Margaret Brindle - Managing Power Through Lateral Networking

Cover

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Margaret Brindle and Lisa A. Mainiero

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brindle, Margaret.
Managing power through lateral networking / Margaret Brindle
and Lisa A. Mainiero.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1567203345 (alk. paper)
1. Organizational effectiveness. 2. Organizational behavior. 3.
Corporate culture. I. Mainiero, Lisa A. II. Title.
HD58.9 .B75 2000
650.1'3dc21 9927822

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.

Copyright 2000 by Margaret Brindle and Lisa A. Mainiero

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 9927822
ISBN: 1567203345

First published in 2000

Quorum Books, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.quorumbooks.com

Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.481984).

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Writing acknowledgments for a book is never easy. There are many people to thank, and someone is always forgotten. We would like to begin by thanking a great scholarour mentor who brought us together in this workJerry Salancik. He taught us much about power, politics, and dependency relationships and developed one of the first M.B.A. courses in power and politics at Stanford University in the early 1980s.

We thank our M.B.A. students, whose experiences, real-life cases, and dilemmas formed the underpinnings of this book. It is for the talented and ambitious practioners who struggle within the complex set of power and dependencies in lateral relationships that this book is primarily designed.

We also extend our appreciation to our respective universities. The opportunity to teach at Carnegie Mellon University has been a rich laboratory, where many hundreds of M.B.A. students provided their deeply personal struggles and insights about work problems in settings from this country and across the globe. At Fairfield University, Dean Walter Ryba in particular supported this effort by providing a sabbatical for one of the authors to work on this book. In helping to move the book to its final stage, we thank Alan Sturmer, our editor.

We also thank David Mangini who developed the artwork for the book. His talent with computer-aided design, his objective critical views and his unswavering personal support and unconditional love are much appreciated, especially by one of the authors in particular. And we thank

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Peter N. Stearns for sound editorial advice and most important for listening to endless ramblings about the nature of lateral relationships. His personal love and support has been an unmeasurable part of moving the work from concept to completion.

On a personal note, we thank our families. We also lovingly thank our children who individually and as a group, suffered for and will eventually benefit from this book: Michael-David and Mariana Mangini, and Luke, Timothy, Stephen, and Patrick Brindle. It is our hope that as they grow and enter the world of work, with all of its complexity and excitement, that the model provided in this work may serve them well in managing their own lateral relationships in an increasingly dynamic business environment. They continue to inspire us with their simple love and trusting devotion. As we watch their worlds change from dolls, Legos, yo-yos, and the puzzles of play to working within and contributing to their chosen fields, we dedicate this book to their journey ahead.

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This book was written to fill a gap. A gap? you ask incredously. Books on management take up more space in bookstores than should be allowed by law. Indeed, books on management abound, but they fall into two major categories, neither of which is adequate for todays managers. On the one hand, there is a wide array of self-help books that promote management skills. These books tell you that interpersonal skills and the personal mastery of time, attitude, and perseverance will make you a success. On the other end of the spectrum, books promoting theories about how we can fix entire organizations with new, utopian theories surface almost as prolifically. Such theories as Total Quality Management and Reengineering fit this bill. Proclaiming new solutions for entire organizations, either business or industry, these books also promise fairly smooth sailing over the realities of organizational complexity.