Analyzation of Organization Culture, Politics, and power Influence on
Individual and Team 

It is people who are the heart of an organization. The progress of an organization solely
depends on the leadership, mentorship, followership of the people. The people of an
organization formulate strategies to utilize the other resources. Only skilled employees or
workers can contribute to the transformation of their organization from mediocrity to
excellence. Hence, the organizational environment can provide the employees to originate new
and innovative ideas. There are some other elements that are extremely influencing the team
and individual performance. 
The organizational culture drives the employees or workers with underlying beliefs,
expectations, and values within the organization. A strong organizational culture plays an
important role in an organization's success because employees get definite direction on how to
give proper action in any situation. Moreover, the employees believe that their proper actions
and responses will be rewarded, as their organization is having a strong culture. The cultural
orientation of BHP Billiton is very simple because it always tries to develop the right equilibrium
of organizational culture. (Perrott, 2015). Having a diversified workforce, it has effectively
constructed a strong organizational culture. As a result, BHP Billiton has occupied its position in
the hypercompetitive market by using the organization as a radical tool to gain strategic
benefits. 
BHP Billiton believes that integrity is one of the core values of its company, it encourages its
employees to accomplish the task in ethical and integrated ways. It also emphasizes on
maintaining a healthy competition with the competitors. BHP Billiton also encourages its
employees to share new ideas and put their efforts into their assigned tasks. Moreover, this
company is more focused on business ethics over customer demands. As the organizational
culture of BHP Billiton is work-oriented, they put additional pressure on their employees for
maximizing the task performance. It causes their employees in reducing job satisfaction.  
Organizational politics also influence individual and team performance. Though organizational
politics doesn’t require to be cursed, it can affect the job performance of the employees.
Sometimes the managers find it gross to involve in organizational politics. BHP Billiton has fair
policies and strict regulations so that the employees hardly involve in corporate politics. BHP
Billiton has trained its employees in a way that all the employees are having their interpersonal
skills and avoid corporate politics to gain personal satisfaction. Moreover, BHP Billiton is
committed to the highest level of governance to reduce corporate politics among the
employees. 
Organizational power refers to the ability to influence the behavior of others. An efficient
leadership helps the organization to accomplish the goals by effectively stimulating the
subordinates. If the leader fails to keep the integrity and starts to misuse the power to pursue
personal motives, it will lead the organization to face a great setback. (Tannenbaum et al,
2013). BHP Billiton has effective policies and principles to eliminate the misuse of
organizational power. BHP Billiton focuses on legitimate power and expert power because
these theories allocate the authority based on the job designation, performance, knowledge,
and ability to perform a task. BHP Billiton’s well-organized organizational structure keeps the
team and individual stimulated.
Bibliography
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