Checkmate: Using political skill to recognize and capitalize on opportunities in the ‘game’ of organizational life

Charn P. McAllister, B. Parker Ellen, Pamela L. Perrewé, Gerald R. Ferris and Daniel J. Hirsch

Business Horizons, 2015, vol. 58, issue 1, 25-34

Abstract: Politics in organizations are a fact of life, and have been regarded as such for decades by organizational scientists and practitioners alike. Unfortunately, far less is known about the skills or competencies needed in order to be successful—and even survive—in such political environments. Although many believe performance, effectiveness, and career success are determined mostly by intelligence and hard work, political perspectives on organizations contend that other factors such as positioning, social astuteness, and interpersonal savvy also play important roles; that is, individuals need to possess political skill. In this article, we describe the underlying features and operation of political skill in organizations, and argue that it allows people to be effective at work by giving them the capacity to more accurately recognize opportunities in the work environment and effectively capitalize on those opportunities. Using the game of chess as a metaphor, we describe how politically skilled individuals strategically employ their competencies in ways that ensure goal attainment. Further, we provide some practical guidance for employees about how to play the organizational politics ‘game’ to facilitate success.

Keywords: Political skill; Opportunity recognition; Opportunity capitalization; Opportunity exploitation; Expert performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681314001463
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:bushor:v:58:y:2015:i:1:p:25-34

DOI: 10.1016/j.bushor.2014.09.008

Access Statistics for this article

Business Horizons is currently edited by C. M. Dalton

More articles in Business Horizons from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().