ORGANIZATIONAL POLITICS

Sabina Baniya (12602) MPhil 2012

Moderating Effects of Tenure and Gender on the Relationship Between Perception of Organizational Politics and Commitment and Trust Setyabudi Indartono and Chun-His Vivian Chen

Arguments

Most People agree that politics in the workplace is a

reality of organizational life and seeks to protect diverse and often competing interests, particularly within dynamic and uncertain situations (Poon, 2003; and Chen and Fang, 2008) Political behavior, for example, is defined as the study of power in action (Pfeffer, 1981; and Chen et al.,2008) It is used to bargain to attain or perpetuate certain interests. Therefore, most managers view political behavior as ethical and necessary. They use political behavior as a means to realize organizational effectiveness, change, resource and reputation. (Buchanan, 2007)

Arguments Political actions such as inappropriate distribution of organizational outcomes leads to jealousy and resentment among employees (Othman, 2008) As a consequence, employees use political action to manipulate their. Accordingly, political behavior in the workplace affects individual perceptions of fairness (Judge and Robins, 2007; and Miller and Nicols, 2008), in turn decreasing employee commitment and trust, which in turn affects organizational productivity and profitability.

Purpose of the study

To test the effect of different perceptions of equity in

political behavior on commitment and trust relationships. The study speculates that employees who perceived inequitable treatment will have negative commitment and trust responses, whereas employees who perceive equitable treatment will have increased commitment and trust.

Research Gap
Recent empirical studies have investigated the relationship

between political behavior and commitment, the relationship seems ambiguous and equivocal. For example, Ferris et al. (2002) argued that political behavior negatively affects commitment yet other scholars have found a positive relationship (e.g. Khumar and Ghadially, 1989, study 1 of Cropanzano et al., 1997; and Randall et al., 1999) Miller et al. (2008) indicated that Perception of Organizational Politics (POS) are complex phenomena because their existence is interpreted through the perceptions of individuals, and individual perceptions are function of individual characteristics , social relationships, and certain attitudes towards work.

Cont..
Thus, some situations in an organization end up as a fertile ground for

political action and are perceived differently.

Buchanan (2007) noted that a wide range of organizational, environmental,

demographic and personality factors empirically influenced perceptions of political action in the workplace.
Othmans (2008) pioneering study on the issue of fairness in organizational

politics, a dearth of studies exist investigating organizational politics in the context of diverse individual perceptions.
According to equity theory (Adam, 1965), individuals modify their behavior

based on their perceptions of fair treatment, i.e. How one perceives the ratio of his or her inputs to his or her outcomes to be equivalent to those around him or her.
Perception of equity is though to be one of the important facets of

organizational politics for obtaining commitment and trust.

Cont..
Can employees use certain situations to achieve commitment

and trust in a political workplace? Therefore, to unravel this problem, it is important to explore whether perception of equity does influence the effect of POP on commitment and trust. Several researchers have suggested further studies be conducted on the relationship between politics and outcomes from motivational perspectives (Witt, 1998; and Kacmar and Baron, 1999). A recent study by Chen and Feng (2008) inclusively suggested that future researchers should incorporate equity theory to enrich understanding of empirical practice on the relationship between politics and outcomes.

Objective

Based on equity theory, the study attempts to

investigate the influence of employees perceptions of political behavior on commitment and trust relationships by examining the role of gender and tenure of the employees

Hypotheses
H1: Perceptions of organizational politics are negatively related to commitment H2: Perception of equity is positively related to commitment H3: perception of equity moderates the relationship between POP and commitment H4: Perception of organizational politics is negatively related to trust. H5: Perception of equity is positively related to trust H6: Perception of equity moderates the relationship between POP and trust.

Cont..
H7: Male and Female employees who had higher POE have varying degree of strengths in POP-trust relationship as well as POPcommitment relationship H8: Male and female employees who had lower perceptions of equity have varying degree of strengths in POP-trust relationship as well as POP-commitment trusts H9: Mature and new employees who had higher POE have varying degree of strengths in POP-trust relationship as well as POPcommitment relationship H10: Mature and new employees who had lower perceptions of equity have varying degree of strengths in POP-trust relationship as well as POP-commitment relationships

Methodology
Data were collected through survey method from teachers in Indonesian

schools. (Jan to March 2009) 261 samples from 500 questionnaires distributed 151 male and 149 were married Average age 36.5 years Average work experience 7.7 years 37.2 percent had leadership/managerial positions. 14.6 percent graduated from college, 46 percent had graduate degree, 19.9 percent had a masters degree and 4.6 percent had a doctorate degree 26 item of organizational politics (alpha =0.854) developed by Kacmar and Baron (1999) Six itemsPerception of equity (alpha = 0.893) from the questionnaire developed by Janssen (2001) Six items of trust (alpha= 0.837) adopted from Posakoff et al., (1990) Twelve items of commitment (alpha = 0.888) adopted from Chinen and Enomoto (2004)

Cont..
Factor Analysis adopted to test for the quality and

adequacy of the measurement model and its second order (HCFA) for the single factor of POP and commitment (Anderson and Gerbing, 1986) Discriminant validity do measure the degree to which operationalization is not similar to (diverges from) other operationalization to which it theoretically should not be similar. (Concept by Campbell and Fiske, 1959) Regression Analysis Hierarchical moderated regression analysis

Findings
Hypotheses 1, 2, 4 and 5 were supported.

Gender and Tenure had moderating effects on the

relationship between POP and commitment as well as trust. The findings partially supported Hypotheses 7, 8, 9 and 10. The findings suggested that when POP is low, female and junior employees demonstrate higher commitment and lower perceptions of equity, compared to male and mature employees Female and junior employees also demonstrate higher trust with high perceptions of equity, than male and mature employees

Conclusion
The result of this investigation were consistent with the

findings of previous studies, e.g., Ferris et al. (2002), Poon (2006), Vigoda (2007), and Othman (2008). Although the perception of equity did not have significant moderating effects on the relationship between POP and outcome variables, employee gender and tenure were found to moderate the relationships. It supports previous findings i.e. Male employees showed higher commitment and trust than female employees in the context of strong organizational politics and perception of equity. Similarly, tenure also had an effect.

Cont..
These findings explain the previous inverse opinion of

Sanders and Schyns (2006) about the relevance of gender and commitment. They indicated that no answer to be given to the question, Are women more committed to the organization-than men? Even though most studies have shared the tendency to focus on commitment as a characteristics of employees, the results have been inconclusive (Meyer et al., 1995; and Meyer et al., 2002). Thus, this finding clearly agrees with previous lack of explanation using equity motivation.

Implications
Current study contributed to methodological rigor by

applying the concept of motivation theory using appropriate measures. Researchers have seemed to force certain measurements to predict a concept of motivation. Future researchers are encouraged to use and develop motivational measurement to reflect the motivational theory used, for example, cognitive, self-efficacy or reinforcement theory of motivation.

Cont..
These findings imply that organization leaders need to

overcome these negative effects (Chen and Fang, 2008) Perceptions of politics decrease with,and are tempered by age since anyone familir with the realities of the way organizations operate may be less prone to cognitively process, evaluate and interpret events as being political in nature (Ferris et al, 1996, and Vigoda and Cohen, 2002) Tenured employees are more familiar with the organization, depend on it more and accept it as a substantial part of their lives.

Conceptual Framework..
Trust
Go along to Get ahead (GATGA) General Political Behavior (GPB
Perception of Organizational Politics Organizational Culture

Gender Tenure

Commitment Affective Commitment Normative Commitment Continuance Commitment