Political Skill Research Articles

Mayoral Influence on Participatory Budgeting in Lithuania during Covid-19

The paper deals with two topics: Participatory Budgeting (PB) and mayoral impact on its success. Its theoretical background is rooted in the interrelation of the discourse of PB and characteristics of mayors as city leaders. The paper analyzes articles revealing personal, social and political characteristics of mayors and their impact on civic governance. The scope of collected characteristics was researched with a view on how they impact succession and the resilience of PB. The idea behind this analysis was not only to reveal mayoral characteristics and their impact on PB in general, but to test them against the background of the Covid-19 pandemic as an example of an external crisis. PB practice in Lithuanian municipalities was researched. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with mayors or their subordinates and helped to reveal the mayors’ role and impact on PB resiliency. Relevant statistical data was collected and analyzed in order to obtain the specific characteristics. The results proved the impact of mayors’ social and personal backgrounds on PB resiliency, but during challenging times or even crises, political affiliation, interrelation with the council or administrative and political skills are supportive factors. The paper suggests that mayors cannot ensure the persistence of PB alone when finances are scarce during times of crisis. Doi: 10.28991/esj-2022-SPER-011 Full Text: PDF

The downside of managers: The moderator role of political skill & deceptive situation

Relying on the trait activation theory and socioanalytic theory, this study investigate conditions that activate or restrain a manager's dark triad, which can predict exploitative leadership. First, we examine the interacting effect of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy with deceptive situation cues at work. Then, we investigated the effect of a manager's political skill - into the emergence of exploitative leadership. A multisource data were collected across two studies administered first to employees then to their corresponding managers (N = 150). Structural equation modeling were used to test hypothesis. The study's findings show that the interaction of deceptive conditions with the dark triad is the most predictive of exploitative leadership, while managers' political skill was found to have a neutralize effect. The present study provides an effort to identify a potential cause and a solution to manager's exploitative behavior at work. Implications for the dark triad literature, theories underlying it, and exploitative leadership are discussed.

"Political Skill as a Moderator between Emotional Intelligence and Organizational Citizenship Behaviour"

"Political Skill as a Moderator between Emotional Intelligence and Organizational Citizenship Behaviour"

Power and Politics in Different Change Discourses

Background: The purpose of this article is to examine how different views on power and politics manifest in organizational change, and how they can be integrated into a single model. Methods: Our research was based on an extensive literature review about power and politics and their relationship with organizational change. We used the systems model of organizational change developed by Maes and Van Hootegem to map the different views on power and politics in organizational change. This systems model integrated different change discourses and allowed us to post the various aspects of power and politics in organizational change. Results: Using the systems model as a reference to look at power and politics from different angles led to a better understanding of the role they play in organizational change so that actors can enter the political arena of change better prepared and play the game of change at a tactically higher level. Conclusions: The analysis contributes to the study of power and politics in three respects. First, using the metamodel of organizational change to map the different views on power and politics offers a more detailed and varied understanding of the use of power and politics in organizational change. Second, looking at power and politics from different discourses can accommodate greater complexity and nuance. Third, it shows that change projects rarely run smoothly but are constantly traversed by all kinds of obstacles and barriers that require specific political astuteness. Members of an organization, who have been introduced to political skills, will be better able to navigate the pitfalls of organizational change and its rhetoric and thus be better agents of change or better able to resist unreasonable change.

A Multidimensional Model of Abusive Supervision and Work Incivility

The ubiquity of abusive supervision in the workplace, as well as the serious repercussions that come with it, has prompted scholars to investigate the numerous dynamics of this problem. This research examines the circumstances in which subordinates react to abusive supervisory behavior. The study hypothesizes the negative impacts of abusive supervision associated with the impression of unfairness and politics in the workplace toward a subordinate deviant attitude based on current research and theoretical perspectives. According to the suggested paradigm, abusive supervision leads to subordinates’ work incivility by creating an unfair and politically thrilling atmosphere in the workplace. Furthermore, the study found that political skill and work incivility are linked to each other; workers who are experts in using political tactics are not supposed to turn toward work incivility while responding to the abusive behavior of the top management. The research was based on the social exchange theory and uncertainty management theory.

Acquiring and developing healthcare leaders’ political skills: an interview study with healthcare leaders

BackgroundResearch suggests health and care leaders need to develop a distinct set of political skills in order to understand and manage the competing interests and agenda that characterise health and...

The bright side of environmental uncertainty for organizational learning: the moderating role of political skill

The bright side of environmental uncertainty for organizational learning: the moderating role of political skill

Is knowledge hiding in higher education a political phenomenon? An explanatory sequential approach to explore non-linear and three-way interaction effects

PurposeThis study addresses a central research question: Is individuals’ propensity to hide knowledge a “political phenomenon” among researchers in the Indian higher education institutions? Drawing upon social exchange and uncertainty management theories, the authors examine how a three-way interaction effect of perceptions of organizational politics, political will and political skill contributes to knowledge hiding. In addition, this study aims to develop a nuanced understanding of the knowledge hiding phenomenon in the Indian higher education context.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopts a mixed-method study design with an explanatory sequential approach. The authors gathered data through a cross-sectional survey of 286 researchers (Study 1) followed by two focus group discussions (Study 2) involving 13 academic researchers from five Indian universities. The sample includes full-time faculty members, postgraduate and full-time doctoral students engaged in research.FindingsThe results of Study 1 indicate that researchers’ perceptions of organizational politics positively relate to their knowledge hiding. The findings of this study also suggest that the positive relationship between perceptions of organizational politics and knowledge hiding turns negative for individuals with high political will and high political skill. The focus group discussions (Study 2) explore significant predictors of knowledge hiding. This study unveils various characteristics of knowledge, knowledge hider, knowledge seeker and interpersonal dynamics as the key drivers of knowledge hiding in Indian academia.Originality/valueThe significant contributions of this study are to provide new insights into the relationship between organizational politics and knowledge hiding and to unravel the various factors that incite knowledge hiding among researchers in the Indian higher education context. This study is one among the few in the knowledge hiding literature to adopt a mixed-method research design with an explanatory sequential approach.

Healthcare Leadership with Political Astuteness and its role in the implementation of major system change: the HeLPA qualitative study

BackgroundThe implementation of change in health and care services is often complicated by the ‘micropolitics’ of the care system. There is growing recognition that health and care leaders need to develop and use types of ‘political skill’ or ‘political astuteness’ to understand and manage the micropolitics of change.AimThe aim of this study was to produce a new empirical and theoretical understanding of the acquisition, use and contribution of leadership with ‘political astuteness’, especially in the implementation of major system change, from which to inform the co-design of training, development and recruitment resources.MethodsThe qualitative study comprised four work packages. Work package 1 involved two systematic literature reviews: one ‘review of reviews’ on the concept of political astuteness and another applying the learning from this to the health services research literature. Work package 2 involved biographical narrative interviews with 66 health and care leaders to investigate their experiences of acquiring and using political skills in the implementation of change. Work package 3 involved in-depth qualitative case study research with nine project teams drawn from three regional Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships operating in different English regions. Work package 4 involved a series of co-design workshops to develop learning materials and resources to support service leaders’ acquisition and use of political skills and astuteness.ResultsThe concepts of political skills and astuteness have had growing influence on health services research, yet these have tended to emphasise a relatively individualised and behavioural view of change leadership. The interview study suggests that, although leaders certainly use individual skills and behaviours when implementing change, change processes are contingent on local contextual factors and the patterns of collective action in the forms of interlocking constellations of political interactions. The in-depth case study research further shows these interactive, contingent and collective processes in the implementation of major system change. The study finds that major system change occurs over several linked stages, each involving particular controversies for which skills, strategies and actions are needed. Informed by these findings, and through a series of co-design workshops, the study has produced a set of resources and materials and a workbook to support individuals and project teams to acquire and develop political skill.LimitationsThe study was complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic and there were difficulties in recruiting in-depth cases for observational research, and also recruiting patient and community groups.ConclusionsHealth and care leaders can develop and use a range of skills, strategies and actions to understand and navigate the diverse interests that complicate change. Building on the literature, the study presents a novel empirical framework of these skills, strategies and behaviours, and shows how they are used in the implementation of major system change. This study concludes with a set of co-designed learning resources and materials to support future leaders to develop similar skills and strategies. Further evidence is needed on the contribution of the learning resources on leadership activities and to understand the contribution of political skills to other areas of service governance.Study registrationThis study is registered as researchregistery4020.FundingThis project was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health and Social Care Delivery Research programme and will be published in full inHealth and Social Care Delivery Research; Vol. 10, No. 11. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information.

When Do Team Members Share the Lead? A Social Network Analysis.

Shared leadership is not only about individual team members engaging in leadership, but also about team members adopting the complementary follower role. However, the question of what enables team members to fill in each of these roles and the corresponding influence of formal leaders have remained largely unexplored. Using a social network perspective allows us to predict both leadership and followership ties between team members based on considerations of implicit leadership and followership theories. From this social information processing perspective, we identify individual team members’ political skill and the formal leaders’ empowering leadership as important qualities that facilitate the adoption of each the leader and the follower role. Results from a social network analysis in a R&D department with 305 realized leadership ties support most of our hypotheses.

The savvy and cheerful employee innovation champions: The roles of political skill and trait‐positive affect in employees' championing and salary levels

As successful innovations depend on how much support an innovation can receive, champion and promote, role theories have investigated characteristics of certain individuals, who promote innovations. Taking an employee‐driven innovation approach, this study enlarges the lens to also include nonmanagerial employees. Compared with champions and people in promotor roles, nonmanagerial employees' championing has received little attention in research. We help in filling this gap by analysing longitudinal questionnaire data from 152 employees from a Danish branch of a global IT consultancy company, who replied to all three questionnaire waves. We investigated how stable championing is across time and examined the relationship between political skills, positive affect, championing behaviour and employee salary level. The findings reveal that employees' level of championing is rather stable. Moreover, the higher level of political skill employees report to have, the more they engage in championing. High levels of positive affect strengthen this relationship between political skill and championing. Additionally, the results reveal a relationship between the level of championing behaviour and the employee's salary band level. This study adds to the extant research in champion and promoter role theories by showing that a sociopolitical approach is also relevant for a broader range of employees.

Local placement test retrofit and building language assessment literacy with teacher stakeholders: A case study from Colombia

This article provides a single, common-case study of a test retrofit project at one Colombian university. It reports on how the test retrofit project was carried out and describes the different areas of language assessment literacy the project afforded local teacher stakeholders. This project was successful in that it modified the test constructs and item types, while drawing stronger connections between the curriculum and the placement instrument. It also established a conceptual framework for the test and produced a more robust test form, psychometrically. The project intersected with different social forces, which impacted the project’s outcome in various ways. The project also illustrates how test retrofit provided local teachers with opportunities for language assessment literacy and with evidence-based knowledge about their students’ language proficiency. The study concludes that local assessment projects have the capacity to benefit local teachers, especially in terms of increased language assessment literacy. Intrinsic to a project’s sustainability are long-term financial commitment and institutionally established dedicated time, assigned to teacher participants. The study also concludes that project leadership requires both assessment and political skill sets, to conduct defensible research while compelling institutions to see the potential benefits of an ongoing test development or retrofit project.

Electoral accountability and political competence

Much research contends that candidate competence brings technical or political skill, such that selecting against such attributes seems irrational. However, if special interest coalitions are sufficiently strong, a majority may expect that political expertise will be used to select policies that generate rents for narrow constituencies at the expense of its own welfare. I develop a model in which a majority prefers to elect the less competent politician in order to undermine the incumbent’s ability to pursue the special interest agenda and derive the implications for accountability in this setting. The results demonstrate that the majority’s attempts to reassert control over policy through its retention decisions impede social welfare maximizing reform and distort aggregate welfare by either encouraging ([Formula: see text]) inefficient policy selection or ([Formula: see text]) inefficient candidate selection. Even if politicians choose policies that maximize social welfare doing so may only worsen aggregate welfare by providing voters with more information about candidate competence, which enables the majority to better select inept politicians.

Finding a New Illinois History: Connecting with the Revival of Midwestern Regional History

Finding a New Illinois History: Connecting with the Revival of Midwestern Regional History

Impact of Political Skill on Employee Outcomes with the Moderating Role of Perceived Organizational Politics

Purpose: Political skill has been attracting immense research attention in recent years. However, majority of the researches showed positive outcomes of political skill for employees. This research will provide new insights to literature through investigating the role of political skill in reducing negative behavioral outcomes of employees by developing job satisfaction to ultimately reduce turnover intention. Moreover, harmonizing effect of political skill in perceived organizational politics may enable employees to maintain job satisfaction and reduce turnover intention.
 Design/Methodology/Approach: Data were collected from 186 employees representing different sectors of Pakistani industry. Hayes (2013) moderated mediation analysis is used to analyze results.
 Findings: Study findings depict a significant relation between political skill and job satisfaction, which ultimately affect turnover intention. Furthermore, perceived organizational politics played a significant moderating role between political skill and job satisfaction.
 Implications/Originality/Value: The study is undertaken in a developing country which provides relevant conditions to investigate such a relationship. This study fills up a significant gap in the literature as there is scarce literature available that investigates the relationship between political skill and its outcomes, specifically in Pakistan.

How Do Political Skills Affect Attitude of Clients in Real Estate Industry?

This study, which is based on the social capital theory, explores how the political skills of salespersons (which include interpersonal influence (II), social astuteness (SA), networking ability (NA), and apparent sincerity (AS)) affect the trust of their clients in order to increase their loyalty. By incorporating the concept of political skills into research on real estate sales behavior, this study addresses the literature gap on the lack of discussion of the social abilities of salespersons in the real estate industry. To validate this theoretical model, this study targets real estate salespersons and buyers in Taiwan, by using questionnaires to collect dyadic data, and linear regression modeling to test the relevant hypotheses. The results indicate that among the political skills, II and SA are positively significant, thus indicating that salespersons with high degrees of II and SA are capable of increasing the trust of their clients, which in turn increases client loyalty. Moreover, the interaction effects on client trust are all negative and significant, which suggest that self-efficacy has a crucial moderating role. Salespersons with low self-efficacy who have NA and AS can enhance client trust. The findings of this study can be considered as constructive advice for the real estate industry in their training of salespersons.

TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP, POLITICAL SKILL, ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE, AND EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE: A CASE FROM TOURISM COMPANY IN INDONESIA

Tourism industry has occupied a strategic position in the country's economic growth. The factors that trigger the high performance of companies engaged in this industry are very crucial. The purpose of this study is to test the correlation of transformational leadership (TL), political skill (PS), organizational culture (OC), and employee performance (EP), and to investigate the role of OC as a mediation variable. The samples consisted of 110 respondents from Tourism Company in Indonesia. The sample was determined by Slovin formula. The data were collected through questionnaire instruments. The current study employed quantitative method. To test the hypotheses, PLS (Partial Least Square) was applied in analyzing the data. This study found that TL and OC, PS and OC and EP were positive and significance. The mediation test also justified that OC could mediate TL on EP and PS on EP. However, it is also indicated that TL did not affect EP. This study has the important implications for managers such as encouraging high EP in the tourism sector by strengthening OC (such as adaptive, collaborative, flexible, and team oriented), by enhancing the PS (such as understanding others, having high social skill, and increasing an ability to influence others). These findings confirmed and contrasted to the previous studies conducted.

Building political capital through corporate social responsibility: a microlevel focus on the role of business leaders

PurposeThere are no management decisions deprived of ethical or political consequences. Political corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been highlighting this assertion but research at the microlevel on this topic is scarce. This study aims to contribute to the microlevel research by proposing a behavioral framework where leaders’ political skills are determinants of engagement in strategic CSR and perceived CSR leverages their ascribed legitimacy to perform a political role outside the boundaries of the organizations.Design/methodology/approachBuilding upon political CSR and critical realism theories, this study offers a general review on key political CSR microlevel concepts and examines multiple dimensions of CSR to explain the indirect effect between boards' political skills and political legitimacy.FindingsThis research suggests that high politically skilled leaders are associated to more CSR adoption which fosters higher legitimacy to act as political influencers. Among these, CSR activities directed toward community members and employees are seemingly the most successful from a political standpoint.Originality/valueThis study proposes a contemporary form of political influence to business leaders that, in contrast with other strategies such as lobbying or financing political campaigns, does not end up damaging corporate image and reputation. Also, this study proposes that not all CSR activities leverage corporate political legitimacy per se, therefore they do need to be differentiated. This study then offers a comprehensive future research agenda, including detailed suggestions for research designs and measurements.

Divergent Fan Forums and Political Consciousness Raising

This article conducts a thematic analysis of 40 threads related to sociopolitical issues on two <em>Divergent</em> fan forums, one on Divergent Fans and another on Divergent Wiki, to determine whether these forums raise political consciousness, especially among young people. As scholars of civic imagination show, popular culture narratives may lead to the ability to imagine a better future. Utopian narratives in particular facilitate this process in a dialectical way by presenting us with an impossible world, and dystopian narratives may operate in a similarly dialectical fashion by offering a negative example or warning. Analysis of posts related to utopia and dystopia, the story world versus the real world, historical and contemporary parallels, governmental reform, and non-normative sexuality reveals that participants on <em>Divergent </em>fan forums discuss real-world issues and sometimes imagine a better world, but this does not conclusively raise political consciousness. We can account for these civic successes and failures by considering Dahlgren’s (2009) six elements of civic cultures: knowledge, values, trust, spaces, practices/skills, and identities. While fan knowledge, trust, and spaces are strong, and fan identities can be experienced as relatively static, values and practices/skills are important areas for intervention to cultivate political consciousness among young people. Critical civic education at the secondary school level could foster democratic values, and teaching media literacy and political discussion skills could improve students’ ability to think critically about entertainment narratives.

Perceived managerial intimidation: harmful implications and potential buffers

PurposeDoes perceived managerial intimidation result in harmful emotional and behavioral implications that impair employees' performance? If so, are there buffers against these implications? To answer these questions, the current study relies on the social exchange theory and presents a moderated mediation model in which (1) perceived managerial intimidation evokes hostility that results in both organizational counterproductive work behavior (O-CWB) and interpersonal counterproductive work behavior (I-CWB) and (2) negative affectivity, political skill, tenure with the manager and sectorial affiliation moderate these relationships.Design/methodology/approachThe moderated mediation model was tested using a sample of 367 subordinates. The data were collected in three waves.FindingsPerceived managerial intimidation was positively related to hostility and both forms of CWB. Moreover, hostility mediated the relationships between perceived managerial intimidation and these two outcomes and sectorial affiliation moderated these mediations.Practical implicationsPublic organizations should implement training programs to develop the awareness of the organizations' managers about the harmful implications of perceived managerial intimidation and teach the managers acceptable methods for improving employees' performance.Originality/valueThis study investigates whether perceived managerial intimidation results in CWB. The study's findings demonstrate positive relationships between these variables, shedding light on the emotional mediating mechanism that links the variables. Moreover, the study validates sectorial affiliation as a buffer against the negative emotional and behavioral implications of perceived managerial intimidation, providing ideas for practical implications.