The roles of departmental and position power in job evaluation

[Welbourne, T. M., & Trevor, C. O. (2000). The Roles of Departmental and Position Power in Job    Evaluation. The Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 43, No. 4 , pp. 761-771]

Power may be defined as an ability to influence the decisions or outrightly control the behaviour of people. In organisations, it is nowadays used as a tool which can lead to positive or negative outcomes depending on how it is used. Such use of power to attain desirable outcomes gives rise to another term i.e. ‘politics’. Studies have shown that almost all the departments and processes are under the huge influence of organisational power and politics, and job evaluation process is no exception to that. Job evaluation may be defined as a process of systematic comparison between jobs to access their relative worth for the purpose of establishing a rational pay structure. The researcher, in this paper has attempted to test whether the job evaluation outcomes are affected by the departmental power in a university setting.

The researcher has successfully proposed a political perspective on job evaluation wherein it is believed that the job evaluation is based on the worth of a position and not on the worth of its incumbent, due to which the position holders use influence tactics in the job evaluation committees. This has made the researchers suggest that job evaluation procedures are not accurate and reliable because power and politics come in between and influence the job evaluation outcomes.

Further, the coalitional view or the political view of the organisation suggest that firms can be characterised as groups of subunits, each with its own agenda, which might or might not be consistent with organisational goals and thus this gives rise to the ‘departmental power’ which becomes an important determinant for resource allocation decisions. The literature suggests that more powerful departments are better at acquiring what they want and thus they have positive effect on favourable job evaluation outcomes. However, the researcher proposes that such positive effect will be greater when the position power of the jobs being evaluated or upgraded is high. Thus, the researcher posits that it is not only the departmental power but also the position power within the department that influence the job evaluation outcomes. Also, a clear distinction has been made between the position power and personal power wherein the position power signifies the incumbent’s ability to influence others through position held in an organisation’s hierarchy rather than through personal characteristics.

The results suggest that departmental power definitely affects resource allocation, however such effects become more substantial when the power associated with resource recipients is high. Also, the effects of departmental power on the number of new positions and position upgrades are greater when the position power associated with the jobs being evaluated is high. Thus, both departmental power and position power strongly influence the job evaluation outcomes. However with regard to politics in job evaluation, the researchers hold mixed views. While some researchers view this politics positively since it ultimately improves the department’s and firm’s performance, others contend that such job evaluation (under the influence of power and politics), does not accurately access the worth of the job.

[submitted by Mansi Babbar, Ph D Scholar, 2017]