Addressing Politics in Matrix Teams

Abstract

Analyses of data collected from 172 members of 23 matrix teams indicated that member perceptions of team-level politics were negatively related to executive and member ratings of effectiveness and to member expressions of satisfaction with and commitment to the matrix team. In addition, results of moderated multiple regression analyses indicated that member-team goal congruence moderated these relationships. Perceptions of politics were more strongly related to the outcome variables among individuals who did not share the priorities of their team members than among those whose goal priorities were consistent. These results suggest that leaders can help their team members cope with politics by making efforts to ensure that they share goal priorities of team members.

Modeling High-Quality Knowledge Sharing in cross-functional software development teams

“…4 shows the direct path between Competition for Intangible Resources and High-Quality Knowledge Sharing is only significant at p < 0.1, while the path between the indirect path (between Competition for Intangible Resources and CF Cooperation) is significant at p < 0.05 (Cooperative Communication: p < 0.05 and Cooperative Task Orientation: p < 0.1). This is consistent with the predominant literature on organizational politics (Witt et al, 2001), implying that Competition for Intangible Resources has a stronger negative impact on cooperative behaviors of individuals, compared to its positive impact on the quality of the knowledge being shared.…”

“…Other behavioral examples of workplace politics include withholding important information from others in order to weaken the ability of others to compete for scarce resources and to accomplish goals outside of the charter of the group. Therefore, this category suggests that political behaviors produce negative outcomes through reducing team cohesion and team member cooperation (Pinto et al, 1993;Witt et al, 2001). The findings of this study about the negative association between Competition for Intangible Resources and CF Cooperation tend to agree with the second category of research on organizational politics.…”

“…The competitive advantage of knowledge can make team members hoard knowledge or offer incomplete transfer of knowledge (Jarvenpaa & Staples, 2001). This is particularly true in cross-functional teams where team members are likely to experience tension caused by diverse professional philosophies and competing goals (Witt, Hilton, & Hochwarter, 2001). For example, shared resource pools, different backgrounds and project roles might make the subgroups of business and IT professionals have different goals of their own, in addition to the project goals (Pee, Kankanhalli, & Kim, 2010).…”

“…Hypotheses testing.The extant literature on cross-functional project teams indicates that Competition for Intangible Resources is nearly always manifested in political behaviors(Witt et al, 2001).The positive and negative associations between Competition for…”

The Relationship of Organizational Commitment and Political Behavior Tendency among the Employees of Tehran University of Medical Sciences

“…But, Witt et al and Cropanzano et al, and the other studies did not confirm this result (Witt et al, 2001;Cropanzano et al, 1997;Vigoda, 2000). Although, Xia &Elangovan stated that employees' perception from power and politics in the organization as a predictive factor, can www.ccsenet.org/ass Asian Social Science Vol.…”