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The purpose of this paper is to bring a more individual focus to social networks in theorizing the social process of knowledge sharing.

The theoretical model proposes that political skill will shape an individual's social network. Further, political skill within a network will influence the degree of complex knowledge sharing, which likely happens through the mechanism of affective- and cognitive-based trust.

Theoretical implications and future research directions are discussed.

Knowledge sharing is an inherently social process and as such occurs within the context of social networks in an organization. However, research to date has not fully explored the details of how and why complex knowledge sharing happens within a social network. Generally, theory on social networks has focused on structural qualities of a network, rather than the individual characteristics of the members of that network. This paper brings a more individual focus to social networks in theorizing the social process of knowledge sharing.

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.

Knowledge hiding, intentionally withholding work-relevant information, is detrimental to organizations, yet practiced by supervisors and employees. Based on social learning and social exchange theories, this study aims to uncover the effects of supervisor knowledge hiding, abusive supervision and employee political skill on employee knowledge hiding behaviors, namely, evasive hiding, playing dumb and rationalized hiding. We compare the two destructive supervisor behaviors in their predictive values toward employee knowledge hiding and examine the role of employee political skill in mitigating their effects.

Based on survey data collected from 598 German-speaking employees, we used path analysis to test the hypotheses.

The two destructive supervisor behaviors and employee political skill predicted employee evasive hiding and playing dumb; supervisor knowledge hiding additionally predicted employee rationalized hiding. The predictive value of supervisor knowledge hiding was 2.5 times larger than that of abusive supervision and political skill. The effects of destructive supervisor behaviors were weaker for more politically skilled employees.

We examine two destructive supervisor behaviors conjointly and show the differences between them regarding their predictive value toward employee knowledge hiding. Furthermore, we investigate the role of political skill in knowledge hiding.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of political skill in a specific workplace setting – the job negotiation. The authors expected negotiator political skill to be positively related to distributive negotiation outcome, problem-solving as a negotiation strategy to mediate this relationship and political skill to also moderate – that is amplify – the link between problem-solving and negotiation outcome.

In Study 1, a laboratory-based negotiation simulation was conducted with 88 participants; the authors obtained self-reports of political skill prior to the negotiation and – to account for non-independence of negotiating partners’ outcome – used the Actor–Partner Interdependence Model for data analysis. Study 2 was carried out as a real-life negotiation study with 100 managers of a multinational corporation who were given the opportunity to re-negotiate their salary package prior to a longer-term foreign assignment. Here, the authors drew on two objective measures of negotiation success, increase of annual gross salary and additional annual net benefits.

In Study 1, the initial hypothesis – political skill will be positively related to negotiator success – was fully supported. In Study 2, all three hypotheses (see above) were fully supported for additional annual net benefits and partly supported for increase of annual gross salary.

To the authors' best knowledge, this paper presents the first study to examine political skill as a focal predictor variable in the negotiation context. Furthermore, the studies also broaden the emotion-centered approach to social effectiveness that is prevalent in current negotiation research.

Drawing on social exchange theory, social capital theory, and perspectives of political influence in organizations, this study develops and tests a model in which managerial political skill is associated with internal, supplier and customer supply chain integration through two mediating mechanisms: facilitating a supply chain orientation and mitigating self-serving politics.

Data were collected from three independent samples, one for each achieved state of integration (i.e. internal, customer and supplier) (n_internal = 225; n_customer = 225; n_supplier = 225; N = 675). Hypotheses were tested with structural equation modeling and indirect effects analysis. The potential impact of unmeasured endogenous factors was mitigated through appropriate survey design, statistical control, marker variable analysis and instrument variable usage.

Managerial political skill exhibited a positive, direct relationship with achieved internal and supplier integration. Supply chain orientation partially mediated the relationship for achieving integration with both customers and suppliers. Self-serving organizational politics was not associated with achieving internal, customer or supplier integration.

By demonstrating the importance of political influence in achieving supply chain integration, the findings support the role of managerial social capital in the underlying social exchange processes that drive integration.

Despite the fundamental role of informal, social dynamics in supply chain integration, past research has largely focused on either the technical prowess of middle managers or the political skill of executives in supporting integration. The present study explicates the critical role of middle management political skill in actually achieving supply chain integration.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how perceptions of politics (POP) impact individuals’ willingness to engage in organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and how this relationship is impacted by individuals’ conscientiousness and political skills.

Primary data collected from 211 employee working in the consultancy sector in India were analyzed using hierarchical moderated regression technique.

The authors found a significant three-way interaction between POP, conscientiousness and political skill in predicting OCB. Presence of high conscientiousness and high political skill alleviates the negative effect of politics on OCB.

The data were collected from consultancy sector organizations, and thus, generalizability of the results is somewhat limited. Further, self-report surveys are used for data collection. Future studies should use multiple methods to collect data to avoid common method bias.

The results suggest that to alleviate the negative effect of POP on OCB, practitioners should recruit employees with high levels of conscientiousness and impart training to develop political skill.

This study attempts to take a holistic person-centric approach to study the moderating effect of personality variable and political skill when examining the linkage between perceived politics and citizenship behavior.

A number of studies have explored the benefits (e.g. enhanced job performance and reduced strain), of being politically skilled. Within the framework of uncertainty management theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore the benefits of high political skill to affective commitment, job satisfaction, and perceived job mobility, under conditions of distrust in management.

Sales representatives were surveyed and moderated multiple regression analyses were conducted to analyze the data.

The authors found that as distrust increased, affective commitment decreased for all persons, but was most pronounced for persons low on political skill. However, distrust in management had no impact on job satisfaction for those high on political skill, allowing persons high on political skill to enjoy their jobs despite high levels of distrust (an intrapsychic benefit of political skill). Finally, as distrust in management increased, persons high on political skill had increased perceived job mobility.

This study is cross-sectional, limiting conclusions about causality in the relationships studied and leaving open the possibility of reverse causation.

This research has important implications, such that, under conditions of distrust, persons low on political skill are less committed, more dissatisfied, and feel a sense of job immobility, which could lead to poor work outcomes, such as decreased job performance.

The study is the first to examine how being politically skilled benefits employee outcomes when the employee distrusts management.

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether political skill is equally effective in its prediction of job performance for different job demands.

This paper uses self‐report sources of employee performance and self‐report of political skill after several weeks along with three ratings of target individuals' job demands.

Results support the hypothesis that Holland's enterprising category (i.e. because of its job demands and requisite job competencies to be effective) will moderate the relationship between political skill and job performance, demonstrating stronger predictability under high enterprising job demands.

The present results suggest that political skill is a better predictor of job performance under situations of high enterprising job demands than under conditions of low enterprising job demands. Furthermore, social and conventional job demands do not significantly moderate the political skill‐job performance relationships, implying that these job demands act as an important boundary condition.

Politically skilled individuals are more likely to succeed in environments (e.g. enterprising jobs) where they have the opportunity to exercise interpersonal influence, and where that interpersonal influence is directly related to their performance.

This paper makes several contributions to theory and practice in vocational achievement and political skill. Perhaps, most significant is the identification of job demands as a boundary condition in the political skill‐job performance relationship.

The purpose of this research is to investigate if employees possessing good political skill face less abusive behavior from their supervisors. Moreover, the gender of the subordinate has been tested as a moderator between political skill and abusive supervision. Cultural and social factors prevailing in the research settings of Pakistan provide an ideal situation to test the relationship between political skill and abusive supervision.

The data were collected from 178 employees representing different sectors of Pakistani industry. To test the relationship between political skill and abusive supervision, simple linear regression was run and moderation was tested using PROCESS macro.

From the analysis, the major findings prove that political skill lessens abusive supervision. Moreover, due to the cultural settings, male subordinates use political skill more proficiently to avoid abusive supervision as compared to female subordinates.

The study suggests that in order to maintain harmony in the work environment, employees must learn political skill to avoid abusive supervision. Moreover, females must be given more chances to utilize their political skill to get positive outcomes.

This study fills up a significant gap in the literature, as there is scarce literature available that investigates the relationship between political skill and abusive supervision, specifically in Pakistan.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating role of political skill in the relationship between proactive personality and citizenship performance, as mediated by career satisfaction.

The authors collected data from a diverse sample of 356 employees, and tested a moderated mediation model, in which proactive personality and political skill jointly impact career satisfaction, which in turn impacts citizenship performance.

The results indicate that career satisfaction mediates the relationship between proactive personality and two forms of citizenship performance, citizenship toward supervisor, and job/task conscientiousness. Political skill moderates these mediated relationships such that proactive individuals who are also politically skilled are more likely to demonstrate greater citizenship toward supervisor and job/task conscientiousness via increased career satisfaction.

The study suggests that proactive employees, due to their enhanced career satisfaction, tend to demonstrate greater organizational citizenship. Such positive tendencies are enhanced when proactive employees are equipped with political skill. Limitations include the use of cross-sectional design and single source data.

Organizations and human resources managers should be aware of the importance of personal career satisfaction and interpersonal competency in building organizational citizenship. Organizations may facilitate citizenship performance by recruiting individuals high in proactive personality and political skill.

Prior research has typically considered career satisfaction as an outcome variable. The authors examine career satisfaction as an intermediate variable leading to citizenship performance. The authors also examine the contingent effect of proactive personality.