With modern regulations regarding campaign finance laws, limits on the amounts that lobbyists can spend wining and dining people in positions of power, and laws against undue favoritism, such as nepotism restrictions in hiring, it would seem that the role of outside power and influence on an organization would be relatively small. However, since most of the restrictions regarding such lobbying and financial incentives can only be legally applied to elected officials or those in public positions (like police officers), the problem of political maneuvering within the business sphere is a difficult one to deal with.

             Power and politics affect business decisions at all levels of an organization; from the manner in which a receptionist treats a visitor to the personal preference of a CEO for another company based only on the personality of that company's representatives. Individuals are at least subconsciously, if not fully aware of being, influenced by the perceived power and potential benefits wielded by others; a lower-level staffer is going to behave differently when meeting with their regional manager than when discussing which brand of copy machine to purchase with the technology department. Similarly, the perceived power of outside individuals to the company changes the manner in which they are treated by the organization; a sales manager with a close friendship or even just an enjoyable business relationship with one seller is more likely to patronize that seller over someone that he or she does not know personally or someone whose personality clashes with his or her own.

             While the business world is often assumed to be governed by finances alone, this rule of thumb appears more and more cliche in today's world where the politics (in the broadest sense of the word, not just in that which implies the involvement of elected officials) of the office and in the organization play a definitive, if subjective, role in decision making.