Development and Validation of the Political Skill Inventory

Abstract

The present research was developed to examine the conceptualization and measurement of the political skill construct and to provide validation evidence for the Political Skill Inventory (PSI). The results of three investigations, involving seven samples, are reported that demonstrate consistency of the factor structure across studies, construct validity, and criterion-related validity of the PSI. As hypothesized, political skill was positively related to self-monitoring, political savvy, and emotional intelligence; negatively related to trait anxiety; and not correlated with general mental ability. Also, the PSI predicted performance ratings of managers in two samples. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are provided.

Proactive and politically skilled professionals: What is the relationship with affective occupational commitment?

“…A six-item scale developed by Ferris et al (1999) was used to measure political skills. An example item includes "I am good at getting others to respond positively to me."…”

Hard, soft or ambidextrous? Which influence style promotes managers’ task performance and the role of political skill

“…Political skill reflects an interpersonal style that helps calibrate behaviors to different contextual demands by employing a manner that is genuine and sincere, which inspires confidence and trust, and results in effective influence over others at work (Ferris et al, 2005;Ferris et al, 2007). It comprises four underlying dimensions (i.e., social astuteness, networking ability, interpersonal influence and apparent sincerity), with each describing a unique capability, that altogether work to ensure the attainment of personal and organizational goals, without seeming manipulative and coercive, even within ambiguous work settings (Ferris et al, 2005;Harris, Maher, & Ferris, 2016).…”

“…This social competency, delineated as political skill, designates, at large, the extent of success of an influence attempt, as well as its frequency and intensity of use (Kolodinsky, Treadway, & Ferris, 2007). In other words, managers must combine social 5 astuteness with a capacity to demonstrate situationally appropriate behavior under different demands and contexts to effectively achieve their personal and/or organizational goals (Ferris et al, 2005).…”

Constructs of social and emotional effectiveness: Different labels, same content?

“…Furthermore, we administered six self-report questionnaires, namely the Big Five Inventory (BFI, John, Donahue, & Kentle, 1991), Social Skills Inventory (SSI, Riggio & Carney, 2003), Interpersonal Competence Questionnaire (ICQ, Buhrmester et al, 1988), Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI, Davis, 1983), Political Skill Inventory (PSI, Ferris et al, 2005), and the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQUE, Petrides & Furnham, 2003). The subscales of each measure as provided in the respective citation are displayed in Table 1.…”

“…To answer this question, we administered a range of widely used questionnaires and tests to broadly cover the domain. In particular, we included questionnaires of social skills comprising social and emotional sensitivity, expressivity, and control scales (Riggio & Carney, 2003); interpersonal competence which includes the ability to handle interpersonal tasks such as initiating relationships, personal disclosure, and empathic concern (Buhrmester et al, 1988); political skill which refers to abilities that are particularly relevant in organizational contexts, such as networking ability and the ability to influence others (Ferris et al, 2005); interpersonal reactivity or empathy (Davis, 1983), and trait emotional intelligence (Petrides & Furnham, 2003). In addition, we used two performance-based assessments of emotion recognition ability and an emotional intelligence test.…”