Organisations are politically charged, complex, social institutions. This complexity does not arise directly from scale or even diversity, but rather from conflicting priorities and preferences: those of individuals, those of groups and those of the organisation. The process of negotiating these priorities results in the pursuit of power and in political behaviour.
Power concerns the capacity of individuals to exert their will over others. Politics, in organisational terms, is the expression of this power. Where power is the ability to overcome resistance on the part of others, politics are the activities undertaken (overtly and covertly, consciously and subconsciously) to acquire, utilise and exploit power.
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