Politics and conflict sometimes capture an organization in whole or significant part, giving rise to a form we call the Political Arena. After discussing briefly the system of politics in organizations, particularly as a set of ‘political games’, we derive through a series of propositions four basic types of Political Arenas: the complete Political Arena (characterized by conflict that is intensive and pervasive), the confrontation (conflict that is intensive but contained), the shaky alliance (conflict that is moderate and contained), and the politicized organization (conflict that is moderate but pervasive). the interrelationships among these four, as well as the context of each, are then described in terms of a process model of life cycles of Political Arenas. A final section of the paper considers the functional roles of politics in organizations.

The organization as political arena

From the Atlantic to the Pacific Century: Cross-Cultural Management Reviewed

This paper aims to develop a theoretical framework for illustrating the conflict resolution models in Chinese society on the basis of author's previous analysis of Chinese cultural heritage. In my book "Knowledge and Action," I analyzed the structure of Confucianism with a reference to my theoretical model of "Face and favor: Chinese power game." According to my analysis of Confucian ethics for ordinary people, interpersonal relationships in Chinese society are classified into three categories: vertical in-group, horizontal in-group, horizontal out-group. When an individual is in conflict with another in one of these three groups, the conflict resolution models may be further classified into 12 categories according to four aspects of consideration, namely whether s/he wants to maintain interpersonal harmony, whether s/he insists on attaining a personal goal, the interactants’ ways of coordination, and what is the dominant response. The author believes that this model can be viewed as a general framework for understanding Chinese social behaviors. This article proposes a conceptual framework to illuminate the conflict resolution in Chinese society on the basis of the author's previous works on analyzing Chinese cultural heritage. In my paper "Face and favor: Chinese power game" (Hwang, 1987), I developed a theoretical model for explaining Chinese social interaction on the basis of symbolic interactionism and social exchange theory; In my book "Knowledge and Action" (Hwang, 1995), I utilize this model as a scheme for analyzing Chinese cultural tradition including Confucianism, Legalism, and Martial School by the method of structuralism. I believe that the Confucian ethics for ordinary people as described in my book "Knowledge and Action" is an archetype of Chinese social action which can be used to understand the Chinese social interaction in various domains of life. Laudan (1978), a major scholar in philosophy of science, advocated that the criterion for judging the progress of a theory is its problem solving effectiveness, rather than its confirmability or falsifiability. The most important standard for evaluating a theory is its effectiveness for providing acceptable solutions to relevant problems. In other words, a significant feature of scientific progress is to transform the anomaly and unsolved empirical problems into solved problems. So long as an approximate statement of a problem can be derived from a theory, we

Guanxi and Mientze: Conflict Resolution in Chinese Society

Treasures in the China house A review of management and organizational research on Greater China

The literature on organizational politics has described organizational decision making as a fluid, informal process characterized by conflict and compromise. One of the most important reasons decision making tends to become politicized is because decision situations are uncertain and open to multiple interpretations. The political process develops as coalitions attempt to define the decision context to gain control over the decision-making process. But the concept of information typically used to investigate organizational politics is defined in terms of the ability to predict future states of the world. This definition completely overlooks the socially constructed nature of information and the fundamentally socially constructed nature of the decision-making process. The result has been an ignoring or underestimating of the role the distortion and manipulation of information plays in communicating and decision-making processes. In this essay, information is understood as a socially constructed phenomenon ...

Secrecy, Information, and Politics: An Essay on Organizational Decision Making

The imperial Chinese bureaucracy was subject to extensive manipulation and corruption by clerical subordinates and lesser functionaries. Higher officials, while required to demonstrate competence in classical scholarship in a series of rigorous, competitive examinations, were lacking in practical administrative knowledge, and were unable to deal with this problem.

Clandestine Management in the Imperial Chinese Bureaucracy

Ancient Mesopotamians were perhaps the first people to evolve a methodical, disciplined approach to the management of large-scale, complex organizations. The success and longevity of their temple corporations provide dramatic testimony to the versatility and effectiveness of the managerial concepts and techniques which they developed.

Richard L. A. Sterba

Papers

Clandestine Management in the Imperial Chinese Bureaucracy

The Organization and Management of the Temple Corporations in Ancient Mesopotamia