Politics and Politicking

Ordinarily, the word 'politics' tends to connote the campaign strategies of humans to win votes, the game people play to win power, the methods and tactics involved in managing the control of human organizations. People often talk of mosque/church/shrine politics; office politics and village politics, politics of student unionism, family politics, politics of consensus and the partisan or fractional intrigue within the given organization. Every human organization has its politics, power struggle and influence wielding. A political scientist defines politics as "who gets what, when, where, and how", and another regards politics as the struggle for power to name the personnel who determines the policies of government. Owolabi defines politics as a process through which any group selects, distributes its advantages and disadvantages. He also defined politics as the process through which the authoritative allocation of values takes place. Ejiogu defined politics as the study of influence and the influential, the influential being those who get, most of what there is to get. Organizational politics are plans, tactics and strategies for seizing, holding, acting and exciting power in organization. Politics are used by individuals and groups to achieve their respective goals.

All organizations whether business, educational, religious, political are subject to conflict and rigorous competition between the desires and interests of different departments, teams and individuals. Organizational politics according to Kinicki could be seen as the process through which these rival interests are played out and eventually reconciled. Although, members of an organization are expected to cooperate in spite of the diverse interests to achieve a common goal and compete for rewards and at times, their personal interests may be at odds with the organizational objectives. Mitchell defined organizational politics as informal approaches to gaining power through means other than merit or luck. Organizational politics are used to gain power either directly or indirectly by promotion to the next level, receiving a larger budget or gaining a rewarding assignment.

The totality of our community, society and the entire world and even the entire universe is an organization. Each one of us is born into an organization, manufactured in organization, educated by organizations and spends most of our lives working for organizations. Adeyemo, et al buttressed that our leisure is spent in playing, praying and worshiping in organizations. Organization according to Adeyemo et al can be perceived as the most potent social grouping for coordinating a large number of human actions, all the available resources are mobilized to achieve set goals.

Adeyemo et al define organization as social units or human groupings deliberately constructed to seek specific goals. These include corporations, armies, schools, hospitals, churches, mosques, prisons etc. Ojo defines an organization as a group of people bound together in a formal relationship to achieve organizational goals. Symbolic interpretation sees organization as continually constructed and reconstructed by their members through symbolically mediated interaction. Organization could also be described as the embodiment of unity and common purpose because workers in the organization assist to achieve plans agreed upon by all. Ojo defined organization as a social economic entity in which a number of individuals perform a variety of tasks in order to reach a common objective. The objective is typically too large or too complex for a single person cutting alone to accomplish.

Organizational structure is comprised of functions, relationships, responsibilities, authorities and communications of individuals within each department. It is the structure that determines the hierarchy and the reporting structures in the organizational chart structure is the basic framework within which the executive's decision-making behavior takes place. The organizational structure can take the form of any of the following types according to Ojo.