Career Success Implications of Political Skill

Abstract

The authors investigated the individual characteristic of political skill and its relation to 5 different career-related outcomes (total compensation, promotions, career satisfaction, life satisfaction, and perceived external job mobility). They examined data obtained from a sample of 191 employees working a wide range of occupations. The results reveal that political skill is associated with 4 of the 5 outcomes. In addition, they examined the 4 dimensions of political skill and found that the networking ability dimension dominates the relations with the examined outcomes. The authors discuss practical implications, limitations, and directions for future research.

Political Skill and Work Attitudes: A Comparison of Multiple Social Effectiveness Constructs

“…In its early stages, political skill was thought to incorporate many different traits, including: social astuteness, savvy, and positioning (Mintzberg, 1985). Political skill involves purposeful attempts at interpersonal influence to achieve positive work-related outcomes (Todd, Harris, Harris, & Wheeler, 2009) and has come to be defined as "the ability to effectively understand others at work and to use such knowledge to influence others to act in ways that enhance one's personal and/or organizational objectives" (Ahearn et al, 2004, p. 311). That is, a politicallyskilled person possesses social competencies that enhance their personal and/or organizational goals through their understanding and influence of others at work (Blickle et al, 2008).…”

The relative importance of political skill dimensions for predicting managerial effectiveness

“…Despite the assertion that political skill is an important predictor of managers' career success (Mintzberg, 1983;Pavett & Lau, 1983;Pfeffer, 1981), a number of gaps in the literature exists that need to be addressed. First, the preponderance of political skill research has treated the construct as unidimensional (e.g., Blickle et al, 2008;Harris, Kacmar, Zivnoska, & Shaw, 2007;Jawahar, Meurs, Ferris, & Hochwarter, 2008;Semadar, Robins, & Ferris, 2006;Treadway, Ferris, Duke, Adams, & Thatcher, 2007), and past research that has treated political skill as a multidimensional construct has reached conflicting conclusions regarding which political skill dimensions matter the most (e.g., Ferris et al, 2005;Todd, Harris, Harris, & Wheeler, 2009). The conflicting findings, however, may be a methodological artifact as these studies have relied exclusively on correlations and multiple regression analyses; unfortunately, these methods have been shown to produce inadequate indices of the relative importance of variables (Krasikova, LeBreton, & Tonidandel, 2011).…”

“…Additionally, prior research has focused almost exclusively on the main effect of political skill's relationship to managerial effectiveness (Blickle et al, 2008;Ferris et al, 2005;Jawahar et al, 2008;Todd et al, 2009), and these studies have also largely ignored the utility of political skill as a predictor over and above traditional measures of managerial skills. The research presented here, therefore, expands on and improves upon previous political skill research in the following three ways: (1) It investigates the incremental validity of political skill as a predictor of managerial effectiveness over and above established measures of managerial skills; (2) it examines the relative importance of each of the political skill dimensions using relative weight analysis not employed in previous research; and (3) it examines the role of two theoretically relevant variables-gender and organizational level-in moderating the relationship between political skill and managerial effectiveness.…”

Political behavior in organizational context: nature, research and paradigm

“…Furthermore, political skill was found to predict early employees' subsequent income level, hierarchical position, and career satisfaction Todd et al, 2009). Although these researches and their findings are interesting but they are not very reliable because the studies in the American school have defendable and logical trends.…”