Power and Trust
Moreland and Levine studied an interesting topic that had much relevance to my first “real world” job experience. When I was a student teacher, I definitely experienced the “new member” position. I felt like a marginal member because everyone knew that I was only going to be around for a certain amount of time. However I do think that my entrustment from the rest of the school came when I proved myself in my expertise and was able to contribute to the greater good of the school by going out of my way. Also from a social perspective, I feel I was more easily accepted by my co-workers because I was Catholic and the school was Catholic. I feel that for me it might have been even easier to associate and gain trust from others versus an employee who was hired at the same time, but was not Catholic. Therefore commonalities either personally between employees may be beneficial or a direct connection to the organization. I also noticed a feeling of power over my students. I automatically gained legitimate power due to position and also due to how I carried myself around my students. That is one thing that my cooperating teacher pointed out from the start: I established good management over the classroom compared to other student teachers that taught beforehand. Usually, in my situation, a S.T. needs to gain the trust of the students first in order to get respect and take on a leadership role, luckily for me I intuitively gained respect by my presence and discipline/expectations. Later on I used reward power by giving the students prizes for a job well done on assignments or quiz games. Expert power was also a great part of my position because the students saw that I knew my material well.
One thing that I did want to revert back to however was, is it possible to gain back the same trust that you once had in an organization, when you screwed up? Towards the end of my experience, I had gained an incredible amount of trust and respect from the school. They offered me a position, but in a subject I felt uncomfortable and I couldn’t make up my mind — they rescinded their offer because I kept switching my mind and created a dramatic situation with me. Luckily I wasn’t in the situation where I had to return to work the next day but sometimes people are in such situations and it sounds like a nightmare. My way of trying to make up for my mishap was that I found a perfect person for their position who they later hired. Regardless my trust was not regained. I wonder if anyone has ever been in such a situation and what did they do about it?
The episode of Scrubs is a great example of where to set boundaries in a professional setting. Although Perry might have not known employee’s individual stories (there is a downside to this), if he did know them, this would probably mean he was on a more personal level with people that worked under him and would make the process of firing them even harder. It would make sense that The Janitor would know their stories, except for the fact that he found them out the hard way- by reading personal files. The Janitor does make a smart move however in forcing his way into being goody-goody with his boss per-say. In making the decision on who to cut however, the most beneficial would be to know how the employees work and if there are any workers that either slack on the job or are not compatible. Their personal stories are important and should have some impact but frankly minimal.
Speaking of power: is there anything more powerful than being able to tell a geographic area that you will confiscate their income and the majority of the people hand over their income without a fight? And if you don’t agree a SWAT team will show up. If a robber did the same you would call the cops or defend your home, but when the government does it nobody bats an eye. That’s power.
The Living Wage discussion misses the point that consumption doesn’t make people richer, production does — more stuff lowers prices. By making labor more expensive you are going to increase the unemployment rate (unless your business is a charity, you are not going to pay your employees more than they produce). The only reason Ford was able to pay their employees a higher wage was because they were so productive — early Ford had really big problems with turnover so increasing the wage reduced turnover. Wages are a result of productivity, supply, and demand for labor, not arbitrary whims of employers — employers do not have monopsony power over the demand for labor.
