The Difference Between Formal And Informal Power

Formal power is given to someone related to the job and position held in the organization. Depending on the position, authority varies and decision making power can be more or less. In other hand, informal power is something a person earned himself. Informal power has unique characteristics depending on the education, experience, and expertise in certain field. These qualities are viewed with respect, however there are several factors to gain personal power. There are many sources of power that someone can achieve using different resources.

Reward Coercive Legitimate Referent Expert Information Connection Persuasion Charismatic Personal Interpersonal Have Position (Tomey, 2009)

Mostly nursing managers and leaders have positional power, however one person can have more than one kind of power. For example a leader has positional power, charismatic, personal, and expert power, if that leader has qualification.

It is preferable for a leader or manager power to be equal to the authority of the position. The nurse leader or manager knowledge of sources of power and authority can help one assess and use them.

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Nurses have the authority to delegate but remain responsible for what they delegate. (Tomey, 2009) Tomey, A. M. (2009). Guide to Nursing Management and Leadership (8th ed.). St. Louis, Missouri:

Professional organizations provide for the professional development of their membership. Some associations provide continuing education contact-hour credits for free or at a significant discount. Webinars and web-based media formats also aid nurses in learning new information. Frequently these offerings focus on advocating for nurses and nursing and teaching, for instance, how to contact and work with legislators and how to advocate for new ways to strengthen healthcare.

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Kim and Carenina,

In addition to your post about the nursing leaders using evidence-based nursing practice, it is crucial to accomplish organizational goal. Evidence-based practice is to bring positive outcome for the patients. Nurse leaders creating a positive work environment that foster employee satisfaction. Critical thinking skills are essentials to nursing practice to recognize the complexity and various technologies used in current health care system. Delivering a patient care in current complex health care settings, nurse managers must be able to redesign the care to meet the organizational goal. Nurse leaders are challenged to think critical to deliver evidence- based nursing care that was learnt in nursing school. Nurse leaders use different techniques to deliver critical thinking. “Inquiry-based learning techniques such as questioning, discussion, debates, case studies, and critical incident analysis can be used when planning curriculum for management and leadership education programs” (Zori, 2009).

Zori, S., & Morrison, B. (2009). Critical thinking in nurse managers. Nursing Economics, 27(2), 75-9, 98. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/236937990?accountid=458

Cultural competence is in the era of evidence-based practice. Nurses shall practice interventions, which were already tested and clinically proven to reduce racial inequalities. Evidence-based practice and research are mostly used in clinical practice to provide culturally congruent care. The transcultural nursing concepts appeared in medical professional years ago due to migration of different societal culture. Peoples are sensitive about their cultures and want to save their norms and values.

It is very important for nurses to preserve their cultural heritage during the direct patient care. “Cultural competency can be defined as having specific cognitive and affective skills that are essential for building culturally relevant relationships between provides and patients” (Kersey-Matusiak, 2012). It is also nurses’ duty to consider patient’s language, gender, patient’s subculture, and interpersonal relationship throughout planning nursing care. Transcultural researchers challenge nurses to become culturally sensitive and knowledgeable about their patients.

Kersey-Matusiak, G. (2012, April ). Culturally competent care: Are we there yet?. Nursing

Angela,

When I was reading the your post about the Shared Governance Model, I have limited knowledge on this topic. According to Ireson &McGills, it is the multidisciplinary-shared governance model adapted an ecologic model that emphasizes interdependence among component parts and uses available resources (1998). In health care system the horizontal communication channel will be more focused on the patient care and increase the staff commitment to quality patient care. The main purpose of shared governance multidisciplinary team is to focus on patient care from the grass-root level and identify the problem in a positive way to improve the patient care service.

Ireson, C. L., & McGillis, G. (1998). A multidisciplinary shared governance model. Nursing Management, 29(2), 37-39. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/231424820?accountid=458

Critical thinking is something a person cannot learn just by watching. It has many components that need practice and experience. “Faccione (2004) identifies several core critical thinking skills, including interpretation, analysis, inference, explanation, and self-regulation” (Ward, 2006). The essential component of critical thinking is to analyze and recognize the importance. Critical thinking is scientific processes that involve, assessment, planning, intervention and evaluation (Ward, 2006). It is hard to say if critical thinking is just the experience. We need to assess and planning, those definitely need education from someone or learn in book. To implement that knowledge as intervention for subject and evaluation, we need some experience. In my opinion critical thinking is combination of both learning as well as experience. Only experience can’t develop critical thinker but he/she must have knowledge what s/he is doing.

Ward, C. W. (2006). Developing critical thinking in nursing. Med - Surg Matters, 15(5), 1-15. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/236964444?accountid=458

Barcode

Bar code reduces labor cost and inventory cost thus provides company higher cost reimbursement and it includes fee- for- service. Healthcare industries collect revenue from patient using various tools and techniques, so it is important to document correct information of the patient, otherwise hospital can loose money. Bar coding implementation will analyze the accurate information thereby reducing the redundancy and errors. Hospitals can loss the revenue from incorrectly charting, insurance denial, incomplete documentation, and misplaced charting. Not only that bar code reduce labor cost and inventory cost thus provide company higher reimbursement. “In most situations such cost reimbursement provides for the reimbursement of depreciation and interest expense, which then may be used to repay financial requirements associated with any indebtedness” (Cleverly, Song, & Cleverly p. 517, 2011).

Cleverly, W. O., Song, P. H., & Cleverly, J. O. (2011). Essentials of health care finance (7th ed.). Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Learning.

Which resources might be used in nursing or health care settings to support an organization's strategic initiatives? How are decisions made to allocate these resources efficiently? When resource allocation decisions are made, who is responsible for the decisions' execution and evaluation?

Organizational strategic planning refers to long-term planning to achieve the goal. Improve efficiency, focused on available resources, expand opportunity, and communication with the stakeholders to ensure organizational goal. Staffs, financial resources, advance technologies, educational materials, are the major resources for nursing or health care settings to support an organization’s strategic initiatives. These resources can be allocated based on the priority of the organizational goal and compare the data usages of resources.

Once the planning and implementation decision is made then the top of the organizational personnel gathered the statistical data from each department and consolidated the resources. Depending on the demand the resources will be allocated among the departments. The management sections of the organization are the responsible for the decisions’ execution and evaluation of allocated resources. The managerial position hold accountability for strategic planning, cost allocation, marketing, organizational culture, staffing, scheduling, evaluation, and quality control of the organization. Continue assessment after implementation for changes managers will do the quality check and program evaluation.

What is strategic management?

Strategic management signifies the strategic plan, actions, and allocation of resources from the top management to implement strategy to accomplish the long-terms goal of the organization (Strategic management, 2009).The process of strategic management defines the organizational strengths and weakness, upcoming opportunities, and future direction of the organization.

What are some examples of business strategies in nursing or health care settings? How do leaders execute strategic management plans?

Heath care industry is moving towards advance technology and our organization’s main strategic plan is to use barcode system by 2016. However, to support these decisions stakeholders as well as internal staffs have to follow the strategic management of health care organization. However, assessment of strength and weakness will provide the good insight about the strategic plan. In our organization, the business strategies involve good customer review, implement bar code system, cost controlling, and adequate staffing. Leaders of the organizations use the planning process using internal and external, and environment assessment. The analysis of strength and weakness that might affect the organization will change in plan of action.

Executives using the strategic planning process give direction to the organization, improve efficiency, weed out poor or underused programs, eliminate duplication of efforts, concentrate resources on important services, improve communications and coordination of activities, provide a mind-expanding opportunity, allow adaptation to the changing environment, set realistic and attainable yet challenging goals, and help ensure goal achievement (Tomey, 2009, p. 222)

Strategic management. (2009, Apr 24). The Kathmandu Post Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/434652396?accountid=458

To what degree are you aware of or involved in your organization's budgetary process? In your opinion, how well does the leadership in your organization address budgeting? What cutbacks or redesigns have taken place due to budgetary issues? How did the leadership in your organization institute those changes? Consider leadership styles, adherence to organizational goals, strategic initiatives alignment, and resource redistribution and allocation.

Budget is a plan for allocation of resources within the organization that includes both financial and nonfinancial such as materials, equipment. Determination of budget for organization is depends on the balance sheet, managerial reports, ROI (return on investment). Although budgeting affects every aspect of organizational operation including strategic initiatives and resource allocation, not everyone of the organization involves in budgeting process. Fiscal manager coordinates the fiscal planning, plan budgets, and explains budget to others. “The governing board, administrator, budget director, steering committee, and department heads are often involved in the budgetary process” (Tomey, 2009, p.253). Me personally have not involved in my organizational budgetary process, however I am aware of analyzing expenses, cost-effective care, defining available resources, and negotiating desired resources for our unit.

Our management keeps updating the employees about the organizational budget routinely. We have annual meeting on fiscal year budget; we will be informed about the types of budgets available, current economics, cost bad debt, censuses, and overall goal of the organization. Quarterly, our meeting is mainly focused on cost containment and inventory and monthly meeting involve customer reviews, social media and our unit, given rank based on the patient care, length of wait, and overall customer satisfaction.

Budgetary issue has not hit hard in our unit. However, some of the changes and cutbacks were implemented. Management changes the policy to hire more full-time nurse instead of travel nurses to cover on-call and extra shifts. Our unit has three extra paid on-call shifts per day that is no longer available. Management focused on documenting every item used in terms of patient care, list of new items are added in the procedure-charting list. This will help organization to bill the patients on the items used for care. To stay top of the rank, our ER started fast track for level 4 patients to provide faster care and waiting time is less. ER becomes vigilant in waiting time by showing “wait time in ER” in our home page. “Wait time in ER” is a good strategy of marketing.

Our management pulls up the all patients’ data that falls under door-to- procedure timing and review the chart to make sure quality care is provided. Failure to do so, employee has face-to face meeting with manger to clarify the reason for not complying with policies. Leadership style can be effective and ineffective depending on the situations; our leaders are effective in terms managing our unit within limited budget and not laying off staffs. The management sections of the organization are the responsible for the decisions’ execution and evaluation of allocated resources. The managerial position hold accountability for strategic planning, cost allocation, marketing, organizational culture, staffing, scheduling, evaluation, and quality control of the organization.

Tomey, A. M. (2009). Guide to Nursing Management and Leadership (8th ed.). St. Louis, Missouri:

How would you describe your leadership style? I think different leadership styles are needed in different situations. Sometimes a leader needs to be authoritarian, other time they can be more democratic and coaching. Different situations call for different skill sets. http://guides.wsj.com/management/developing-a-leadership-style/how-to-develop-a-leadership-style/ What changes have you made in your leadership style as a result of your evolving leadership role?

I have learned to be much tougher and how to be more authoritarian/commanding when it is needed. What challenges have you faced as a leader in today's health care systems? Everything is about competing priorities. We need to give high quality excellent care with fewer resources. Find the balance here is challenging sometimes. What is the effect of formal and informal power in your organization? Power and trust go hand in hand. If you trust those who have both formal and informal power to work for you or in your best interest things feel better. You feel more empowered to do what is needed.

Identify Formal and Informal Power Structures

Identify the current formal and informal power structures in the organization. How might the power and political structure of the organization affect employee behavior. Power comes from an individual or group influence over another. The sources of power are divided into two general groups which are formal and personal. An individual’s position in an organization is based on formal power. Formal authority comes from the ability to coerce. Coercive power depends on the fear of negative results from failing to comply with rules and regulations. Political behaviors in organizations are activities that are not required as part of an individual’s formal role. Some factors that influence employee behavior are individual and organizational factors. When employees feel that politics are a threat they respond with defensive behavior to avoid blame or change. Employees can also behave with compliance when reward power is put into play.

Identify characteristics of the company culture. What are the potential influences of the corporate culture on employee behavior. Organizational culture is a system that refers to a shared meaning held by distinguished members of the organization. Culture is a descriptive term, it is concerned with how employees perceive the characteristics of an organization’s culture, not whether or not they like them. When an organization’s culture is strong the management is not concerned as much with developing formal rules and regulations to help guide employee behavior. Cultural differences will affect employee satisfaction and performance. Organizations that operate with people from high power distance such as most of Latin America, find that their employees are much more accepting of mechanistic structure.

Updated: Sep 29, 2022
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The Difference Between Formal And Informal Power. (2016, Sep 27). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/the-difference-between-formal-and-informal-power-essay

The Difference Between Formal And Informal Power essay
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