Political behavior in organizations—A cross-cultural comparison

Abstract

97The purpose of this study is to explore the differences in the meaning attached to organizational politics (OP) across cultures. A critical incidents scale was distributed to two samples of university faculty, one in Canada and one in Israel. Three aspects relevant to the perception of OP were investigated: (1) the role that elements previously identified in the literature play in the actual perception of OP by employees; (2) the extent to which OP is perceived as moral; and (3) the degree to which OP is perceived to be prevalent or likely to occur in the subjects' organization. The results showed that the Canadian sample perceived the various elements in the scale as generally more political, less moral, and less prevalent in their organization than the Israeli sample. Both samples considered informal influence attempts as more political than formal or illegal ones. The two samples also considered illegal influence attempts as less moral thanformal or informal ones. Elements defined in our study as circumstantial, i.e, "conflict," "power attainment," "concealment of motive," and "acting against the organization," were found to make a smaller contribution to the perception ofsituations as political than elements defined as behavioral, i.e., "formal," "informal," and "illegal," influence attempts.

Perceived Political Climate and Job Attitudes

“…(Madison, Allen, Porter, Renwick and Mayes 1980) and that it is associ-. ated with informal rather than formal behaviour (Porter, Allen and Angle 1983; Drory and Romm 1988; Romm and Drory 1988). The present study attempts to address some of the above issues.…”

Assessing Performance: The Impact of Organizational Climates and Politics on Public Schools' Performance

“…For example, Schneider (1975) proposed that climate has to have a focus or target and that climate research has to be a climate for something . More specifically, studies have suggested that organizations do not have ‘one climate’, but encompass many climates, such as the service climate (Schneider 1980), the human resource development climate (Biswajeet 2002), the safety climate (Probst 2004), the innovation climate (Bare and Frese 2003), the ethical climate (Starratt 1991), the political climate (Romm and Drory 1988; Drory 1993), the justice climate (Leventhal 1980), the leadership climate (Chen and Bliese 2002) and the participative climate (Tjosvold 1985; Tesluk et al . 1999).…”

“…Evidence for such negative views can be seen in several studies that discussed and empirically examined how politics may relate to organizational climate (Romm and Drory 1988; Drory 1993). In accordance with these studies we expect that multiple organizational climates will be negatively related to perceptions of organizational politics.…”

“…Finally, organizational politics (e.g. Romm and Drory 1988) will be tested as a potential mediator in the multiple climates–performance relationship.…”

Electronic mail as a coalition-building information technology

“…Pfeffer [1981], in a landmark study of political prevalence, suggested that politics is more likely to occur under the following conditions: (a) when power is decentralized, (b) when resources are scarce, and (c) when there is a high level of interdependency among units drawing on the same resources pool. The importance of these conditions has been supported by subsequent research into the nature of political behavior in universities Romm and Drory 1988]. According to this research, universities are an extreme example of the above three conditions.…”