The relationship between organizational politics, strategic political management, and competitive advantage

A political approach is one of the oldest perspectives of enterprise, and it offers important insights into organizational phenomena (Kulikowska-Pawlak, 2018). It is based on the propositions of the Carnegie School (Cyert & March, 1963; March & Simon, 1958) and the resource dependence theory (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978). Unlike the rational model of the enterprise, the political model indicates that enterprises are political arenas (Mintzberg, 1983), and their employees behave in a way that reasonable recommendations cannot explain.

OP can be viewed as “the exploitation of resources, both physical and human, for the achievement of more control over others, and thus of safer, or more comfortable, or more satisfying terms of individual existence” (Burns, 1961, p. 278). The company's employees are involved in the OP process to influence decision-making and organizational effects, and, according to (Pfeffer, 2013), OP is an inherent element of the organization's reality. OP, in all of its forms, can and will occur in organizations (R. Denhardt, J. Denhardt, & Aristigueta, 2013; Mayes & Allen, 1977; Mintzberg, 1983; Pfeffer, 1981, 1992, 2013).

The construct has long been thought of as creating several detrimental consequences in a work environment, for example, higher stress and lower worker satisfaction, commitment, and productivity (Miller, Rutherford, & Kolodinsky, 2008, p. 209). However, an increasing number of researchers support the view that organizational political behavior is not inherently negative (Etbiga, 2020; Ferris & Hochwarter, 2011; Kapoutsis, Paplexandris, Thanos, & Nikolopoulos, 2012; Lampaki & Papadakis, 2018; Vigoda-Gadot & Talmud, 2006; Vigoda-Gadot & Vashdi, 2012). They perceive such behavior as the type of activities and efforts used to overcome opposition or resistance, resolve competing interests, and balance various goals (A. Smith, Grimm, & Gannon, 2009). Thus, OP appears to comprise these activities and efforts.

A review of the OP literature revealed that it has not yet been possible to find either a common method of OP measurement or an agreement on whether or not it is a unidimensional construct (Kreutzer, Walter, & Cardinal, 2015). However, what has already been established is that what truly matters is not an action or behavior in itself but how individuals perceive them (Ferris & Kacmar, 1992; Kreutzer et al., 2015). Such a perceptual approach to measure OP, adopted by most researchers, focuses on perceptions of organizational politics (POP), which comprise observations of other organization members’ informal, unofficial, and sometimes behind-the-scenes and manipulative behaviors (Bozeman, Perrewé, Hochwarter, & Brymer, 2001). One of the first to propose a comprehensive model of OP perceptions were Ferris, Russ, and Fandt (1989). They included the antecedents and consequences of OP perceptions in their model yet treated the construct as a unidimensional one. In contrast, Kacmar and Ferris (1991) developed a 12-item, three-factor scale with an overall reliability of 0.87. In the following year, Ferris and Kacmar (1992) published the results of two studies on portions of the POP model proposed by Ferris et al. (1989). In their refined and expanded measure of POP, a total of 22 items have been retained across the three factors. The first factor was supervisor behavior, the second was coworker and clique behavior, and the last was organizational policies and practices. Ferris and Kacmar (1992) also confirmed Kacmar and Ferris's (1991) findings on the multi-dimensional nature of POP's construct. This measurement method has been widely accepted (Ferris et al., 2005; Rosen, Levy, & Hall, 2006). In subsequent research, borrowing from Ferris and Kacmar (1992), Kreutzer et al. (2015) used the first two factors: managerial politics (vertical) and group politics (horizontal). They constructed a two-dimension model that showed satisfactory psychometric properties. Building on previous findings, Kulikowska-Pawlak (2018) proposed a typology of OP processes, depending on the level of OP effectiveness and OP ethics. Following her reasoning, there are (i) functional and ethical behaviors related to the fulfillment of tasks – they are not political in their nature; (ii) dysfunctional and ethical behaviors – the company's resources are used outside of the sphere of organizational goals but in an ethically correct manner; (iii) behaviors oriented at achieving the company's goals, although not sanctioned by ethical standards; (iv) political behaviors that are dysfunctional in terms of organizational consequences and in violating ethical norms.

Based on the conducted review that provided conceptual arguments in favor of the multidimensionality of OP, we further explore this construct in connection to the other constructs from the field of management, led by methodological guidelines for the conceptualization of multidimensional constructs (DeVellis, 2003; MacKenzie, P. Podsakoff, & N. Podsakoff, 2011). The basis for identifying the dimensions of OP measuring is the concept of archetypes (Kulikowska-Pawlak, 2014, 2015; Plowman, Baker, Beck, Kulkarni, Solansky, & Travis, 2007; Sułkowski, 2011). In this view, an organization is a set of properties involving multiple variables that reflect measurable dimensions. The essential components of the OP archetypes are: (1) the area of management that OP primarily concerns (Cameron, Quinn, DeGraff, & Thakor, 2007), (2) the cultural orientation and corresponding theory of effectiveness (Quinn & Cameron, 1983), (3) the dominant management model (Birkinshaw, 2010), (4) the theory of organizational development and the associated nature of change (Van de Ven & Sun, 2011), (5) the most valued source of power and the dominant logic of its use (Kulikowska-Pawlak & Bratnicki, 2014), and (6) the social situation of the organization (Yu, 2014). These led to identifying the following four OP archetypes (Birkinshaw, 2010; Cameron et al., 2007; Kulikowska-Pawlak & Bratnicki, 2014; Oliver & Holzinger, 2008; Van de Ven & Sun, 2011):

the archetype of improvisational politics (organizational improvisation, clan culture, anticipatory strategy),

The above archetypes shall be considered equivalent to the four dimensions that make up the phenomenon of OP. These four dimensions include the necessary yet sufficient characteristics (attributes) that constitute the OP construct. This allows us to formulate the following hypothesis:

H1: Organizational politics is a construct with four dimensions: planning, improvisational, learning, and entrepreneurial.

As Wildavsky (1968) argues, politics is inherently related to the conflict of preferences, a process that determines the strategic policy of a company. On the other hand, Wamsley and Zald (1973), when analyzing politics in public organizations, emphasized the structure and process of using formal and informal authority to formulate goals, future directions of activity, and the main parameters of economic activity of an organization. Thus, the understanding of the OP process is tightly tied to the higher levels of management. Still, the process itself also takes place at lower levels, as long as strategic decisions that affect the entire enterprise are made there. So far, OP has been rarely analyzed as a dependent variable. Therefore, the knowledge about the determinants of this process is insufficient. A significant number of studies show that characteristics of the organizational context, such as technology, organizational structure, size of the enterprise, HR management systems, strategic policies, and programs – all influence the behavior, motives, interactions, and attitudes of management (Arthur & Boyles, 2007; Bowen & Ostroff, 2004; Haggerty & Wright, 2010; Lepak, Marrone, & Takeuchi, 2004). Therefore, it should not be surprising that there is a widespread belief that organizational context is a current and vital issue in strategic management (Dess, Peng, & Lei, 2013). Furthermore, according to Kulikowska-Pawlak (2018), strategic political management is one of the core elements of organizational context (the other two are creative leadership and strategic design of the organization).

Strategic political management comprises an organization's planned and performed strategic actions that benefit from its political environment. It allows companies to improve their performance or competitive advantage by using a repertoire of political activities that materialize in actively influencing the political environment or, if the influence is impossible or undesirable, in compliance with public policies or regulations intended to benefit the most from such compliance (Oliver & Holzinger, 2008). OP, like most organizational phenomena, is determined by its context. Specifically, organizational context – and strategic political management as its component – defines the scope of OP within the firm and is also a boundary condition for the effects of OP (Ferris et al., 2002; Andrews, Kacmar, & Harris, 2009). Therefore, taking contextual considerations into account, we formulate the below hypothesis:

H2: There is a positive relationship between strategic political management and organizational politics, which means organizational politics grow as strategic political management increases.

In the early days of strategic management research, special attention was paid to OP, power, and influence as critical elements to understand how a company functions, grows, and eventually collapses (Allison, 1971; MacMillan & Jones, 1986; Pfeffer, 1981; Porter, 1980). A decade later, the focus was on the dynamics of competitiveness, trying to understand how OP affects the frequency, scope, and timing of competitive responses (K. Smith, Grimm, & Gannon, 1992). In particular, the role of power and OP in implementing strategic plans and, consequently, shaping strategic responses was analyzed (Derfus, Maggitti, Grimm, & Smith, 2008). In short, the competitive dynamic documents that the exercise of power and politics are intertwined with economic strategies. Therefore, political resources and political capacity can become essential sources of a company's competitive advantage (Hillman & Keim, 2001; Ferris et al., 2005).

There are ample sources of competitive differentiation (company history, market position, beliefs, preferences, etc.), leading to permanent and systematic differences between enterprises. According to the current dominant perspective in the strategic management literature, different competitive positions taken by enterprises result from the heterogeneous distribution of resources and capabilities between enterprises (Hoopes & Madsen, 2008). Empirical research confirms that competitive advantage results from blending valuable and scarce resources with the company's capabilities (Newbert, 2008). Following (Dahan, 2005), one can take a specific approach to OP. In the structure of strategic management as a research field, OP should be considered in terms of competitive edge and in connection with resource-based theory that stresses the role of resources in providing sustained competitive advantage and superior performance (Furrer, Thomas, & Goussevskaia, 2008). They need to be rare and difficult to imitate and, at the same time, valuable and have no substitutes.

Importantly, it is not enough to have resources; you also need to use them skillfully and create new combinations of them using dynamic abilities that ensure fusion with the demands of the environment (Bowman & Ambrosini, 2003; Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000). The management striving to achieve the effectiveness and longevity of strategic undertakings must acquire the necessary power resources and use the skills developed for the purposes of OP. Thus, OP is a dynamic ability of an enterprise, thanks to which the resources of power are reconfigured (Kulikowska-Pawlak, 2018).

Businesses rely on a set of unique political assets and skills to which the enterprise has access and can use to model the political environment for their own benefit (Holburn & Zelner, 2010). The focus is on social ties with key political actors such as government representatives and interest groups seeking to influence the government. Thus, political abilities reflect the enterprise's capacity to continuously use or develop its political resources to ensure favorable conditions for activity and defend against unfavorable political changes. As a result, such firms build above-average capabilities to recognize political dynamics and manage relations with different stakeholders on the political scene (Boddewyn & Brewer, 1994). These political abilities can be a solid foundation for the firms’ competitive edge as others can not easily replicate them. Usually, the reason behind this is the hidden nature of the most successful political actions (Etzioni, 1988). OP can lead to sustained, high organizational effectiveness of the enterprise through positioning and directing the use of other dynamic and substantial abilities. It enables the “reconfiguration of resources and routines in a way seen by key decision-makers and deemed appropriate by them” (Zahra, Sapienza, & Davidsson, 2006, p. 918). As there is an increasingly strong view in the literature that organizational performance measures are a valid substitute for objective measurement (Bititci, Garengo, Dörfler, & Nudurupati, 2012; Richard, Divinney, Yip, & Johnson, 2009; Singh, Darwish, & Potočnik, 2016), we share the opinion of Bratnicka-Myśliwiec (2017), that subjective assessments of competitive advantage, social efficiency, and value appropriation provide a solid theoretical basis for estimation of the organizational effectiveness of a company. For this article, we used competitive advantage as a proxy for the organizational effectiveness of a company; however, in further studies, we will also use other subjective dimensions (i.e., social efficiency and value appropriation) and objective accounting measures (i.e., ROA, ROE). Thus, we formulate the below hypotheses:

H3: Organizational politics is positively related to the organizational effectiveness of a company, and understood to be a competitive advantage,

The research model is presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1

OP: A conducted review of literature provided conceptual arguments in favor of the multidimensionality of OP. The basis for distinguishing the dimensions of measuring OP is the concept of archetypes (Kulikowska-Pawlak, 2014, 2015). The concept identifies four archetypes of OP, which constitute the theoretical foundations of the four dimensions of OP: planning, improvising, learning, and entrepreneurial politics. Hypothetically, it was assumed that the dimensions are formative, and together, they form the full scale of OP. The scale developed by Kulikowska-Pawlak (2018) was used to measure OP.

Strategic political management: The measurement of strategic political management was made atypically compared to the other dimensions, where the seven-point Likert-type scale was used. In this case, the scale developed by Kulikowska-Pawlak (2015) was used. Respondents were asked to choose a description that best suits the company's political management strategy. A summary of descriptions of individual strategies is presented in Table 1.

Organizational effectiveness: A close look at the construct of organizational effectiveness discloses various models oriented toward capturing the multidimensional nature of effectiveness (Cameron, 2010). The complex dimensions of corporate organizational effectiveness comprise objective measures (financial profitability and growth), competitive advantage, social efficiency, and value capture (Bratnicka-Myśliwiec, 2017). As it has already been stated, for practical reasons (ease of obtaining data for each element of the studied population), we used competitive advantage as a proxy for a company's organizational effectiveness for this article. Thus, the research perspective we adopted focuses on how OP influences competitive advantage (as one of the dimensions of the organizational effectiveness of an enterprise), estimated with the use of a previously validated scale (Zbierowski et al., 2014). The entire tool includes ten questions. A sample question is the following: “Average annual sales growth (net) in the last three years.” The scale in question is one-dimensional. Cronbach's alpha for this scale is 0.921. We also refer to the previous research of Kulikowska-Pawlak (2018a).

The research results were compiled using two statistical software packages: IBM SPSS Statistics ver. 20 and Statistica 12. The statistical tools were used to perform exploratory factor analysis (along with normalized VARIMAX rotation). The Sobel and Aroian tests were used to estimate the mediation (Hofmann, Griffin, & Gavin 2000; Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002).