Organizational Politics and Employee Performance: A Review and Theoretical Model

Organizational Politics (OP) refers to the influence cerivities organizational members resort to in order to maximize their interests and goals in the workplace. This paper has nivo main goals: (1) to review major studies which have discussed OP in the recent years and thereby (2) to propose a theoretical model for the relationship between OP and employee performances. Ihile so far most studies have concentrated on OP's negative outcomes, this paper argues tar, under certain conditions, OP may have positive effects valuable both to organizations and their members. The model uses a contingency approach which is in much congruence with Ferris and Kacmar's (1992) recontendation of a more balanced perspective toward OP. It suggests that OP may positively and indirectly relate to employees' performance through their level of Met Expectations (ME) at work, the level of Person-Organization Fit (POF), and employees' Perception of Politics (POPS). These relationships express a new concepualization of the OP-organisational outcome relations, and thereby provide some interesting directions for further studies.