Preparing Students to Determine Personally Appropriate Political Behavior

Abstract

Although textbooks of organizational behavior and management commonly include chapters on power and organizational politics, they uniformly ignore how to develop competency in these areas. Yet students would benefit from learning that organizational politics affects decision making and that their own political behavior can reflect both organizational goals and their individual interests and preferences. To help students determine appropriate political behavior, this article presents guidelines superimposing individual differences on existent models of politics and provides an experiential vehicle for introducing these guidelines.