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The purpose of this paper is to examine hostility as a mediator of the relationship between perceptions of organizational politics (POP) and counterproductive work behavior (CWB).

The authors’ examined the mediation model using a sample of 171 full-time employees studying in an evening MBA program. The authors’ collected the data for this study in three waves.

The findings supported all of the hypotheses. POP was positively related to both hostility and CWB. Moreover, hostility mediated the relationships between POP and both organizational and interpersonal CWB.

Given that individuals high in emotional intelligence (EI) are better at regulating their negative emotions, EI training may be a powerful tool for reducing the hostility elicited among organizational members in response to POP, and consequently, their engagement in CWB.

The current study uncovered the emotional mechanism that underlies the POP-CWB relationship. The findings have intriguing implications in terms of potential moderators that can be developed through interventions in an attempt to reduce the hostility and CWB that result from POP.

The study examined the effects of two context variables, such as work experience and opponent's power on the styles of handling interpersonal conflict. 480 subjects were asked to consider a short critical incident describing an interpersonal conflict in an organization and to indicate their response to the situation in terms of the five conflict management styles: integrating, obliging, avoiding, dominating, and compromising. The results suggest that under the low‐power opponent condition there was a higher preference for dominating and a lower preference for avoiding, obliging, and integrating. Inexperienced subjects did not change their choice of using the different conflict management styles in view of their opponent's power. The results also showed significant interaction effects of the two independent variables. The implications for the study are discussed.

The effect of ambiguity is investigated with regard to the success of a venture on the initial choice of interpersonal conflict management strategy of the venture's initiator. In the experiments reported here, subjects were asked to imagine a hypothetical situation in which the decision‐maker, in a capacity as an organization member, seeks the use of an organizational resource in order to initiate the venture. The conflict arises as another member of the organization also lays claim to the same resource. Subjects, taking on the role of the decision‐maker, show more collaboration in managing the conflict when experts disagree about the probability of successful outcome of the venture. Similar inclinations are revealed when the possible long‐term adverse consequences of the conflict are made explicit. These findings support the interpretation of ambiguity effect in terms of increased loss aversion due to personal responsibility.

The purpose of this paper is to compare patterns of impression management in two organizational systems, namely, organic and mechanistic.

Qualitative data were gathered from 23 employees by means of in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews. In addition, questionnaires pertaining to the use of impression management strategies toward superiors and peers were given to 208 employees from military and R&D organizations.

The results suggest that employees in mechanistic systems engage more in impression management behavior and direct their efforts more often toward their superiors than toward their peers, most frequently by using the strategy of “Ingratiation”. On the other hand, employees in the organic system sample use impression management to a lesser extent, and they direct it more equally toward superiors and peers. Their predominant strategy is “Initiation.” These results are discussed in light of the differences in the norms and structural characteristics of the two organizational systems.

The mechanistic system was represented by a military organization and there is disproportionate representation of males in the survey sample.

The paper demonstrates the importance of the specific characteristics of an organizational system in shaping employees' impression management behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the mediating effect authentic leadership (AL) has on professional identity (PI), ethical climate (EC) and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) and political behavior (PB) among elementary school principals in Israel.

Four hundred and ten elementary principals from various Israeli districts participated in the study. The research is based on principals' self-report questionnaires. The analysis focused on SEM using AMOS software.

Results indicated that AL fully mediates the relationships between PI and OCB and PB while partially mediates the relationships between EC and OCB and PB.

This study could contribute to the design of an integrative model not previously researched, while exploring relationships between behaviors perceived as mutually opposite. This study suggested that to increase OCB and decrease PB, authentic leadership among elementary school principals should be enhanced by educational leaders.

The new model is likely to help school principals to deal with political behaviors while fostering citizenship behaviors during their work. Educational leaders may design professional training for principals in order to encourage the development of the positive aspects of OCB and PB.

Drawing on affective events theory, the purpose of this paper was to investigate direct and indirect relationships between perceived organizational politics and workplace cyberbullying (WCB) perpetration mediated through anger, as well as to examine the moderating role of gender in these relationships.

The sample comprised 534 white-collar employees who were employed in a variety of service industries, including banking, higher education, telecommunications, health care and insurance in Islamabad, Pakistan. Data were analyzed using the structural equation modeling technique in Amos.

Results demonstrated that perceived organizational politics has a direct positive effect on WCB perpetration. Moreover, results indicated that perceived organizational politics evokes anger among employees that, in turn, triggers WCB perpetration. Results of a multigroup analysis revealed that the positive effect of perceived organizational politics on WCB perpetration was not significantly different between men and women. However, the positive relationship between perceived organizational politics and anger was significantly stronger for men than for women. Likewise, this study found a significantly stronger relationship for men than for women between anger and WCB perpetration. Anger partially mediated the relationship between perceived organizational politics and WCB perpetration only among men.

This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating that perceived organizational politics triggers WCB perpetration directly and indirectly through its impact on anger. Moreover, this study identified gender differences in the experience and expression of anger in response to perceived organizational politics.

This study has a twofold goal. First, we examined perceptions of organizational politics as viewed by the academic staff in a public university. Second, we tested the potential mediating effect of perceptions of politics on the relationship between social capital and work outcomes. We surveyed 142 junior and senior faculty members of a large public Israeli university and tested several competing models. Major results, based on Structural Equations Model (SEM) analysis, indicate that the mediating model has several advantages over the direct effect model. In addition, a revised, mixed model provided additional advantages. The models are compared and discussed. Finally, implications of the findings and recommendations for future studies on internal politics and social capital in academia and beyond are suggested.

This study investigated employee cynicism and workplace ostracism as pathways through which perceived organizational politics (POPs) is related to counterproductive work behavior (CWB) targeted at individual coworkers (CWB-I) and the organization (CWB-O).

Data were collected from 794 university employees in Southeastern, Nigeria at three-point of measurements.

Results of the Structural Equation Modelling showed that POPs positively predicted CWB-I but did not predict CWB-O directly. POPs positively predicted both employee cynicism and workplace ostracism. Employee cynicism did not predict CWB-I and CWB-O, but workplace ostracism positively predicted both CWB-I and CWB-O. Moreover, whilst POPs did not predict both CWB-I and CWB-O through employee cynicism; workplace ostracism partially mediated the relationship between POPs and the two dimensions of CWB.

The relationship between POPs and CWB has been documented in the literature, but whether affect-laden processes (employee cynicism and workplace ostracism) explain this relationship is new. Conducting the study in a context previously neglected extended our understanding of the indirect relationship between POPs and CWB.

The purpose of this paper is to examine perceptions of organisational politics (POP) as a mediator of the relationship between high-involvement work practices (HIWPs) and employee outcomes (trust in employer and employee engagement).

Using a longitudinal time-lagged quantitative survey design, data were collected in two waves (n = 1,554, time 1, and n = 970, time 2). Direct and indirect (mediation) effects were tested through structural equation modelling (SEM) in AMOS.

The results of SEM suggest that HIWPs are positively associated with trust in the employer and employee engagement and negatively associated with POP. The data supported a partial mediation model in which POP mediated the relationship between HIWPs and both trust in the employer and employee engagement levels.

HIWPs reduce employees’ perceptions of the degree to which their work environment is politicised, enhance employee engagement and develop a more trusting relationship between employee and employer.

Perceptions that workplace environments are characterised by political behaviours are ubiquitous and a large body of research has highlighted their detrimental effects on both employees and employers. This is the first study that has examined the potential of HIWPs in reducing such perceptions, which in turn, can foster employee engagement and enhance trust in the employer. Longitudinal studies of the effect HIWPs have on employee perceptions and attitudes are also still scarce.