The Impact of Perceived Organizational Politics on Work Attitudes

Abstract

An understanding of politics at workplace is of utmost importance as it is an inherent part of workplace activities. It is evident in processes such as decision making, allocation of resources. This study investigated the effect of perceived organizational politics (POP) on workplace attitudes such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment and turnover intentions. Further, the paper investigated the role of Leader-Member-Exchange (LMX) on the relationship between perceived organizational politics and workplace attitude. The hypothesized relationship was tested on a sample of 228 employees from Indian IT sector. Factor Analysis on POP suggested that variables can be summarized by two factors; Perceived Politics in organizational management (POP1) and Perceived Politics in co-workers (POP2). The findings suggest that there exists a negative relation between POP and workplace attitude. The results show that incase of the relationship between POP and workplace attitude, the part of organizational politics related to management has shown a significant negative impact on organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and a positive relation to turnover intention. With regard to the role of LMX in the relation between POP and workplace attitudes, results of LMX as a moderator have confirmed to the hypothesis.