Political Skills towards Personal Reputation Among Academicians in Malaysia: A Conceptual Study

Abstract

Educational qualifications and skills by themselves are no longer sufficient to ensure an employee's continued professional success due to the industry's accelerating situation. Thus, in order to sustain a highly competitive labour market, another significant intangible asset that an employee ought to prioritise is having a strong personal reputation within the organisation. In any line of business, having a stellar personal reputation is vital because it helps employees stand out from the crowd. Globalisation that demands online interaction also urges all employees to have a pleasant reputation to win trust and confidence from customers and gain noble personality. Undeniably, great personal reputation enables individuals to have amazing career prospects, better recruitment, minimise negative sentiment and leads to high prestige as well as recognition from the company and the community. Moreover, it has been proven that social skills provide additional value to an employee's personal reputation. Therefore, the aim of this study is to provide a conceptual framework for investigating the roles of political skills, including its dimension: networking ability, interpersonal influence, social astuteness, and apparent sincerity, in relation to the personal reputation of academicians in Malaysia. We anticipate that by providing a research framework, future researchers will be able to evaluate the presented model and fill knowledge gaps in the field of research on academicians' personal reputation.