Politics

Organizational Politics, or when someone acts to influence or protect the self-interest of individuals or groups, can be irritating if you are witnessing it on a daily basis.  One form of organizational politics is known as “brown-nosing,” and I witnessed quite a bit of this at my internship this summer.  One of the other interns, who I will refer to as Chris, was always trying to get ahead by playing politics via brownnosing.  He would regularly ask the bosses if they needed coffee, exuberantly praise their work while subtly criticizing the work of other interns, often take credit for the ideas of other interns, and much more.  The other interns, including myself, noticed it and so did the upper-level employees.  It was annoying, but while taking this class and learning about Organizational Politics, I gained greater perspective to why Chris may have acted the way he did.  He probably tried to politic in this way because of uncertainty; five common sources of uncertainty and how they relate to Chris are:

1.     Unclear objectives – us interns knew basically what to do, but not how it really fit into the puzzle at the bank, so Chris was obviously lacking some information

2.     Vague performance measures – we did not have formal performance reviews or any metrics to see how we were doing, so a lot of “how we were doing” was up to us; Chris oftentimes prodded for feedback so he could do a better job but it came off a bit pretentious

3.     Ill-defined decision process – the bank was doing well, but it was structurally weak, which gave rise to uncertainty among all interns and lower-level employees as the decision making process was not clear

4.     Strong individual or group competition – there were four interns and the bank traditionally only offered one a full-time position, so Chris was definitely trying to gain an edge on us to get the offer

5.     Any type of change – we often changed what we were doing and how we were doing it throughout the summer as our work was not very structured, which gave rose to uncertainty and lots of questions, which Chris always asked in a bit of a whiney fashion

Comic 1

Comic 2

Organizational Politics can have both positive and negative effects on people depending on how central they are to a group. Many times, the political behaviors are rewarded (comic 1), but when they go too far, people can get fed up or disagree with the ethics of it (comic 2).  Conformity and flattery are among the tactics that are not as maliciously intended, while acclaiming and favor have a natural tendency to have a negative connotation.  Organizational politics shows up in every type of group dynamic including companies, classes, and families.  We have all experienced a class where there are clear teacher favorites, and it is often reflected in grades.  Students often use supervisor-focused tactics in order to reach their ultimate goal of self-promotion.  Others are expensed for their own selfish interest.  While organizational politics benefit the individual, they are more likely to do more harm than good for the rest of the organization.