There are multiple dimensions of organizational politics or workplace politics. Question is whether human nature is affected by organizational politics or organization politics takes place because of human nature. Human nature is the identity of a person which refers to distinguishing characteristics such as the way of thinking, feeling behaving that human tends to have naturally. Development of human nature depends on many factors such as cultural background, religion, caste, society, family environment, friends, schooling, educational background are some of the factors that are responsible for the creationist.
Organizational politics refers to a variety of activities associated with the use of influence tactics to improve personal or organizational interests. Studies indicate that individuals with political skills tend to do better in gaining more personal power as well as managing stress and job demands, than their politically naive counterparts.
If we look at the Michael Jarrett(2017) model has beautifully explained how the organizational politics works when the politics is informal and played on individual level it Is like weeds very small but scattered everywhere, when the organization politics is played by individual level in formal way it becomes rocks type, where roles, responsibilities which may be interpreted as politics, when it is informal and played in organization level then there is a lot of distraction and it takes the shape of wood. High ground is the level where all the policies, organization structure etc., are set to make alien the work of an organization where many people are not comfortable, and they feel and predicts it as politics, apart from these rules and regulation there are many hidden things which are not on paper neither they are told verbally which takes the shape of the woods it can provide the cover and safety to the employees if it is handled carefully, or it will lead to the situation where good things will be lost. Organizational politics when it is dysfunctional politics can sink an organization, and yet most of the executives do react with distaste to the idea of being a savvy organization politician
“To break the chain of politics, you need a person with good political skills, because person good with political skills will only know the moves of the person playing politics, and she/he can only be able to set right the things.”
However, the reality is that politics is normal and human nature is built on it. Organizational politics another influencing process along with the norms, formal authority and expertise. Thus, it’s important for leaders to understand the forms it can take and how to use it for the well-being of the organization. Political behavior is likely to be present but may not be explicit and need to be gleaned from observation. It may be that manager needs to exert a lot of pressure on a team to get things done, by emphasizing not drop-down approach but based on actionable work items that focus on workflow based on current activity. The current action is constrained by organizational politics. The organizational intern is the outcome of human nature. Thus, finding organization politics and relating to human nature is an important dimension of organizational study. Sometimes, it may be necessary for employees to work behind the scenes to build coalitions of believers in a new vision to convince others. Whatever may be the context it is important to understand that the root causes of political activities are often scarce resources (including time pressures), social, economic and structural inequalities, and individual personal motivations. Thus, it is not always that the politics are dirty and may be necessary to save the organization.
As the organization age grows there is growth in crises, crises of manpower, managerial resources, leadership, the delegation of work hence placing right people in right place from the beginning is very healthy sign for any organization.
To be continued in the next article…
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