Organizational politics in work teams: Toward a team-level conceptualization of organizational politics

A major assumptions directing this chapter is that the basic motivation to become engaged in workplace politics, by individuals and teams, is quite similar to those motivations of politicians and activists at the national level. This activity is individually derived but also largely group and team derived. The quest for acknowledgment of specific interests, the willingness to play a "give-and-take" game, and the rationality of actions during build-up, construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of coalitions and teams are all part of a political code of action occurring inside organizations and around them in the wider society. Although there is no doubt that internal politics is a common phenomenon in every organization, too little is known about the exact nature and boundaries of such politics among teams of various structures, nature, cultures, and orientations. Uncovering some of the missing links in this direction may contribute to the generalization power of the field and to its scholarly robustness and may point to promising avenues for future empirical research. The major goal of this chapter is to effectively integrate what we know today about team-related organizational politics and to suggest a few directions for future theoretical development. In other words, the focus is on ideas for the extension of current knowledge on teams in general and on organizational politics and to illuminate a potential track for developing the knowledge of workplace politics in the direction of group-level and teamwork analysis.