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This paper aims to examine three sets of antecedents of organizational politics perceptions: organizational antecedents, job work context antecedents, and personal antecedents.

Survey data were collected from 206 full‐time Arab employees of seven Kuwaiti companies and four industries (financial services, investment, real estate, and communication).

Results of multiple regression analysis showed job/work context factors and hierarchical level to be significant predictors of perceptions of organizational politics. However, contrary to the findings of previous research, formalization and centralization did not have a significant effect on organizational politics perceptions.

The potential for common method variance that may be associated with the use of a single source, self‐report methodology of data collection represents a limitation.

The study is very useful in raising the level of awareness of managers, at various levels of the organization, of the potential consequences of their political behavior to their employees.

This study expands such research on organizational politics in a different cultural setting, one that is characterized by lower individualism and higher power distance.

Does civic participation, especially in the arts, increase democracy? This chapter extends this neo-Tocquevillian question in three ways. First, to capture broader political and economic transformations, we consider different types of participation; results change by separate participation arenas. Some are declining, but a dramatic finding is the rise of arts and culture. Second, to assess impacts of participation, we include multiple dimensions of democratic politics, including distinct norms of citizenship and their associated political repertoires. Third, by analyzing global International Social Survey Program and World Values Survey data, we identify dramatic subcultural differences: the Tocquevillian model is positive, negative, or zero in seven different subcultures and contexts that we explicate, from class politics and clientelism to Protestant and Orthodox Christian civilizational traditions.

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.

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.

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.

They say Eve tempted Adam with an apple. But man I ain’t going for that. Pink Cadillac – Bruce SpringsteenAll through history, individuals have spent considerable effort attempting to influence the behaviors and beliefs of others. As a principal issue in psychology (Forgas & Williams, 2001), social influence processes have been the subject of inquiry for a considerable length of time (Sherif, 1936) while Peterson (2001) argued that the manner in which individuals manipulate others represents the very core of social psychology. Extensive reviews of the social influence literature (e.g. Cialdini & Trost, 1998; Forgas & Williams, 2001) elucidate its powerful role in virtually all work and non-work domains.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating role of perceived organizational politics on the relationship between electronic human resource management (e-HRM) use and e-HRM macro-level consequences.

The paper uses a cross-sectional survey of HR professionals, line managers and information technology specialists. A purposive stratified sampling technique is employed. The analyses of data make use of regression and process macro in SPSS analysis.

The effect of e-HRM use on e-HRM macro-level consequences is partially mediated by perceived organizational politics.

Organizations can invest in e-HRM use alongside other HR practices such as, emotional intelligence training, to reduce the negative effects of perceived organizational politics and in the process enhance employee attitudes and performance.

The study enriches the scope through which the interaction between e-HRM use and perceived organizational politics is viewed. The study was conducted in Zimbabwe, demonstrating that the indirect effect of e-HRM use on e-HRM macro-level consequences is not limited to developed economies.

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.

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 develop and test a model of team performance by applying social exchange and social capital perspectives in a single model setting. It hypothesizes that team performance is indirectly affected by politics through leader–member capitalization (LMC) and by ethical leadership through leader–member exchange (LMX). Meanwhile, team identification is hypothesized to moderate the relationships between politics and LMC and between ethical leadership and LMX.

The hypotheses of this study were empirically tested using a survey of work teams from the banking and insurance industry in Taipei, Taiwan.

The relationship between team performance and ethical leadership is fully mediated by LMX, while the indirect relationship between team performance and politics is mediated via both LMC and LMX. Team identification positively moderates the relationship between ethical leadership and LMX.

This study is one of the few to examine the mediating roles of LMC and LMX simultaneously in team performance development. This study provides several key findings that complement the existing literature by evaluating fresh associations among LMC, LMX and their determinants and moderator.