AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS ON OFFICE POLITICS IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS

The corporate offices continuously suffers from the politics played by its employees. Sometime the
employee gets indulge in politics to excel among their peers and most of the times to degrade others’
performance. Despite the immense efforts from the management this problem is incurable. The paper
briefly discusses the factors influencing political behaviour of individuals in the organisation, effects
of politics on organization and employees and how to manage political behaviour. This paper also
attempts to find out if there are any demographic differences between the employees while engaging
in such politics.

Politics refers to irrational behaviour of the individuals at the workplace to obtain advantages which
are beyond their control. Nobody has ever gained anything out of politics; instead it leads to a negative
ambience at the workplace. The factors influencing political behaviour of individuals in the
organisation can be broadly categorized into individual and organizational factors.

Individual Factors:
Individuals play politics to satisfy their personal needs like to gain power for control and to influence
decision-making process of the organisation. Such types of individuals are basically internals and self-
monitored people.

Organisational Factors
Limited Resources in the organisation
Uncertainty in decision-making
Performance evaluation
High Performance pressure
Affecting lower level persons

Effects of politics on organization and employees:

1. Decrease in overall productivity
a. Employees indulged in politics at the workplace pay less attention to their work.
b. They frequently criticize their fellow workers and are involved in leg pulling and back biting.

2. Affects Concentration: As they are involved in criticizing and spoiling other person’s image in front
of the superiors, they tend to lose focus from their work and make mistakes.

3. Spoils the Ambience: Politics leads to a negative environment at the workplace. It spoils the
relationships amongst individuals.

4. Changes the Attitude of employees

a. Even the serious employees lose interest in work due to such disturbances.
b. Internal politics do not allow employees to give their hundred percent at work.
c. No matter how much hard work an employee puts in, it goes unnoticed in a politically driven
organization.

5. Demotivated employees
a. Employees feel demotivated when they are not rewarded suitably or someone who has not
worked hard gets the benefits due to mere politics.
b. Politics increases the stress level of the employees.

6. Wrong Information: Superiors get a wrong picture of what is actually happening in the organization.
Managing political behaviour:
Political behaviour cannot be eliminated, but it needs to be managed properly to take advantage of
its positive aspects and reduce the possibility of its negative impact. The following steps are suggested:
 Defining job duties clearly.
 Designing job clearly.
 Encouraging ethical behaviour.
 Promoting understanding and trust between formal and informal groups.
 Allocating resources judiciously.
 Implementing appropriate performance appraisal system.
 Optimizing job pressures.

Strategies used to achieve political ends are as follows:

 Consultation: Getting employees more involved to bring about the desired change.
 Rational persuasion: This involves convincing others by using reason, logic, information etc.
 Inspirational appeal: In this, support is sought by appealing to higher ideals, values or
emotions of others.
 Coalition strategy: At times individuals and groups collaborate with each other to achieve the
desired end.
 Upward appeal: This involves seeking support of top level executives.
 Exchange strategy: Under this, favours or promises of favour are offered on exchange basis,
to achieve desired the objective.

Objective of analytical study: To study the prevailing office politics in Indian service industry.
Hypotheses
H1: Office politics/Organizational politics is positively associated with age of the employees.
H2: Office politics/Organizational politics is negatively associated with educational level of the
employees.
H3: Office politics/Organizational politics is positively associated with designation of the employees.
H4: There is a significant difference in perception of employees’ categories for organizational/office
politics.
Correlations
There is significant positive correlation between organizational politics and employee designation and
hence hypothesis 3 is supported.
There is negative correlation between educational level and organizational politics and hence
hypothesis 2 is supported.
No significant correlation was found between organizational politics and age, therefore hypothesis 1
is rejected.
Analysis of variance shows that there is a significant difference in perception of employees’ categories
for organizational/office politics and hence hypothesis 4 is supported.

Conclusion: Office politics is a grave matter as it not only disturbs the organizational culture and
working environment but also affects the mental well-being of the employees. There is significant
relationship between office politics and designation of the employees and hence management is
advised to look into this factor and resolve the intra politics between groups as it effects the
organizational politics and sometimes good employees suffers and eventually get demotivated
towards hard work and organizational goals. Management can minimize the politics by imparting
confidence in the workers by providing them fair justice and ample and fair opportunities to grow with
a decent amount of success rate for each individual employee.
 Questionnaire

Q. What are your vies on power and politics?

Power and Politics go parallel. Both are used in both negative and positive way. When you have power,
seems like u r independent to take decision but then politics can come into picture playing favourism
and influencing you. Again it's up to you to go for it or not (which can be positive aspect).

Q. What are the positives of power and politics in an organization?

Power enables one with Integrity & vision to inspire others to do the right and required things for the
organization.

Power empowers a leader to transform processes and people by asserting their insights.

Power enables a leader to harness everybody’s aspiration and enable him or her to make it happen.

Politics improve someone’s power and status within an organization.

Politics can be used to bring about changes that benefit the organization.

Politics can be used to become inclusive and influential.

Q. What are the negatives of power and politics in an organization?

Empowering someone without the right leadership skills leads to stagnation, regression or slows down
growth and changes in the organization.

Misuse of power is rarely punished in organizations, hence forming a cycle of abuse of power.

Politics by nature excludes people, while including the others.

Pursuit of power and status may have negative impact on other individuals or even the organization.

Q. How do you deal with such situation in organization?

My focus in always on the issue rather on the individuals. I address the behaviour never the individual.

I treat everyone equally. Everyone is an important person, no one is better than anyone else.

I try to keep the team involved in the decisions and keep them transparent.

I am always available to any team members for conversations and feedbacks.