LEADERSHIP AND ORGANIZATIONAL POLITICS

Leadership and Organizational Politics

Leadership and Organizational Politics

An important first step is to identify what is considered political behavior and what are considered the different categories of political behavior. Although it has been commonly known to exist for centuries, the scientific study of organizational politics has only really begun to take shape in the last thirty years. Block (1988) offered a reason for the lack of study by likening research of organizational politics to the issues of sex in the 1950s: Everyone knew it was going on, but no one wanted to talk about it. It is ever present in our lives, but getting reliable information about it is next to impossible.

As researchers seek a deeper understanding of the causes and effects of political behaviors, a new variable has emerged as an important factor in both causes and effects (www.alagse.com). This new variable is the study of organizational members' perception of politics within the organization. This is unique from previous efforts as it investigates employees' subjective perceptions, behaviors, and environments as political in nature. Multiple studies investigating this aspect of political research have shown that certain factors can create a significant variance between individuals' perceptions of politics. Such factors proven to have a strong correlation to an individual's perception of organizational politics include organizational influences, job/work environment influences, and personal influences (www.geocities.com). Organizational influences are structural characteristics such as centralization of authority, formalization of rules and procedures, the hierarchical level within the organization, and the span of control of managers. Perceptions of politics increase when leadership of an organization is more centralized, span of control is larger, and when formalization of rules and is low. Different studies have shown conflicting effects regarding level of hierarchy within the organization. At higher levels within an organization, job and work environmental influences such as job autonomy, job variety, and feedback are all shown to reduce perceptions of politics (www.globalknowledge.com). When ambiguity and uncertainty are high and sense of control over situational factors is low, perceptions of politics are much higher. The last category, personal influences, is a combination of demographic and individual characteristics such as personality and disposition. Certain demographics such as women and older workers perceive higher levels of political behaviors (www.nwlink.com).

Politics exist and will continue to exist in the foreseeable future. In general, it is comfortable and societally acceptable to focus on the negative attributes of organizational politics (e.g., wasting ...