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Much of the research associated with organizational politics has focused on negative outcomes such as stress, burnout, and turnover intention. Only a limited amount of research has focused on identifying the psychological mechanisms that explain the influence of negative organizational politics on individual and organizational outcomes. In this chapter, we propose a more positive conceptualization of organizational politics and explore potential associations between both positive and negative politics and employee engagement. More specifically, we propose a model showing how the psychological conditions of psychological safety, availability, and meaningfulness explain the relationship between perceptions of positive and negative politics and employee engagement. We conclude by suggesting practical interventions to assist organizations develop a more positive organizational political climate.

Research on perceptions of organizational politics has mostly explored the negative aspects and detrimental outcomes for organizations and employees. Responding to recent calls in the literature for a more balanced treatment, we expand on how positive and negative organizational politics perceptions are perceived as stressors and affect employee outcomes through their influence on the social environment. We propose that employees appraise positive and negative organization politics perceptions as either challenge or hindrance stressors, to which they respond with engagement and disengagement as problem-focused and emotion-focused coping strategies. Specifically, employees who appraise the negative politics perceptions as a hindrance, use both problem- and emotion-focused coping, which entails one of three strategies: (1) decreasing their engagement, (2) narrowing the focus of their engagement, or (3) disengaging. Although these strategies result in negative outcomes for the organization, employees’ coping leads to their positive well-being. In contrast, employees appraising positive politics perceptions as a challenge stressor use problem-focused coping, which involves increasing their engagement to reap the perceived benefits of a positive political environment. Yet, positive politics perceptions may also be appraised as a hindrance stressor in certain situations, and, therefore lead employees to apply emotion-focused coping wherein they use a disengagement strategy. By disengaging, they deal with the negative effects of politics perceptions, resulting in positive well-being. Thus, our framework suggests an unexpected twist to the stress process of politics perceptions as a strain-provoking component of employee work environments.

This study aims to investigate the influence of organisational politics on work engagement and the moderator effect of positive framing on this relationship

Data were collected from 241 public sector employees in Sri Lanka through a structured questionnaire and analysed with partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS_SEM).

The results indicated that organisational politics negatively influenced employees' work engagement, positive framing positively influenced engagement and weakened the negative relationship between politics and engagement.

This study suggests that organisation and individuals must take the necessary steps to enhance work engagement. Organisations must be transparent in all activities to avoid employees' negative perception. Also, organisations need to take steps to recruit employees with positive framing or develop this competency through training and development. Individuals also need to take necessary steps to frame the work environment positively to enhance their engagement in work.

This study extends the literature by being the first to examine the positive framing as a moderator in the relationship between politics and engagement. This study found that positive framing as a resource reduced the harmful effect of organisational politics on engagement and suggested positive framing can be considered as a resource in the future investigation of the job demand–resource model.

The study aims to examine the relationship between organisational culture and employee efficiency and how organisational politics strengthens or weakens that relationship in the public sector of Ghana due to the perceived inefficiency of public sector employees.

The study employs cross-sectional survey design and quantitative approach to collect the data from public sector employees in Ghana. The analysis is done using descriptive statistics, correlation and hierarchical regression models.

The results show that negative organisational politics is the predominant perceived politics in the Ghanaian public sector. Further, organisational culture and employee efficiency have significant positive association and organisational politics (positive and negative) significantly moderate the association. However, negative organisational politics depicts negative interaction effect, meaning that negative organisational politics affects the positive influence of organisational culture on employee efficiency.

The findings imply that strategies such as formulation of organisational policy and strict enforcement of same to eradicate or minimise the practise of negative organisational politics, whilst positive organisational politics is encourages and awarded to induce employees to be efficient. This will enhance the overall effect of organisational culture on employee efficiency.

The study contributes significantly to extant literature by providing empirical evidence that organisational politics (positive and negative) effectively strengthens the association between organisational culture and employee efficiency from a developing country perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between positive perceptions of politics (i.e. positive politics) and decision creativity and propitiousness (i.e. reaching unforeseen advantages while limiting unexpected problems). In addition, drawing from threat-rigidity effect theory the authors argue that such relationships will be resilient to external environmental threats and specifically macro-economic uncertainty.

The database for the analyses consisted of 200 strategic decisions gathered from firms located in Dubai.

Positive politics significantly influence decision creativity and propitiousness. Also, macro-economic uncertainty moderates this relationship.

Although this research has tried to adopt a more neutral perspective on political behavior, much more work is required to better understand the role and implications of neutral politics in decision-making.

If decision makers ensure that the concern for the organization’s welfare remains a priority over the self-serving motives of the actors, then politics can enhance decision success.

This paper challenges the long held conventional wisdom that politics in organizations are an important underlying cause of unethical practices, poor decisions and organizational ineffectiveness.

The findings serve to further the understanding of complexities involved in the relationships between political behavior and its consequences.

The aim of this paper is to critically explore the behavioral assumptions of organizational politics, as well as to reconsider and redefine the premises of political behavior in the workplace. The main objective is examination of the presuppositions associated with the possibility of constructive politics in organizational settings.

The deficiencies of explaining managerial activity as solely regulated by self‐interest are discussed, as well as a revised version of self‐interest that may enrich current understanding of workplace politics. Drawing on the respective literature, the authors develop some propositions and suggest, assess and discuss a conceptual framework that integrates self‐interest and constructive politics.

The paper represents an attempt toward inferring positive political behavior through adopting an alternative view of established behavioral assumptions. This view purports to reduce the existing discrepancy between different types of political behavior in defending the possibility of an inclusive, participative and welfare‐enhancing political process, founded on the pro‐social and reciprocating aspects of human interaction. Boundedly selfish organizational members are expected to demonstrate these qualities that are in position to transform the very nature of political activities to the direction of greater organizational good.

The paper reevaluates the self‐interested nature of organizational politics through the introduction of a bounded self‐interest assumption as more representative of actual human behavior. This new construct embodies those constraints that make trust formation, networking and reciprocities operative in environments effectively embedding political behavior in broader, organizational goal‐oriented processes and structures.

This article wants to propose deeper insights and clarifications into the effects of organizational politics which have been at the center of many debates in decision-making literature. For a long time, the debate focused on the negative effects of organizational politics and how to avoid them. This article wants to explore the positive effects of organizational politics and see how this impacts the consensus process in teams moderated by organizational change.

The article model and propositions are grounded in the organisational politics literature. The analysis builds on the “positive” politics literature which has been gaining steam in the last two decades and links this with the consensus literature.

The article proposes an integrated model which clearly shows how the three core concepts influence each other through the four proposed hypotheses. Organizational politics can help to create more consensus in a team decision-making process, and this can have a positive effect on team performance.

The article aims to expand insights of organizational politics on decision-making by putting the light on possible positive effects of organizational politics. The article addresses the theoretical gap of how organizational politics can impact the consensus process.

The purpose of this paper is to challenge the older perspective on the nature of workplace politics and its disruptive role in organizations. In particular, this paper references the positive aspect of meaningful relationship building that is promoted by workplace politics and how the very politicking becomes a necessary tool for generating and maintaining social capital within the organizational boundaries.

The paper relies on presenting author’s viewpoint on positive workplace politics and its intertwined relationship with social capital.

In the process of politicking, the relationships built, the networks established and maintained and the social capital acquired are of immense value. To thwart the negative effects of organizational politics such as disengagement from work, intentions to quit, low job satisfaction, etc., we must look into the multidimensional nature of politics and the value that social capital adds to it.

The positive side of politics has long been in the shadows of its pronounced negative side. The paper presents the ground work for exploring the many colours of organizational politics and also delve into the factors that can thwart the negative effects of politics that may be experienced by the employees.

The paper contends that workplace politics is not just responsible for the disruptive and unwanted behaviours but is rather an important source of the positive and productive interpersonal relationships that are often useful in accomplishing individual and organizational goals.

Work environments, which are widely acknowledged to exert strong influences on employee attitudes and behavior, have been studied since the initiation of formal work entities. Over this time, scholars have identified myriad impactful internal and external factors. Absent though are investigations examining economic downturns despite their acknowledged pervasiveness and destructive effects on worker performance and well-being. To address this theoretical gap, a multistage model acknowledging the impact of recessions on workplace responses, response effects, and environmental considerations is proposed. Inherent in this discussion is the role of economic decline on reactive change processes, the nature of work, and the structure and design of organizations. These significant changes affect employee attitudes and behaviors in ways that increase the political nature of these work environments. Organizational factors and employee responses to heightened recession-driven politics are discussed. Additionally, theoretically relevant intervening variables capable of influencing work outcomes are described. The chapter is concluded by discussing the implications of this theoretical framework as well as directions for future research.

This study addresses a central research question: Does employees' personal initiative, with a benevolent political will, lead to career growth prospects in a work environment replete with perceived organizational politics? Drawing upon self-determination, signalling, and social cognitive theories, the authors examine how perceptions of organizational politics operate to limit the influence of benevolent political will – induced personal initiative on career growth prospects.

This research adopts a quantitative research design. This multi-wave, multi-sample and multi-source investigation includes 730 subordinate-supervisor dyads from India's information technology, education and manufacturing companies. The sample comprises 236 full-time faculty members from higher educational institutions and 496 mid-level managers from technical and service departments of information technology and manufacturing companies.

The results indicate that benevolent political will is significantly related to career growth prospects. In addition, perceptions of organizational politics shows a crossover interaction effect. The findings reveal that the indirect relationship between benevolent political will and career growth prospects changed significantly from those with a low perception of organizational politics to significantly negative among those perceiving organizational politics as high.

This study provides several implications for practice regarding personal initiative, benevolent political will and perceptions of organizational politics.

The significant contributions of this study are to provide new insights into the relationship between benevolent political will and career growth prospects and to unravel the paradoxical nature of the personal initiative phenomenon.