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We examined the moderating role of age on the politics perceptions—organizational commitment relationship. Confirmatory factor analyses of data collected from 633 office employees of a private sector organization indicated that the scales measuring politics and commitment reflected unique constructs. Perceptions of politics were inversely but weakly related to commitment. However, results of hierarchical moderated multiple regression analysis revealed that perceptions of organizational politics and commitment were essentially unrelated among workers in and above their 40s, but were moderately related among younger workers. Implications of the results and directions for future research are discussed.

In a world that glorifies power, the lives of the powerless serve as context for testimonies of salvation that in their pretentiousness more often reinforce the reputation and self-esteem of the powerful hero than transform the lives of the oppressed. Whereas these types of popular human-interest stories may raise awareness of the conditions surrounding the powerless, they do little more than advance the notion that these individuals are without hope and must rely solely on the generosity, resources, and leadership of the powerful populations by which they are exploited. We seek to offer a contrasting perspective in this chapter. That is, we present a framework that challenges messianic notions of leaders of ineffectual populations and presses forth with the idea that powerlessness is a more common condition than feeling powerful and that only the powerless can alter their destiny.

Based on social exchange theory and the norm of reciprocity, interactional justice has been proposed to be an important construct in explaining individual performance. However, meta-analytic results have noted the relationship is modest at best. The present study extends the understanding of the justice-performance relationship by empirically examining how interactional justice and political skill interactively influence contextual job performance. Focusing on interpersonal aspects of justice and performance, the paper proposes that the existence of interactional justice will only lead to improvements in interpersonally facilitative behavior if employees recognize this situation as an opportunity to invest their skill-related assets into the organization. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Integrating research on political skill with social exchange theory, the current study contends that interactional justice stemming from the supervisor will likely lead to employees feeling obligated and/or wanting to help, cooperate, and consider others in the workplace. However, only employees with political skill will be able to recognize the conditions and act appropriately on these conditions. As such, this paper investigates the moderating role of political skill in the interactional justice-performance relationship. The paper used multi-source survey methodology and applied hierarchical moderated multiple regression analysis to test the hypotheses.

Results from 189 respondents indicated that interactional justice was more strongly related to supervisor-rated interpersonal facilitation when employees possessed higher levels of political skill. This suggests that when both interactional justice and political skill are high, the potential for interpersonal facilitation is also high. Conversely, when one or both are low, interpersonal facilitation is less likely.

Previous articulations and evaluations of the relationship between interactional justice, political skill, and interpersonal facilitation have omitted either situational determinants of motivation or individual differences in job-related skills. With the current study, the paper sought to address these omissions by exploring the interactive effects of interactional justice and political skill on interpersonal facilitation.

Although individual difference variables are important in the prediction of leadership effectiveness, comparatively little empirical research has examined distal and proximal traits/characteristics that help managers lead effectively in organizations. The aim of this paper is to extend previous research by examining whether and how specific distal, narrow personality traits and the more proximal characteristic of political skill are related to decisiveness, a specific competency of leadership effectiveness, as rated from direct reports and peers.

Self-report data on political skill and personality traits (i.e. perceptiveness and affability) from 225 practicing managers from the US, together with other-report (i.e. peer and subordinate) ratings of their leadership effectiveness (i.e. decisiveness) were used to test the mediating effects of political skill.

Results show that political skill (i.e. the social astuteness dimension) mediated the relationships between narrow personality traits and evaluations of leadership effectiveness as rated by some, but not other rater sources. Specifically, the social astuteness dimension of political skill mediated the relationship between perceptiveness and decisiveness ratings from direct reports but not for ratings from peers, and the full political skill composite measure mediated the relationship between affability and decisiveness ratings from peers but not for ratings from direct reports.

Limitations include the availability of only two narrow personality traits, which constrained the scope of the possible mediation tests of all individual dimensions of political skill.

Political skill is shown to be a more proximal predictor of leadership effectiveness than personality dimensions. Thus, political skill should be considered over personality for emerging leaders. Further, differences in ratings due to source (i.e. peer and subordinate) indicate the need for organizational leaders to consider the source when evaluating effectiveness reports.

This study is one of the first to integrate the Ferris et al. model of political skill and the Zaccaro et al. distal-proximal trait model of leadership effectiveness.

The current paper seeks to bring the political perspective to gender differences in promotion decisions, a phenomenon with great longevity in research and practice. Specifically, the degree to which gender role‐congruent and counterstereotypical influence behavior is related to liking as moderated by political skill.

Using a sample of n=136, these hypotheses were tested in retail organizations in the Northeast and Southwest.

Political skill significantly moderates the relationship between ingratiation and liking, such that use of ingratiation was positively related to liking when women were high in political skill. However, the relationship between assertiveness and liking was unchanged by political skill level and was unrelated to liking. Liking was consistently found to be positively related to promotability ratings.

Questionnaire data collection is used exclusively; however, the subordinate and supervisor data were collected at two different times.

The results are relevant for employees in that they imply a need for them to be cognizant of their behavior as it relates to social role expectations and for supervisors to understand the factors that could contribute to lower ratings.

The current results suggest that gender role‐congruent influence behavior is positively related to socially relevant evaluations (i.e. liking); thus, women whose behavior is consistent with social expectations may be more positively evaluated.

This study provides a political explanation for differences in women's promotability and also investigates mechanisms that may be related to reducing promotability disparity.

Recent studies suggest that 84 percent of employees are affected in some manner by workplace bullies. The current study aims to integrate theory from social information processing and political skill to explain how bullies can successfully navigate the social and political organizational environment and achieve higher ratings of performance.

A questionnaire, archival performance data, and social networks methodology were employed in a health services organization in order to capture the individual differences and social perception of bullies in the workplace.

While victims are usually targeted due to their social incompetence, on some occasions bullies can possess high levels of social ability. Due to their social competence, they are able to strategically abuse coworkers and yet be evaluated positively by their supervisor.

This study is the first attempt to measure the high performance of bullies who thrive in the workplace. Future research could investigate the ways in which bullies select their targets and the role of an abusive organizational climate in their subsequent effectiveness.

Companies and researchers should consider how organizational interventions could serve to balance bullying behavior in a manner that limits deviant behavior while rewarding high performers.

The current paper applies a social effectiveness framework (social information processing (SIP)) as a lens through which to explain bullies who maintain high levels of performance ratings. The application of this theory to bullying leads to a functional perspective of workplace deviance.

In this response, we address three central themes of the Fedor and Maslyn and Dipboye and Foster commentaries. In doing so, we attempt to integrate their perspectives by presenting possible extensions to the current research stream. We suggest that these research extensions will generate a broader understanding of the perceptions of politics construct both across levels and between organizations.

Coalitions are informal and interdependent groups of actors operating within organizations, yet their effects in organizations are not widely understood. In this paper, we develop a model of coalition formation and functioning inside organizations. By extrapolating the behavioral intentions (i.e., altruistic or antagonistic) and compositional differences (i.e., supplementary or complementary) among these informal group structures, we classify coalitions into four forms (i.e., lobby, cartel, circle, and alliance), theorizing how each coalition form affects work role innovation, resource allocations, and work performance. Our conceptualization helps clarify previous theoretical inconsistencies and establish an agenda for the study of coalitions at work. Furthermore, this paper provides insights into the ways that coalitions support or impede the organization’s objectives.

Social influence processes in organizations involve the demonstration of particular behavioral tactics and strategies by individuals to influence behavioral outcomes controlled by others in ways that maximize influencer positive outcomes and minimize negative outcomes. Such processes necessarily draw from research in topic areas labeled impression management, self-presentation, interpersonal influence, and organizational politics. However, few efforts have been made to integrate this work for purposes of assessing our current knowledge base, and identifying gaps and thus areas in need of further investigation. The present paper provides a critical analysis and review of theory and research on social influence processes in the workplace, with particular emphasis on human resources systems, organized according to the What, the Where, the Who, and the How of influence. In the process, we identify neglected areas, including theory-building challenges, as well as key issues in need of empirical investigation.

Theory and method are inherently intertwined in the creation and maintenance of most areas of scientific inquiry. The organizational sciences, in general, and the occupational stress area, in particular, are no exceptions. In this paper, we argue that an implicit supposition of linear independent–dependent variable forms has driven both theory and method, and as such, presents a characterization of organizational science and stress scholarship that is incomplete at best. We also review stress literature that has acknowledged the potential for nonlinear stressor–strain associations and offer empirical examples of both restricted and non-restricted nonlinearity. We conclude by offering prescriptions for scholars conducting research that extends beyond the examination of linear forms exclusively.