Power and Politics in Organizations

In contrast, coercive power is the ability to take something away or punish someone for noncompliance. Coercive power often works through fear, and it forces people to do something that ordinarily they would not choose to do. The most extreme example of coercion is government dictators who threaten physical harm for noncompliance. Parents may also use coercion such as grounding their child as punishment for noncompliance. Steve Jobs has been known to use coercion - yelling at employees and threatening to fire them. When John Wiley & Sons Inc. published an unauthorized biography of Jobs, Jobs's response was to prohibit sales of all books from that publisher in any Apple retail store. In other examples, John D. Rockefeller was ruthless when running Standard Oil Company. He not only undercut his competitors through pricing, but he used his coercive power to get railroads to refuse to transport his competitor's products. American presidents have been known to use coercion power. President Lyndon Baines Johnson once told a White House staffer, "Just you remember this. There's only two kinds at the White house. There's elephants and there's ants. And I'm the only elephant".