Reward Power Vs Coercive Power

When it comes to being a leader it takes more than just being well liked amongst peers. A leader must be organized and able to use different types of power to achieve goals and ready followers. One type of power is called coercive power. According to the book titled Leadership: Enhancing the Lessons of Experience, by Gordy J. Curphy, Ginnett, and Hughes, coercive power is, “the potential to influence others through the administration of negative sanctions or the removal of positive events” (Curphy, 2015, p. 128). Another type of power that relates to coercive power is reward power, as stated by Leadership, “the potential to influence others due to one’s control over desired resources.” (Curphy, 2015, p. 127). By the definitions above, coercive …show more content…
Molm in Is Punishment Effective? Coercive Strategies in Social Exchange, the article states that two people in a relationship can have “reward power” and “punishment power” over the other (Molm, 1994, 76). According to Molm, coercive power is not just one person having power over another to give them punishment. Coercive power can be either equally divided or skewed among members in a relationship (Molm, 1994, p. 76). The article says that reward and punishment are associated because in order for someone to receive a punishment or a reward, it must be administered by another person (Molm, 1994, p. 75). Punishing someone does not have to be a physical punishment either. For example, in the article, she says that a punishment could be a child screaming because the parent is not giving it any attention, or a politician refusing to sign a bill because there is something he wants in return (Molm, 1994, p. 77). Here, Molm is showing that the punishment could be something as small as showing dissatisfaction. So, if any actions or inactions are occurring for a specific reason at another’s expense, it is a punishment. According to Leadership, punishment and its ability to effect the effectiveness of followers is more or less mixed, often times it depends on the situation and how much punishment was actually administered (Curphy, 2015, p. 688). So, punishment is a very controversial topic and it has been seen that …show more content…
Followers and leaders can have different types of interactions. For example, in Band of Brothers Episode Curahee, originally written by S. E Ambrose but produced by Spielberg and Hanks, a show about WW2, Captain Sobel is not well liked by his men. For example, he forced a member of Easy company to take a three-mile hike to the top of a mountain alone because he drank a sip of water on the previous march when the company was told to not drink anything (Hanks & Spielberg, 2001). Here, Sobel is using his coercive power to punish the soldier. But, in the episode this punishment led the rest of easy company to rally around the one man who was required to do the hike. In the scene, the rest of the company comes running up behind the man on the hill and all of the soldiers run to the top together (Hanks &Spielberg, 2001). Here, Sobel is using his coercive inappropriately. Throughout the Curahee episode, Sobel pushes the men more than necessary sometimes. For example, Sobel takes away leave for the weekend because he said there was something that was dirty. The men responded angrily and started taking a dislike to Sobel (Hanks &Spielberg, 2001). This is an example of when a leader uses punishment inappropriately. By Sobel taking away Easy companies’ leave, he is preventing them from becoming closer as a unit and also from giving them some time off. This, as seen in the episode, can lead to dislike. The