Is Political Skill Always Beneficial? Why and When Politically Skilled Employees Become Targets of Coworker Social Undermining

Shuhua Sun ()
Additional contact information
Shuhua Sun: A. B. Freeman School of Business, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana 70118

Organization Science, 2022, vol. 33, issue 3, 1142-1162

Abstract: The benefits of political skill at work have been extensively documented and highlighted. Existing research also reports unexpectedly equivocal and even positive relationships between employee political skill and coworker social undermining, suggesting that politically skilled employees can become targets of coworker social undermining. However, there is a lack of research explaining why and when employee political skill can lead to coworker social undermining. This research, drawing from social rank theory and the theory of rivalry, offers a novel lens to answer these questions. Specifically, I theorize that employee political skill evokes coworker social undermining by affecting coworker perception of status threat, particularly when the coworker views the focal politically skilled employee as a personal rival. Findings from four studies—one correlational two-wave study and three experiments—provide support for these predictions. Further, nonrival competition and interpersonal disliking as alternative potential explanations to the hypothesized moderating effects of rivalry were ruled out. This study provides a theory-driven explanation of an unintended consequence of employee political skill and offers a more balanced understanding of the effects of political skill at work. Theoretical and future research implications are discussed.

Keywords: political skill; social undermining; rivalry; social rank theory; rivalry theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.1476 (application/pdf)

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:inm:ororsc:v:33:y:2022:i:3:p:1142-1162

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Organization Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().