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Persistent change has placed considerable pressure on organizations to keep up or fade into obscurity. Firms that remain viable, or even thrive, are staffed with decision-makers who capably steer organizations toward opportunities and away from threats. Accordingly, leadership development has never been more critical. In this chapter, the authors propose that leader development is an inherently dyadic process initiated to communicate formal and informal expectations. The authors focus on the informal component, in the form of organizational politics, as an element of leadership that is critical to employee and company success. The authors advocate that superiors represent the most salient information source for leader development, especially as it relates to political dynamics embedded in work systems. The authors discuss research associated with our conceptualization of dyadic political leader development (DPLD). Specifically, the authors develop DPLD by exploring its conceptual underpinnings as they relate to sensemaking, identity, and social learning theories. Once established, the authors provide a refined discussion of the construct, illustrating its scholarly mechanisms that better explain leader development processes and outcomes. The authors then expand research in the areas of political skill, political will, political knowledge, and political phronesis by embedding our conceptualization of DPLD into a political leadership model. The authors conclude by discussing methodological issues and avenues of future research stemming from the development of DPLD.

This chapter builds on previous research that conceptualized organizational politics as an organizational stressor. After reviewing the studies that integrated the occupational stress literature with the organizational politics literature, it discusses the negative implications of the use of intimidation and pressure by supervisors, implications that have generally been overlooked. Specifically, the chapter presents a conceptual model positing that the use of intimidation and pressure by supervisors creates stress in their subordinates. This stress, in turn, affects subordinates’ well-being, evident in higher levels of job dissatisfaction, job burnout, and turnover intentions. The stress also reduces the effectiveness of the organization, reflected in a high absenteeism rate, poorer task performance, and a decline in organizational citizenship behavior. The model also maintains that individual differences in emotional intelligence and political skill mitigate the stress experienced by subordinates, resulting from the use of intimidation and pressure by their supervisors. In acknowledging the destructive implications of such behavior in terms of employees’ well-being and the productivity of the organization, the chapter raises doubts about the wisdom of using it, and advises supervisors to rethink its use as a motivational tool. Implications of this chapter, as well as future research directions, are discussed.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

This chapter utilizes a network perspective to show how the totality of one’s social connections impacts well-being by providing access to resources (e.g., information, feedback, and support) and placing limits on autonomy. We provide a brief review of basic network concepts and explain the importance of understanding how the networks in which leaders are embedded may enhance or diminish their well-being. Further, with this greater understanding, we describe how leaders can help promote the well-being of their employees. In particular, we focus on four key aspects of workplace networks that are likely to impact well-being: centrality, structural holes, embeddedness, and negative ties. We not only discuss practical implications for leaders’ well-being and the well-being of their employees, but also suggest directions for future research.

Large-scale organizational change, such as seen through mergers and acquisitions, CEO succession, and corporate entrepreneurship, sometimes is necessary in order to allow firms to be competitive. However, such change can be unsettling to existing employees, producing considerable uncertainty, conflict, politics, and stress, and thus, must be managed very carefully. Unfortunately, to date, little research has examined the relationships among change efforts, perceptions of political environments, and employee stress reactions. We introduce a conceptual model that draws upon sensemaking theory and research to explain how employees perceive and interpret their uncertain environments, the politics in them, and the resulting work stress, after large-scale organizational change initiatives. Implications of our proposed conceptualization are discussed, as are directions for future research.

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.

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.

Scholars typically view cross-legacy boundary spanners – employees who develop and maintain social relationships with coworkers from both legacy organizations – as the key integrators in mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Organizations even formally appoint employees with cross-legacy responsibilities to support the post-merger integration process. Recent research has started to emphasize, however, how difficult it can be to reap the benefits of a boundary-spanning position. Building and maintaining formal or informal boundary-spanning ties is costly because it requires time, attention, and political savviness. To better understand the perks and pitfalls of cross-legacy boundary-spanning, the authors identify and describe its structural and sociocultural dimensions and explain how they influence cross-legacy boundary-spanning in M&A contexts. The authors argue that the two dimensions can be seen as boundary conditions to the positive relationship between cross-legacy boundary spanning and post-merger integration. This chapter highlights the potential dark side of cross-legacy boundary-spanning and proposes a multi-dimensional model to explain how cross-legacy boundary spanners can avoid the pitfalls and promote the perks of their position in support of successful post-merger integration.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the definition and conception of tacit knowledge in existing peer reviewed literature and to suggest how research agendas can be established to clarify understanding for praxis.

The methodology involved an in‐depth literature review of tacit knowledge as part of the knowledge management discourse.

There is considerable disagreement in the literature over the definition and role of tacit knowledge in management studies and organizations. These polemics are reflected in a lack of systematic research agendas being established. Conversely the more meta level concept of knowledge management has been the subject of an increasing amount of research. However, it is suggested that an improved understanding of tacit knowledge is needed to underpin and further develop the knowledge management discourse. From the literature the concept of tacit knowing is advanced as a means for establishing research agendas and improving understanding in praxis, within the tacit knowledge domain. This approach enables definitional differences to be further probed along with the role and purpose of tacit knowledge within organizations.

The paper suggests a number of ways in which tacit knowledge can be developed in organizations at organizational, group and individual levels.

The paper shows how the concept of tacit knowing can help in understanding the dichotomies within the tacit knowledge literature and in advancing understanding of the subject.

A comparison of distributive justice strategies was made between a collectivistic culture, i.e., Mexico, and an individualistic culture, i.e., the United States. This study is the first to include the effect of ingroup/outgroup on the distribution strategies as Fischer and Smith (2003) called for in their extensive meta‐analysis of the topic. Distributive justice was operationalized as the monetary rewards given by Northern Mexicans and Americans in sixteen different allocation vignettes. The results showed that the two groups were significantly different in only one of the allocation vignettes. These results indicate a convergence between the cultures of the northern maquiladora region of Mexico and of the United States. Northern Mexicans and Americans were not significantly different in their distributive justice strategies.