Power, Authority And Influence The Performance Of A Kids Athletic Team

Every organization needs a leader to make decisions, organize work efforts, manage the budget, and deal with external influences. The larger an organization, the more complicated the hierarchy and relationships become. One example to understand how power, authority, and influence differ from each other along with how politics affects decision making is to examine the role a coach for a kids athletic team.
A baseball team has a coaching staff comprised of several assistant coaches that help with batting, pitchers, and other positions. The head coach has the power and authority to run the team as they see fit, but as part of their authority will delegate responsibilities to the assistant coaches in their area of expertise. The head coach has the power to over-rule an assistant coach, but will rarely exercise this power. All coaches have the ability to influence the performance of the team members through means of various powers such as rewards, coercive, referent, expert, and legitimacy. The parents of the kids are one source of external power that may influence a coach to play their child more than a better player. Additionally, the rules of

This power is important for not only day-to-day operations but for reaching short and long-term goals. The top managers of an organization have considerable control and have the ability to influence the allocation of resources (Rainey, 2014). In the public sector, this means top managers heavily influence internal dealings such as budgets, resource allocations, and goal setting. Externally, top managers influence political alliances, public perceptions, and stakeholders. Lower-level managers may also have substantial power depending on their job responsibilities. They may be subject matter experts, informal coalitions within the organization or with formal organizations such as labor unions (Rainey,