H.

M Basit Feroz
SP 18-RMS-001

Impact of organizational politics on job satisfaction of university teachers

Literature Review:

Organizational politics was first described by Ferris et al. (1989) as an unpleasant fact for any
organization. It is defined as social influence in which your behavior is strategically for
maximization of your self-interest at the expense of other’s interest.

During the past two decades, there has been a significant emphasis on perception of politics
(POP) model that was presented by Ferris et al. (2000). This model suggests that members of
organization negatively used tactics through authority or power for maximization of their
self-interest (Bola et al. 2012; Gotsis & Kortezi 2013) and by hiding crucial information
widening communication gap (Robson et al. 2006) and fostering inequality in environment.
Researchers proposed in different studies that POP decreases desiarable job outcomes (e.g.,
job satisfaction) and enhances undesirable job outcomes (e.g., turnover intentions & negligent
behavior) (Vigoda 2000, 2001, 2002; Miller et al. 2008; Chang et al. 2009; Hochwarter et al.
2010; Kapoutsis et al. 2011).

Abbas et al. (2012) defined organizational politics as the influence to get legitimate favors
through unauthorized means and it usually occurs to maximize self-interest of people by
taking advantage of their connections. However, one must understand to tackle its influence
in the organizational environment to succeed effectively in the organization (Abbas, Raja,
Darr, & Bouckenooghe, 2014).

There have been numerous researches on effect of organizational politics on several job
outcomes. Researchers also argue about job satisfaction and associates it with both
organizational and individual characteristics. Similarly in one study, it was argued that
teacher’s, job satisfaction is related to school characteristics and also individual
characteristics (Spear et al., 2000). Also, teacher’s satisfaction level is effected by educational
system, professional autonomy, educational reforms or public image of teachers etc. Besides
these, researchers argued that leadership styles can also influence the teacher’s satisfaction
level and their perception about their profession. Leader’s emotional intelligence and political
skills can make teachers more interested in educational fields and enhance their job
satisfaction level. So in this case, political and social skills are interpreted as a positive for the
organization or university when leaders practice it (Taliadorou & Pashiardis, 2015).

Extending the leaders’ role in satisfaction level of its employees in the political organizational
environment, some research finding also revealed that transformational leadership positively
influence job satisfaction and transactional leadership negatively influences job satisfaction
and POP mediates the relation between both leadership styles and job satisfaction (Saleem,
2015).

In the same context, some researchers argue the organizational politics relationship with three
levels of antecedents (i.e. organizational, work environment and individual levels) and its
consequents at the central university in India. They indicated that POP (perceived
organizational politics) have a significant impact on all three levels. The workforce diversity
(the organizational level), relationship conflict (the work environment level) and a need for
power (the individual level) have a significant positive impact on POP, whereas no
relationship was found between role conflict and POP. Of the three levels of antecedents, it
was observed that the organizational level contributed most significantly to POP. Of the three
consequences, the intention to turnover and job anxiety were found to be positively related to
POP, while organizational commitment was negatively related to it (Mishra, Sharma, &
Swami, 2016).

Several studies have also discussed that collaboration of teachers and exchange of ideas
between teachers and friendly cooperative environment provide emotional and psychological
support to teachers and in turn can help a great deal on students learning and overall
university learning and help to improve overall teaching practices and satisfaction level of
them. Participative decision making helps reinforcing teacher’s positive practices for the
organization goals and feel important part of the organization and overall system and can be
very helpful in enhancing their job satisfaction level (Thoonen, Sleegers, Oort, Peetsma, &
Geijsel, 2011).

In one of the study, researchers also suggested that public sector motivation is reinforced
when the social environment is supportive and encourages individuals to spend time, effort
and resources in helping the organization grow and develop. Vigoda Gadot and Drory (2006)
suggests that influence dynamics and politics are very important in any type of organization
now and is a part of culture. They also suggested that organizational politics in public sectors
are practiced much higher as compare to private sectors which in turn decreases the trust of
people from organization and cause dissatisfaction of people. Empirical evidences from
various studies demonstrates the negative effects of organizational politics on various job
outcomes such as job satisfaction (i.e.Ferriset al.1996;Wittet al.2000), organizational
commitment (i.e. Vigoda 2000), job stress and strain, and job burnout (Valle and Perrewe
2000;Vigoda2002). In other words, we can say that positive organizational climate like
justice and fairness can contribute positively to the organizational performance and its people
satisfaction. Also on the other hand, negative organization climate like political influence can
contribute negatively to organization and cause their dissatisfaction (Vashdi, Vigoda-Gadot,
& Shlomi, 2013).

However Lawong et al. (2018) in his study points out that high level of experience can act as
an antidote to several workplace ill factors like organizational politics by weakening the
increase in job tension, exhaustion and frustration and can tend to increase job satisfaction if
you have the experience to cope with these situational or organizational factors. (Lawong,
McAllister, Ferris, & Hochwarter, 2018).

Some researchers have also discussed that organizational politics can be perceived by
emotional intelligence and POP mediates the effect of emotional intelligence on three
behavioral outcome such as job satisfaction, turnover intention and negligent behavior where
EI is negatively related with POP and there is a partial mediation effect of EI on both job
satisfaction and negligent behavior and full mediation between EI and turnover intention
(Meisler & Vigoda-Gadot, 2014).

Other than these, some studies also suggested that trust and social support are good
moderators of POP and several job related outcomes (i.e., job satisfaction, organizational
commitment, stress, and burnout), so can be used to reduce the politics in the organization
and increase job satisfaction (Vigoda-Gadot, Eran and Talmud, 2010).