Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Political Behavior in Organizations 2

In the last byte, we looked at the definition of organizational politics and political behavior. In today's byte, we continue the discussion further.
By its very nature, politics is a controversial topics; and more so for the managers. While some managers take a favorable view of it, others see it detrimental to the organization. Some workers perceive their workplace to be highly political and find using political behavior very satisfying when they engage into it! These people would then thrive in such an environment. The other section generally finds the office politics distasteful and stressful. It is common to find that most people detect political behavior at all levels of the firm.
Organizational conditions could also encourage political activity - unclear goals, autocratic decision making, ambiguous lines of authority, scarce resources and uncertainty - all these favor political activity!
Political behavior in organizations could affect the organization very negatively when it is strategically undertaken to maximize self-interest.  That is, if members of an organization quite competitively pursue selfish ends - it is unlikely that the concerns of others are paid attention to. The workplace thus would be seen as less helpful, more threatening, and more unpredictable.

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