Understanding the effects of political influence behaviors on informal performances

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of supervisors’ political influence behaviors on subordinates’ organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). As a subgoal of the study the effects of those political behaviors on organizational identification (OID) and affective commitment (AC) of subordinates have also been evaluated. Thereby OID and AC are also supposed to be the mediators in the relation between superiors’ political behaviors and subordinate’s OCB. Through convenience sampling method, 265 employees, who are all medical representatives, from 10 companies operating in Turkish pharmaceutical industry have been subjected to survey for this research. The reason of conducting the survey in one sector is to minimize the effects of internal and external environmental factors of different sectors. Data acquired through the questionnaires were analyzed using SPSS 18.0 program. Through this program, hierarchical regression analyses have been implemented to reveal the independent variables’ effects on the dependent variable through the mediator variables. The main hypothesis of the study indicating the effects of the managers’ political behaviors on the employees’ OCB has been accepted. The sub-hypotheses which predicted the mediator effects of OID and AC in the model are also accepted.