Power and politics in organizational and social systems

¶ … environment in which an organization operates, seen as a cumulus of social, economic, legal or technological factors, is constantly changing. We may refer to the specific or general environment so as to separate the environment in which the company revolves on a day-to-day basis, including here its suppliers or customers, from the general conditions within the country (Schermerhorn, Hunt and Osborn. Organizational Behavior. Eighth Edition. John Wiley and Sons. 2003. Chapter 12,-page 14). It becomes evident that the organization is influenced by both these different environments and that the decisions made within the company and the organization's politics are strictly determined by them.

The government regulations on business form much of the legal and economic factors of the general environment. However, they are also specific, as they have a direct impact on the company's business and on the decisions taken. A common business regulation is the Anti-Trust set of regulations, that bans a company from having a dominant position on the market.

If we refer to the economic, social and cultural phenomenon of our times, globalization, which means that we extrapolate the specific and general environment to a global environment, we may see some of the influences it has on organizations, and especially on the work relations, on power and politics in the organization. A global organization's most notable characteristic is perhaps is wide variety of cultural differences and peoples. Generally, they all share a common goal, the prosperity of the organization they work for and it is often the case that they tend to be assimilated to the organizational culture and pass their national culture on second place.