Politics in Organization and its Perception within the Organization

The purpose of this study was to examine the meaning of the concept ‘organizational politics’ (OP) as it is perceived by members of organizations. 156 employees completed a critical incident scale presenting various combinations of OP definition elements. The results suggest that OP is more highly associated with informal rather than formal or illegal bahaviour. The presence of other definition elements such as: power attainment, acting against the organization and concealment of motive, increases the likelihood of judging behaviours as political only when formal behavioural styles are employed. In the presence of informal and illegal behavioural styles the addition of the above elements has no effect. These results challenge the structure of most OP definitions offered in the literature by suggesting that employees perceive OP not as a rigid series of necessary conditions but as a set of variables which have complex and flexible inter-relationships.