Introduction
Leadership and organizational politics are regarded to be important factors that contribute to the employees’ performance. The research titled Leadership Style, Organizational Politics, And Employess performed by Eran Vigoda-Gadot is aimed at testing this theory by means of studying the relationship among leadership, politics and performance. The perspective of the study is to investigate the relationship between leadership and employees’ performance arguing that organizational politics comes in between this relationship.
Also, the research is targeted at focusing on two basic aspects of employees’ performance, namely, formal and informal. Morrison’s suggestion about the importance of both of those factors is expected to be proved by the research.
Main body
The article is expected to contribute to the general knowledge on leadership style and organizational politics and to the theory of Organizational Citizenship behavior (OSB), in particular.
The research under consideration presents the model that presents the connection between leadership style, organizational politics, and employee performance. This model is based on the idea of House and Aditya and Ammeter et al. and regards organizational politics as a mediator between leadership and employees’ performance. Going by this model the author states the following hypotheses:
- Transformational and transactional leadership are both related to employee performance and OCB, where the influence of transformational leadership on formal performance and OCB is stronger.
- Transformational leadership is negatively related to the appreciation of organizational politics.
- Transactional leadership is positively related to appreciation of organizational politics.
- Perceptions of organizational politics are negatively related to OCB and employee’s in-role performance.
- Organizational politics mediates both between transactional and transformational leadership and in-role performance and OCB.
The research study took place in a public security division of a law enforcement agency in Israel. The agency has four major regional headquarters and nine branches throughout the nation. The research study was conducted between December 2002 and August 2003. 233 questionnaires were sent by the researchers across the country and were collected by them, 201 questionnaires were used for data processing, and the overall response rate was 86.4 percent. The distribution and the collection of the questionnaire were held in accordance with the direct method:
- The researchers obtained permission from the organization’s management;
- The participation in the research was voluntary;
- The data collected through the research remained confidential;
- The management did not get the information about the participants of the research;
- The supervisors were asked to complete the questionnaires about their employees.
The following statistical information about the respondents is presented in the study under analysis:
- The average age – 24.9 years;
- Male- 79.6 percent;
- Married – 81.9 percent;
- Working in the organization more than two years – 39 percent;
- Law level and middle level managers- 32.8 percent, others- front line employees;
- Academic college degree – held by 49.7 percent.
- The income median – $ 1,500 per month.
The leadership styles were measured by the Multi-Factor Leadership Questionnaire. The respondents were asked to evaluate the degree to which a particular type of behavior was typical for their supervisors. Reliability for the transformational leadership and transactional leadership was 0.95 and 0.83 respectively.
Perception of organizational politics was measured by the Perception of Organizational Politics Scale first developed and examined by Kacmar and Ferris. Respondents marked the degree (from 1 to 5) according to which they agreed with the items suggested.
In-role performance and organizational citizenship behavior was based on a scale proposed by Williams and Anderson, in-role and extra-role activities were evaluated here. The supervisors were asked to evaluate the degree to which each employee behaves (again, from 1 to 5).
The results that were achieved after the research was conducted imply the following:
- Managers with a transactional style usually rate lower in the transformational style and vice versa;
- There is a positive relationship between transformational leadership and in-role performance (it supports the first hypothesis);
- There is a positive relationship between transformational leadership and OCB (it also supports the first hypothesis);
- There is a negative relationship between transactional leadership and in-role performance (this contradicts the first hypothesis);
- There is a negative relationship between transactional leadership and OSB (that also contradicts the first hypothesis);
- There is a negative relationship between transformational leadership and perceptions of organizational politics (supports the second hypothesis);
- There is a positive relationship between transactional leadership and perceptions of organizational politics (supports the third hypothesis);
- There is a negative relationship between perceptions of organizational politics and in-role performance and between perceptions of organizational politics and OCB (support the fourth and the fifth hypotheses respectively).
Evaluating the results achieved the author admits that two alternative models were tested: the mediating Model 1 included the mediating variable, namely, perceptions of organizational politics, while the direct Model 2 did not. The following criteria to compare the models were used: fit indices, path coefficients, and the percentage of explained variance. The research showed that the two models are very close to each other, representing direst and indirect relationships between leadership and performance. Though, both models fit the theory, Model 1 has many advantages over the Model 2.
The contribution of the research to the study of leadership and performance, on the one hand, and to the developing theory of OCB, on the other, is obvious. Perceptions of politics serve as a buffer between transactional and transformational leadership styles and formal and informal performance indicators.
The two models examined in the research demonstrated the complex relationship between the three phenomena: leadership, politics, and performance in the organization.
The author concludes that public administration employees working in terms of organizational politics but having preference in the security of public employment will react with apathy towards their work and even will neglect it. Organizational politics has the similar effect on OCB. In the public sector this process influences not only performance level of the organization and its employees, but it also influences the organization’s creativity, innovative practices and the democratic system as a whole.
The research has the following limitations:
- The study focused on perceptions of organizational politics as seen by the employees but not on actual political behaviors;
- The specific characteristics of the organization where the research took place may limit the external validity of the findings.
Conclusion
But the limitations sited above did not prevent the researcher to discover that transformational leadership may have a positive direct effect on employee’s performance by establishment the environment less political in its nature and rooted in notions of fairness and equity.
Works Cited
Vigodat –Gadot, Eran “Leadership Style, Oranizational Politics and Employee’s Performance. An Empirical Examination of Two Competing Models.” Personnel Review 36.5 (2006): 661-683. Web.