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The purpose of this paper is to implement the concept of the “political iceberg” and to investigate its hidden or submerged part comprised of motives and latent triggers lying behind leaders’ political behavior, and which remains almost unexplored. Specifically, drawing on the abundant literature at the intersection of leadership and organizational politics, the authors examine – what drives leaders to engage in political behavior?

Public sector organizations are characterized by a high level of organizational politics and are therefore suitable for this research. A semi-structured interview formed the main data-gathering instrument. The authors conducted interviews with 14 leaders across public sector organizations. The findings are based on a qualitative analysis of the interviews.

Two key themes were analyzed: leaders’ motives to engage in political behavior to achieve corporate interests; leaders’ motives to engage in political behave or for personal interests. On the one hand, motives for political behavior are directed toward the general good, such as accomplishing organizational goals, attaining resources and managing change. On the other hand, motives to engage in political behavior may focus inter alia on such, personal interests as one’s career in the organization, gaining an advantage or other self-interests.

To date, research has focused primarily on the visible tip of the political iceberg. This study is part of a new stream of qualitative studies of political behavior. To gain a complete picture of organizational life, this study focuses on the hidden side of the political iceberg and has revealed the motives for political behavior.

This paper aims to understand how the organizational political climate as a contextual antecedent contributes to individual engagement in political behavior; and the moderating role of organizational commitment and trust in local government organizations.

A mixed methods integration and an explanatory-sequential mixed methods design were used. Data were collected from 217 managers and employees, and 16 interviews were conducted. Data were collected in sequence, and the quantitative results were explained by the qualitative data.

The results suggest that political climate is related to political behavior and that both trust and affective commitment are negatively related to political climate. Trust moderated between political climate and political behavior. However, affective commitment moderated by the political climate and political behavior only for women. The qualitative results suggest that men perceive organizational politics as having more positive outcomes than women.

Human resource practitioners and managers can use this model to gain insights into their organizational political climate and to implement practices that will foster a climate that is functional and positive and which will cultivate a positive subjective experience in the workplace for their employees.

The mixed methods design for studying the contextual-organizational antecedent (perception of political climate) for politicking and individual engagement in political behavior may serve to expand the theory of organizational politics.

This paper reports on two separate studies (S1, n = 169; S2, n = 224) that were designed to examine the relationship between organizational image, perceptions of workplace politics, and an additional set of job related variables (i.e. job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job autonomy). The paper suggests that perceptions of politics have never been examined in relation to organizational image, despite the fact that both concepts are closely related to more general ideas of climate and atmosphere in and around the workplace. For this purpose, a structural equation modeling with LISREL 8.30 was used to compare three alternative models in each of the studies. Findings reveal that the first model, where perceptions of politics function as antecedents of satisfaction and commitment that have an impact on organizational image, fitted the data best. The article concludes that perceptions of politics may have an important initial impact on the formation of organizational image via other job attitudes. Relevant implications for future studies in this area are discussed.