Abstract The Antecedents of Organizational Politics Perceptions -- A Study of Western and Chinese Organization in Taiwan The purpose of this investigation is based on the model proposed by Ferris et al. (1989)to explore the influence factors of perceptions of organizational politics,including personal influences, work environment influences and organizational influences, and to examine if the perceptions of organizational politics is significant different between western and Chinese organizations in Taiwan. The sample consisted of 196 from western organization and 437 from Chinese organization. The data was analyzed by applying statistical methods, i.e., descriptive statistics analysis, reliability analysis, factor analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis. Results showed that significant influences were observed for both western and Chinese organization to perceive organizational politics. 1. In personal factors, age, sex and type A behavior demonstrate significant influence to perceptions of organizational politics in Chinese organization but not in western organization 2. In work environment factors, automomy and feedback were found significant negative influence to perceptions of organizational politics in western organization but not in Chinese organization 3. In organization facors, democratization was found significant negative influence to perceptions of organizational politics in western organization but not in Chinese organization

Because of vague objectives, limited resources, environmental changes, decisions made out of standard procedures, inborn disposition of self interests, as well as differences in personal characteristics, values, and perceptions of its members, an organization becomes the battlefield in pursuit of individual interests. All members within the organization want to wield more power and influences through exploitation of the available resources, thereby resulting in political behaviors within the organization. However, through effective management, some of these political behaviors may enhance value for the organization. Therefore, the organization members perceive political behaviors within the organization, their behaviors, reactions, and attitudes will likely exert influences over the organization. ¡§Knowledge is power¡¨; oftentimes the members within an organization deem their knowledge as the source to cement their own position/status and power. In addition, to solidify the position within the organization, they habitually see knowledge as their own assets and are not willing to share with others. However, in the era of knowledge-based economy, competitive edges of an organization are often the results of knowledge sharing and application. Thus, creating a knowledge-sharing environment has therefore become a crucial topic of discussion. To compete in today¡¦s competitive environments, organizational changes are considered as a must for survival. Success of organizational transformation hinges on vigorous implementation of various transformation measures. Furthermore, it also depends on responses arising from expectation, perception, and level of satisfaction from the organizational members to the on-going organizational changes. Therefore, this research discusses relationships among the three variables: perception of organizational politics, knowledge sharing, and level of satisfaction to organizational changes. Further, it studies interferences of the level of satisfaction on the inter-relationships of the three variables. Since previous studies rarely discuss the inter-relationships of perception of organizational politics, knowledge sharing, and level of satisfaction of organizational changes, this research hopes to probe and explore the inter-relationships of the afore-mentioned variables through empirical studies. Targeted firms for survey in this research are from banks, insurance companies, securities firms, manufacturing companies, shipping and transportation firms, food and beverages services, and telecom companies. A total of 1130 questionnaires have been distributed, of which 1,037 are effective. The empirical findings are summarized as follow: ¡]1¡^The perceptions of organizational politics and organizational change have a significant negative relation . ¡]2¡^The satisfaction of organizational restructuring and knowledge sharing have a significant positive relation . ¡]3¡^The perceptions of organizational politics and knowledge sharing have a significant negative relation . ¡]4¡^The both perceptions of organizational politics and knowledge sharing are interfered by satisfaction of organizational change.

In an era of new knowledge-based economy, knowledge management would promote the organizational performance and improve the competition in the global market. Improving organizational members¡¦ willingness of knowledge sharing will be useful for carry out knowledge management. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationships among perceptions of organizational politics, trust and knowledge sharing in the industries for understanding employee¡¦s degree of perceptions of organizational politics, attitudes of trust and feelings of knowledge sharing in the organization. Therefore, this study constructs a model which perceptions of organizational politics is the independent variable, knowledge sharing is the dependent variable and trust is the mediate variable to identify the causal relationships. The sample consisted of 1037 employees selected from 42 firms among 5 industries in Taiwan. The data were analyzed by reliability analysis, descriptive statistics analysis, independent-sample T test, one-way ANOVA, correlation analysis and regression analysis. The major findings of this study are as fallow: 1.Seniority, official rank, industry, firm age and firm size among individual variables have significant difference in perceptions of organizational politics. 2.Educational level, income and firm age among individual variables have significant difference in trust. 3.Marital status and age among individual variables have significant difference in knowledge sharing. 4.Perceptions of organizational politics have significant negative relationship with knowledge sharing. 5.Perceptions of organizational politics have significant negative relationship with trust. 6.Trust has significant positive relationship with knowledge sharing. 7.Trust has partial intervening effect between perceptions of organizational politics and knowledge sharing.

When the Era of Knowledge-based Economy approaching, the knowledge is considered a key factor in corporate competitiveness, knowledge sharing play a critical role in an organization knowledge management. The enterprise must through the fast learning system to establish the competitive ability,and will continual readjustment step by the drastic change environment.Due to increasing uncertainly on organization change,political behaviors become active in organization.Therefore,it has some kind of subtle relations between the perceptions of organizational politics¡Bknowledge sharing and organizational changing satisfaction.The research discusses about the correlation analysis of them. This research was proceeded by questionnaire to the sampling objects of five industries in Taiwan.That includes Hospitality Industry,Telecommunication Industry,Manufactory Industry and Transportation Industry.The results indicated¡G 1¡BPerceptions of organizational politics have a significant negative relationship with knowledge sharing. 2¡BPerceptions of organizational politics have a significant negative relationship with organizational changing satisfaction. 3¡BOrganizational changing satisfaction have a significant positive relationship with knowledge sharing. 4¡BOrganizational changing satisfaction mediates the effect between perceptions of organizational politics and knowledge sharing. 5¡BSome of the individual variables have significant difference on the perceptions of organizational politics¡Bknowledge sharing¡Borganizational changing satisfaction.

Writing instruction has been ignored in junior high school in Taiwan. Since teachers and schools have started to focus on communicative ability, should writing gain more attention in junior high schools? The pedagogical practices are assumed to be determined by teachers¡¦ perceptions, beliefs and attitudes. Therefore, this study aims to examine teachers¡¦ perceptions of English writing instruction, what factors they believe are crucial, and what measures are recommended to improve it. Besides, the study investigates teachers¡¦ attitudes toward assessing students¡¦ writing ability in the entrance exam. Finally, this study also intends to explore whether public and private school teachers view certain issues differently. Questionnaires are administered to 57 English teachers in Taichung City and are analyzed by frequencies and the independent t-test. The findings show that either teachers or schools downplay the importance of writing instruction. Teachers find factors affecting their teaching include: students¡¦ language proficiency, students¡¦ motivation, and time and efforts spent to review students¡¦ writings. Also most teachers disapprove to include a writing test in the entrance exam. Possible measures to improve writing instruction are suggested: ability grouping, reducing the number of classes to teach, adopting more appropriate teaching materials, and avoiding a test-oriented curriculum.

This research goal lies in relies on Ferris et the al. (1989) model discussion to organize member's Machiavellianism advantage personality tendency and the organization ¡§the democratized degree¡¨and ¡§the male privately operated special characteristic¡¨ to organizes influence the member politics consciousness. This object of study including 13 public-operated organization 754 questionnaire, and 17 privately operated organization 859 questionnaire, total sends out 2356 questionnaire, recycles 1745, the returns-ratio reaches 74.07 ¢M, rejection invalid questionnaire 132, the effective questionnaire is 1613, effective questionnaire returns-ratio 68.46%. The investigation material uses the descriptive to count, analysis methods separately and so on letter analysis, correlation analysis, exploring factor analysis, level linear model. This findings discovered that,1.organizes member's Machiavellianism advantage personality tendency to organize member's political consciousness to have the remarkable sound.2.organization's democratized degrees to organize member's political consciousness not remarkable influence.3.organization's male privately operated special characteristics to organize member's political consciousness to have the remarkable influence.4.organization's democratized degrees to ¡§organize member's Machiavellianism advantage personality tendency to organize the member politics consciousness the influence¡¨ not to have the disturbance effect.5.Organization's male privately operated special characteristic to ¡§organizes member's Machiavellianism advantage personality tendency to organize the member politics consciousness the influence¡¨ not to have the disturbance effect.

The purpose of this investigation is to develop localized and suitable inventory for measuring perceptions of organizational politics¡]OP¡^in domestic enterprises and using the model proposed by Ferris et al.,¡]1989¡^study the relationships among the OP, job satisfaction, job stress & organizational commitment¡]employee¡¦s job attitudes¡^. The sample consisted of 227 employee selected from some traditional industry in Taiwan. The data were analyzed by applying statistical methods, including factor analysis, reliability, one-way ANOVA, correlation, regression and canonical correlation analysis. The major findings of this study are as fallow: The present study examined the dimensionality, reliability and validity of the Perceptions of Organizational Politics Scale¡]POPS¡^¡]Kacmar,1997¡^.Perceptions of organizational politics were found have a negative relationship with job satisfaction , job stress & organizational commitment. Understand, tenure , control and locus of control as a moderator of the relationships between perceptions of organizational politics & employee¡¦s job attitudes was examined. Results indicated that understand, tenure moderated the relationship between politics and job satisfaction; Locus of control moderated the relationship between politics and organizational commitment.

The purpose of this study was to assess the self-perceptions of leadership skill development and attitudes of experienced collegiate sophomore student leaders who elected to take an undergraduate collegiate leadership course. Leadership attitude, for the purpose of this study, consisted of one's group or leader orientation. The five leadership skills studied were working in groups, positional leadership, communication, decision-making, and understanding self. A post-then methodology was utilized with self-reporting as the process by which data was collected following completion of an academic leadership course. The major findings of this study were as follows: After the semester course, there were no significant differences among sophomore student leaders regarding their attitude toward the construct leadership orientation and their attitude toward the construct group orientation. In addition, the sophomore student leaders who completed the academic leadership course displayed a self-perceived increase in their ability to work in groups, work in positions of leadership, communicate, make decisions, and in their awareness of self. No relationship was found between the self-reported attitudes on leader or group orientation of sophomore student leaders with the amount of high school leadership courses that were completed. No statistically significant relationship was found between the self-reported attitudes on group orientation of sophomore student leaders and the amount of leadership activities in which the subjects participated in high school. A statistically significant positive relationship was found between the self-reported attitudes on leader orientation of sophomore student leaders and the amount of leadership activity participation in high school. No statistically significant relationship was found between the post-class self-perceptions of the leadership skills of sophomore student leaders and their high school leadership education. A statistically significant relationship was found between the self-perceived communication skills of sophomore student leaders and the amount of leadership activities completed in high school. The more high school leadership activities in which students participated, the less confidence the students perceived in their communication skills. Statistical analysis failed to reveal a relationship between an attitude of group orientation and any one type of leadership skill.

The purpose of this study is to identify the perceptions of novice and veteran teachers regarding the role of the principal in retaining teachers in the profession. Also, the research investigated whether and to what extent there are differences in the perceptions of novice and veteran teachers on the role of the principal in teacher retention. Participants for the study were selected from 15 elementary schools in an urban school district in the Southwestern part of the United States. The study included 270 novice and veteran elementary teachers who completed a Likert Scale questionnaire consisting of 23 questions. The study revealed that novice and veteran teachers believe principals play a key role in the retention of novice teachers. Specifically, the study revealed that teachers want to know the expectation of principals and their evaluation of them as a novice. In addition, they expect principals to play a major role in providing professional development support for teaching strategies, classroom management, and they expect continuous collaboration and encouragement. The results of the study revealed that there was not a statistically significant difference in the perceptions of the novice and veteran teachers in regards to the role of the principal and teacher retention.

This research is a qualitative case study involving eight participants' €”seven teachers and one instructional coach at an elementary school. The student population of this school was a Title I eligible elementary campus with students of mixed ethnicity. The purpose of the study was to document teachers' perceptions and understanding of the implementation process and those factors they perceived that inhibited and facilitated the implementation by an instructional coach of the Cognitive CoachingSM process. The method of inquiry was an instrumental case study at a single site that included a minimum of three one-on-one interviews with each of the eight participants. These interviews triangulated with historical data and observations provide the information to tell the story of the implementation process and extend the reader's understanding of the implementation process. The themes revealed in the research included: (1) lack of understanding and clarity of the Cognitive CoachingSM process, (2) influence of the campus leadership, (3) teacher'™s willingness or resistance to change educational practice, (4) relational trust, (5) influence on instructional change, and (6) increased student achievement. This research study offers implications for both practice and theory. There are specific implications for administrators, instructional coaches, principals, and teachers as they implement the Cognitive CoachingSM process. There is a need for clear, welldefined expectations for implementation at both the campus and district level. In addition, personnel responsible for the implementation process at the campus and district level must be trained in the Cognitive CoachingSM process. Teachers must be aware of the process and terminology pertinent to the implementation process. The Cognitive CoachingSM process provides the opportunity for teachers to restructure their educational practice as they to engage in professional dialogue and reflection with instructional coaches, principals, and peers. Further studies on the connection between relational trust and the implementation process, would provide educators and researchers a fuller understanding of the factors that support the process of implementing innovative reform models in schools.