Perceptions of organizational politics: A meta-analysis of its attitudinal, health, and behavioural consequences.

Abstract

In this study, we report the results of a meta-analysis of the relations between perceptions of organisational politics (POP) and attitudinal, psychological health, and behavioural variables using data from 118 independent samples, totaling 44,560 participants. Among the variables examined, POP was most strongly related to organisational trust and interactional justice, but also exhibited relations with a variety of other criteria, including positive relations with stress, burnout, turnover intentions and counterproductive work behaviour, and negative relations with job satisfaction, citizenship behaviour, and job performance. We also found evidence that some effect sizes were moderated by the publication status, geographical origin of data, and types of measures used to assess POP.Keywords: perceptions of organisational politics, stress, job satisfaction, absenteeism, organisational trustIt has been about 25 years since Ferris, Russ, and Fandt (1989) introduced their seminal model of perceptions of organisational politics (POP) and more than a decade since it was revised and updated by Ferris, Adams, Kolodinsky, Hochwarter, and Ammeter (2002). Since that time, researchers have used these models to guide their investigations of the antecedents, correlates, and consequences of perceptions of politics in work settings. Reviews of this literature have generally shown that politics is influenced by a variety of individual attributes, such as Machiavellianism, positive affectivity, and locus of control, and conditions in the work environment, such as job autonomy, centralization, and formalization (e.g., Ferris et al., 1989; Hochwarter & Thompson, 2010; Valle & Perrewe, 2000). In addition, research has shown that individuals who perceive politics at work experience negative outcomes; for example, lower levels of job satisfaction and commitment and higher levels of job stress (e.g., Atine, Darrat, Fuller, & Parker, 2010; Miller, Rutherford, & Kolodinsky, 2008).Although Ferris et al.'s (2002, 1989) framework has been useful in advancing the understanding of the nomological network of POP, much of the empirical research on the construct has focused on its proposed consequences. Given this, the primary purpose of the present meta-analysis was to contribute to our understanding of, and guide future research on POP by (a) representing, as accurately as possible given the available data, the relations between POP and its theoretically proposed consequences; and (b) investigating whether these relations are moderated by methodological or other variables.Using insights from the job demands-resources (JD-R) theory (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007; Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Schaufeli, 2001), we propose organisational politics as a job demand that requires employees to expend sustained physical and/or psychological effort to manage, resulting in various negative attitudinal, psychological health, and/or behavioural consequences. Past reviews by Chang, Rosen, and Levy (2009) and Miller, Rutherford, and Kolodinsky (2008) have helped to integrate segments of the literature on POP but focused on a narrower set of individual outcomes than were examined in this meta-analysis. For instance, Miller et al. (2008) focused specifically on job satisfaction, stress, job performance, turnover intentions, and organisational commitment, while Chang et al. (2009) focused on strain, job satisfaction, turnover intentions, organisational citizenship behaviours-individual (OCB-I), organisational citizenship behaviours (OCB-O), task performance, and affective commitment. Our goal with the present research is to extend and update previous reviews in three ways. First, we analyse a broader range of variables that have been theoretically positioned as consequences of POP. In addition to the variables included in previous studies, we also include variables such as absenteeism, counterproductive work behaviours, self- and supervisor-rated job performance, burnout, job involvement, organisational trust, organisational support, perceived work control, distributive justice, interactional justice, and procedural justice. …