Search results

Organizations are confronted with problems and political risks to which they have to respond, presenting a need to develop tools and frames of understanding requisite to do so. In this article, we argue for the necessity of cultivating “political judgment” with a “sense of reality,” especially in the upper echelons of organizations. This article has two objectives: First to highlight how a number of recent interlinked developments within organizational analysis and practice have contributed to weakening judgment and its accompanying “sense of reality.” Second, to (re)introduce some canonical works that, although less in vogue recently, provide both a source of wisdom and frames of understanding that are key to tackling today’s problems. We begin by mapping the context in which the need for the cultivation of political judgment within organizations has arisen: (i) increasing proliferation of political risks and “wicked problems” to which it is expected that organizations adapt and respond; (ii) a wider historical and contemporary context in which the exercise of judgment has been undermined – a result of a combination of economics-inspired styles of theorizing and an associated obsession with metrics. We also explore the nature of “political judgment” and its accompanying “sense of reality” through the work of authors such as Philip Selznick, Max Weber, Chester Barnard, and Isaiah Berlin. We suggest that these authors have a weighty “sense of reality”; are antithetical to “high,” “abstract,” or “axiomatic” theorizing; and have a profound sense of the burden from exercising political judgment in difficult organizational circumstances.

There are often relational interactions in teams that lead to and drive the spread of work engagement. Despite the potential social impacts on work engagement, such as coworker support and organizational citizenship behaviors within teams, they have rarely been studied from a social perspective using social network analysis (SNA). This review draws on the crossover model and conservation of resources theory to suggest that the effects of social diffusion and the exchange of resources can impact Well-Being, specifically work engagement, in teams and that SNA can help measure those social interactions. Linking several network concepts – closeness centrality, density, degree centrality, and tie strength – to work engagement propositions related to the spread of work engagement as well as the number and quality of network ties, this review elucidates the potential for integrating SNA methodology to the field of Well-Being for teams.

Organizational success in a dynamic environment demands leadership and agility. The extant literature on employee agility needs more empirical evidence and appropriate theoretical explanations. This study aims to contribute to the literature by bringing empirical evidence to understand the intervening mechanisms through which empowering leadership influences employee agility and to suggest alternate theoretical explanations.

The mediating role of knowledge-sharing behavior and psychological safety is examined using quantitative data from a sample of 924 employees working in India's information technology industry.

Findings reveal that empowering leadership contributes to psychological safety at the workplace, promoting employees' knowledge-sharing behavior and leading to employee agility. The findings are globally relevant and theoretically consistent.

The phenomenon is explained in two ways. Firstly, by combining the structural empowerment and motivation perspectives, and secondly, by combining the conservation of resources and social exchange perspectives.

The findings imply that psychological safety and knowledge-sharing behavior can be used as leading indicators to prepare the organization for success in a dynamic and volatile environment.

This study is one of the earliest attempts to explain the mediating mechanism between empowering leadership and employee agility using serial multiple mediations. Further, this study combines different theoretical perspectives to present the findings more logically.