An Examination of the Inverse Relationship Between Dimensions of Political Skill and Interpersonal Conflict at Work: Exploring Perceived Control as a Mediating Factor

Political skill has been established as an antidote to workplace stress and strain. However, despite the scholarly attention it has attracted, we still know very little about mediating mechanisms that explain this relationship and the role of political skill dimensions in mitigating workplace stressors. Thus, in this study, we investigate the impact of perceived control as a mediating mechanism between the political skill dimensions (i.e., social astuteness, interpersonal influence, networking ability, apparent sincerity) and interpersonal conflict (i.e., stress arising due to social interactions). Structural equation modeling was applied to analyze the data collected from 370 employees in a textile organization. The study found that perceived control mediated the relationship of social astuteness, interpersonal influence, and networking ability with interpersonal conflict. It, however, did not mediate the link between apparent sincerity and interpersonal conflict. Limitations, implications, and directions for future research are also discussed.

The effect of organizational culture and leadership on performance: A case of a subsidiary in Colombia

This study aims to determine the level of culture of a new subsidiary of a company in Colombia and define strategies to increase the level of culture in a way that promotes the organization in this region. Following the organizational culture theories, the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument was used to measure the aspects of organizational culture. The transfer and adoption of culture are achieved through knowledge sharing within and across the departments and units of large organizations. The comparison between the current and desired state of culture shows a gap in the clan culture, as the company wishes to establish a working environment that promotes teamwork and employee participation, creates confidence, and provides opportunities for professional development. Executives can measure the strength of organizational culture with the aim of updating, strengthening, or modifying the existing culture to improve performance and gain sustainability.

Forty years of political skill and will in organizations: a review, meta-theoretical framework and directions for future research

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to review the scholarship on political skill and political will so that the authors might inspire future work that assesses these constructs individually and in tandem.

Design/methodology/approach

The “political skill” and “political will” concepts were introduced about 40 years ago, but they only have been measured and produced empirical results much more recently. Since that time, substantial research results have demonstrated the important roles political skill and political will play in organizational behavior. This paper provides a comprehensive review of this research, draws conclusions from this work and provides a meta-theoretical framework of political skill and political will to guide future work in this area.

Findings

Scholarship in this area has developed quite rapidly for political skill, but less so for political will. The authors hope that recent developments in a political will can set the stage for scholars to create a theoretical and empirical balance between these two related constructs.

Originality/value

The authors corral the vast and widespread literature on political skill and will and distill the information for scholars and practitioners alike.

Employee Political Skill, Supervisor-Subordinate Guanxi, and Work-Family Conflict: The Cross-Level Moderating Role of Family-Friendly Practices

Many studies have examined the negative effects of work-family conflict on society, organizations, and individuals. Nonetheless, alleviating employee work-family conflict is a topic worthy of further investigation. Few studies examine the antecedent variables of work-family conflict from personal skill and Guanxi perspectives. Studies that test the moderating role of family-friendly practices at the organization level are also rare. Accordingly, we collected data from 404 employees of 51 organizations. The research data are time-lagged and multileveled. The results of hierarchical linear model (HLM) show: (1) Employee political skill negatively affects employee perceived work-family conflict; (2) Employee political skill positively affects supervisor-subordinate Guanxi; (3) Supervisor-subordinate Guanxi partially mediates the relationship between employee political skill and employee work-family conflict (that is, employees can use their political skill to build high-quality supervisor-subordinate Guanxi, further reducing their perceived work-family conflict); (4) Organization family-friendly practices negatively moderate the relationship between supervisor-subordinate Guanxi and work-family conflict (that is, in organizations with high level family-friendly practices, the negative relationship between supervisor-subordinate Guanxi and work-family conflict becomes weak); Furthermore, by coding with Mplus software (Muthen & Muthen, Los Angeles, CA, USA), we also find: (5) Organization family-friendly practices moderate the indirect effect of employee political skill on employee work-family conflict. The results have both theoretical and empirical implications. Further research directions are addressed at the end.

Activist identity construction of Madam C.J. Walker

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, this paper seeks to formalize a definition of activist entrepreneurship and differentiate it from social entrepreneurship. Second, this paper proposes a model that explains how the storytelling process, in the form of the message and means of communication, influences the activist identity process and consequently the legitimacy of the activist entrepreneur.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper explains the historical method and offers an overview of the unique case of Madam C.J. Walker and analyzes how she gained legitimacy as an activist entrepreneur by conveying psychological capital (Psycap) concepts in her message and political skill in the means of her communication. The paper also analyzed books being written on her and also letters that were exchanged between herself and her lawyer F.B. Ransom.

Findings

The authors have found out that Madam Walker used Psycap elements such as self-efficacy, hope, resiliency and optimism as message and elements of political skill such as social astuteness, interpersonal skill, networking ability and apparent sincerity as means to communicate the message toward her followers and built a legitimate social identity where she had won the trust of them.

Research limitations/implications

The primary limitation of this paper is that it is theoretical in nature and uses only one case study to support the theoretical model. However, when analyzing complex relationships, historical cases offer a wealth of insight to solve the problem at hand.

Originality/value

By using the elements of the model discussed in the research paper properly, people could create a legitimate identity for themselves where any message they give to their employees, colleagues and sub-ordinates would be viewed as a selfless one and that would increase the chances of their messages or orders being accepted and obeyed by the followers.

How does political skill lead to job and organization engagement? Role of self-evaluations

Purpose

Political skill is a valued resource employees use to achieve success. Earlier research has mostly focused on the effect of political skill on others rather than on the self of the politically skilled individuals. Specifically, there is disconnect between political skill and employee engagement research as both these fields have been growing in isolation. Drawing from theories of engagement and conservation of resources, this study bridges this gap in knowledge by investigating how political skill leads to job and organization engagement of politically skilled employees via impacting their self-evaluations of organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) and organizational identification.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a survey method, data were obtained from 188 employees who worked in three private schools of Lahore, Pakistan. Structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed model.

Findings

This study found that individuals who used political skill by practicing social astuteness, interpersonal influence, networking and sincerity rated themselves high in OBSE and organizational identification. As a consequence, high OBSE enhanced their job engagement, whereas high organizational identification increased their organization engagement.

Originality/value

This study is one of the first studies to present political skill as a driver of job and organization engagement. It reveals that the self-evaluations of OBSE and organizational identification mediate the political skill–engagement relations in unique manners.

The creation and the dynamics of informal groups

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the way informal groups rise and operate in the Teacher Association in a Secondary Vocational School Unit in Greece. More specifically, the way the role of the head teacher, the school culture and teachers’ emotional intelligence impacts these groups is investigated.

Design/methodology/approach

Qualitative research through in-depth interviews with teachers and the head teacher as well as the researchers’ participatory observation has been conducted, in order to support the selected method of the case-study.

Findings

The findings showed how both positive and negative informal groups rise and function in the Teacher Association. The role of the head teacher emerges as a very significant factor that influences the emergence and the preservation of such groups. The school culture has a bidirectional relation with the existence and quality of informal groups. Emotional intelligence also plays an important role in forming informal groups and in the quality of actions of these groups.

Originality/value

This study covers a significant gap in the international literature of group dynamics in a Teacher Association and provides practitioners with valuable insights regarding the underexamined factors that lead to the formation, operation and preservation of informal groups, the study of which can lead to the development of sophisticated scales of measurement of these dynamics by future researchers.

Trust in Group Decisions: a scoping review

BACKGROUND

Trust is a critical component of competency committees given their high-stakes decisions. Research from outside of medicine on group trust has not focused on trust in group decisions, and "group trust" has not been clearly defined. The purpose was twofold: to examine the definition of trust in the context of group decisions and to explore what factors may influence trust from the perspective of those who rely on competency committees through a proposed group trust model.

METHODS

The authors conducted a literature search of four online databases, seeking articles published on trust in group settings. Reviewers extracted, coded, and analyzed key data including definitions of trust and factors pertaining to group trust.

RESULTS

The authors selected 42 articles for full text review. Although reviewers found multiple general definitions of trust, they were unable to find a clear definition of group trust and propose the following: a group-directed willingness to accept vulnerability to actions of the members based on the expectation that members will perform a particular action important to the group, encompassing social exchange, collective perceptions, and interpersonal trust. Additionally, the authors propose a model encompassing individual level factors (trustor and trustee), interpersonal interactions, group level factors (structure and processes), and environmental factors.

CONCLUSIONS

Higher degrees of trust at the individual and group levels have been associated with attitudinal and performance outcomes, such as quality of group decisions. Developing a deeper understanding of trust in competency committees may help these committees implement more effective and meaningful processes to make collective decisions.

Tensions Between Diversity and Shared Leadership: The Role of Team Political Skill

Maintaining workplace diversity is an important legal and ethical issue in modern organizations. However, demographic heterogeneity might discourage the development of shared leadership in work teams as individuals are inherently not inclined to share leadership roles with dissimilar others. The present study is designed to investigate how political skill assists team members to overcome interpersonal dissimilarities and become engaged in mutual influence with their peers. By studying 63 student project teams using multiwave, multisource surveys, we find that team demographic faultlines on gender and race are negatively associated with shared leadership magnitude and therefore discourage team task performance. However, such destructive direct (on shared leadership magnitude) and indirect (on team performance) effects of team demographic faultlines can be mitigated when the team is staffed with many politically skilled members. Our findings bring important implications for organizations in building and encouraging shared leadership, especially in newly formed professional work teams.

Investigating the relationships among team emotional intelligence, trust, conflict and team performance

Purpose

The purpose of the study is to enhance understanding of the relationships among team emotional intelligence (EI), trust in team, conflict in team and team performance.

Design/methodology/approach

A sample of 389 team members from 84 project teams in large-scale construction projects was surveyed.

Findings

Findings showed that team EI is positively associated with team performance. In addition, trust and conflict in the team mediate the association between team EI and team performance.

Practical implications

The ability to perceive one’s own and others’ emotions significantly increases the likelihood of team performance by increasing trust in a team and reducing conflict. Therefore, managers can use these findings to boost team performance and reduce conflict in their teams.

Originality/value

This research contributes to the better understanding of the relationship between team EI and team performance in large-scale construction projects. In addition, this research is an empirical investigation into the mediation variables linking EI to team performance.

The Effect of Political Skill on Work Role Performance and Intention to Leave: A Moderated Mediation Model

Although political skill has received extensive and growing attention over the past decade, to date most research has focused on its direct relationship with individual outcomes. Only recently, a few researchers have begun to investigate the intermediate linkages between political skill and its outcomes. Based on social support and resources conservation theories, the current study explores the mediating role of perceived organizational support (POS) in the relationships between political skill and two relevant outcomes: work role performance (data provide by two different sources) and intention to leave. Moreover, it examines the moderating role of political skill in the relationships POS-work role performance and POS-intention to leave. Results, in a sample of engineers, support the proposed relationship except for the moderating role of political skill in the relationship POS-intention to leave. This research contributes to the political skill and POS literatures and, hopefully, it will stimulate more interest in these important areas of inquiry.