Military Power
The Dark Side of Power
Power is essentially the ability to influence people and situations to your desired outcome. It exists in various forms, e.g. it can be the authority that comes with one’s position, it can also come from relationships with influential persons or it can come from the possession of immense resources such as wealth or military power. Power can be used to achieve outcomes even if the power was bestowed not for the intention of producing the outcome. Like a double edge sword, it can be used to protect or to harm.
I’m currently doing Regional HR in the financial sector. Before working, I’ve always felt that HR is like a “mysterious-feared-almighty-body” of the organization, bestowing rewards upon the worthy, meting our punishments for the evil ones and drawing up policies to ensure order, so that justice and peace prevails within the office.
But of course, that is my ideal function of HR but most of the time I realize that a role that primarily requires you to deal with the interests of people, the corporate world doesn’t really work in that way. It irks me how relationships triumphs over policies for greed and self interests jeopardizes one’s decision to uphold the rules. Then comes the question, what really is the purpose of HR when its policies are not put in place to eradicate the very problems it was designed for.
Today I was handling the recruitment of a very senior expatriate and because the company pays for the accommodation of expatriates, I was studying the rental lease contract. To my horror, the contract requires the advance payment of the rental for a period of time which I consider extremely long and unreasonable. Seriously whoever pays rental in advance? And mind you it was a six figure amount in US dollars for rental. There could be so many problems arising from such an arrangement – What if the expatriate resigns before the tenure was up? What if the house for some reason gets destroyed by an earthquake / landslide? What if the office decides to move elsewhere and the house is no longer convenient for the staff to travel from? What if there are some hidden problems with that house? It puts the company at a major disadvantage considering the huge amount of money that exchanged hands.
Then you must be thinking why did HR choose that house for the expatriate if the terms are so unfavourable? We didn’t. The expatriate did. So why didn’t we say no? I wanted to. I wanted to question him. But my boss gave him the go ahead. “Why?” I asked.
“Because he’s the CEO’s friend.”
I see a severe lapse of fairness in this agreement as I started to ponder why such an arrangement could come to place. There is a possibility that the expatriate in question could be profiting from this deal. The intention of the provided accommodation is to provide a safe housing for our employees while working in a foreign land and certainly not for them to abuse this benefit by cutting it into their pockets. (Whether or not the expatriate did abuse this benefit, I wouldn’t know as I wasn’t given the opportunity to question him. As such, this scenario is at best speculation on my part.)
Then I began to elaborate my stand and highlight my doubts regarding this arrangement to my boss but he just shrugged them off and said,
“It like that one lah.”
How can I ever accept a such explanation?
It irks me that there are employees who can squander away the company’s resources without justification because of power due to something as frivalous as “friendship with the CEO”; and they get away with it because most people with the power to act would let them get away with it for the sake of their self interests.
You may be wondering if I’m so indignant about this, why did I not just bring this up all the way to the top. I’m idealistic but not reckless. I personally don’t care for the corporate world or office politics. However if I choose to be gung-ho and individualistic about this, I risk endangering my boss’ and my big boss’ positions which at the moment is not concrete with my current CEO. But at the very least, where others in similar positions would probably prefer to pretend to be agreeable with their bosses, I did voiced my objections.
The root of power abuse is greed; it grows slowly by feeding on self interests and fear, eventually rendering all rules and systems useless, and thereby hindering the progress of the entity.
http://emeraldiel.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/the-dark-side-of-power/
About the Author
The author is a Regional HR executive in the financial sector of Asia. Her role involves overseeing the HR operations in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Vietnam and Brunei.
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