MGT 424 Module 6 Power, Influence and Ethics Example

No Authority, One Braking Fault and a Trade Show in Six Weeks: Power, Influence and Ethics in a Product Launch Decision

Student Name

Business Administration Program, Aspen University

MGT 424: Leadership

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

No Authority, One Braking Fault and a Trade Show in Six Weeks: Power, Influence and Ethics in a Product Launch Decision

Northstar Mobility, a composite company in Minneapolis, Minnesota, designs and builds powered wheelchairs. Its new mid-range model is scheduled to launch at a national trade show in six weeks, with dealers already promised demonstration units and first shipments. During final testing, the chair failed to stop within the required distance on a wet ramp in 3 of 40 trials. Engineering has traced the problem to the braking software and estimates eight weeks for a fix and retest. The product manager, responsible for the chair's success but with no authority over engineering, sales or the launch date, believes the chair must not ship until the fix is proven. The sales vice president argues that the failure rate is small, that a fix can follow in a software update and that missing the trade show would cost a year of dealer commitments. Her own director is undecided. This paper analyzes her power, chooses influence tactics and sets out the ethical line she must hold.

Bases of Power

French and Raven (1959) identified five bases of social power. Reward power rests on the ability to give things others value, coercive power on the ability to punish, legitimate power on a recognized right to direct others, referent power on others' identification with and admiration for the person, and expert power on recognized knowledge. The product manager has no reward or coercive power over the sales vice president or engineers, and her legitimate power covers the product plan, not the launch decision. Her strongest base is expertise: she knows the test data, the users and the regulatory expectations better than anyone. She also has some referent power with engineering, where she spent four years before moving to product management.

Influence Tactics

Yukl and Falbe (1990) asked managers and their coworkers how often different tactics were used in influence attempts directed up, down and sideways. Rational persuasion, which relies on facts and logical argument, appeared more often when people tried to influence their bosses than when they influenced subordinates. Consultation and inspirational appeals were among the tactics reported most often in every direction, while pressure showed up mainly in attempts directed at subordinates. Coalition tactics, enlisting others' support, were also reported. The direction of influence shapes which tactics fit.

Ethical Leadership

Brown et al. (2005) described ethical leadership as having two sides: the leader behaves rightly in their own dealings, and the leader actively spreads that standard by talking about it with followers, rewarding it and weighing it openly in decisions. Ethical leaders are not only honest themselves; they make ethics visible, talk about it and reward it. In their studies, ethical leadership related to followers' satisfaction with the leader, extra effort and willingness to report problems to management. If Northstar ships a chair with a known braking fault, it teaches every engineer that test failures can be overridden by a sales calendar, the opposite of the behavior a safety-critical company needs.

The Ethical Line

The line is clear: no chair ships to a user until the braking fix passes testing. A wheelchair user on a wet ramp cannot step off. Everything else, including the trade show, can be negotiated.

Understanding the Other Side

The sales vice president is not careless. Dealers commit their annual budgets at the trade show, and a competitor is launching a similar chair there. Missing the show could cost an estimated $4 million in first-year orders and strain relationships with dealers who were promised units. He also believes, wrongly but sincerely, that a 7.5% failure rate on wet ramps is acceptable for a first release because most users rarely face wet ramps. Influence will work better if she acknowledges these pressures and offers a way to meet his real need, dealer commitments, without shipping an unsafe product.

Her Director's Hesitation

Her director worries about being seen as blocking revenue and about the company's relationship with the sales vice president, who is more senior. Rational persuasion with data will help, but so will showing that the delay protects the company from a much larger cost: a field failure, a recall and possible injury to a user would harm the brand far more than a missed show. She will bring the quality manager to the meeting so the director is not asked to stand alone.

The Plan

She will first meet her director with the test data and a written risk analysis. She will then consult the sales vice president, not to argue but to ask what he most needs from the trade show, and propose a solution: show the chair at the show as a preview, taking dealer orders for delivery after testing, with an announced ship date. She will build a coalition with the quality manager, who shares responsibility for safety, and with the engineering lead, asking whether added staff could shorten the fix to six weeks. All three will present together to the vice president of operations, who owns the launch decision.

Keeping Engineering Willing to Report

Brown and colleagues found that ethical leadership encourages people to bring problems forward. The engineer who ran the wet ramp tests reported the failures promptly, even knowing the launch date. However the decision turns out, the product manager will thank her publicly in the next team meeting, so that the next person who finds a problem late in a project reports it just as quickly.

If Influence Fails

If leadership decides to ship anyway, she will put her objection in writing to the vice president of operations and, if necessary, to the company's quality and regulatory officer, whose role includes such concerns. Ethical leadership sometimes means accepting personal risk.

Conclusion

The product manager lacks formal authority but holds the expertise that matters most. Research on influence tactics points to persuasion upward, consultation with the sales vice president and a coalition across functions, while research on ethical leadership explains why her stand matters beyond this launch. Offering a preview instead of a shipment gives the company a way to keep both its trade show and its integrity.

References

Brown, M. E., Treviño, L. K., & Harrison, D. A. (2005). Ethical leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development and testing. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 97(2), 117-134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2005.03.002

French, J. R. P., Jr., & Raven, B. (1959). The bases of social power. In D. Cartwright (Ed.), Studies in social power (pp. 150-167). University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research.

Yukl, G., & Falbe, C. M. (1990). Influence tactics and objectives in upward, downward, and lateral influence attempts. Journal of Applied Psychology, 75(2), 132-140. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.75.2.132