The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate whether or not perceptions of organizational politics mediate the relationships between accountants' personality and interpersonal traits and their perceptions of a superior's leadership ability and performance. An accountant who has a higher degree of confidence in his or her superior's abilities is more likely to be committed to a given project, resulting in a better project outcome. This benefits the client and ultimately society as a whole. This study contributes to the accounting and psychology literatures because extant research views perceptions of leadership ability and performance from the perspective of the individual agent, with little or no recognition that social action and interaction shape and mold both the individual agent's actions and perceptions of those actions. Perceived leadership and perceived performance are important in accounting for several reasons. First, individuals act in part in relation and response to the expectations of others. Thus, the perception of effective leadership and performance is gained by meeting the expectations of others. Secondly, accountants with reputations for effectiveness have been found to be more successful in their careers. Finally, the reputation for effectiveness in performance and leadership ability has been shown to increase those abilities. This study draws on the adaptive self-regulation framework as well as other theoretical models of perceived performance. The study results indicate that certain manageable personality, interpersonal, and contextual variables affect how accountants view the level of organizational politics within the workplace. In turn, the accountant's view of the organizations' politics is shown to very strongly affect how the accountant perceives his or her superiors' performance and leadership ability.