O comportamento político é uma característica da vida nas organizações, no entanto é preciso reconhecer que diferentes gestores são mais ou menos efetivos no uso desse comportamento, como consequência de suas habilidades. A competência política é vista como fator crítico para a efetividade e o desenvolvimento da carreira de lideranças. Esta pesquisa visa compreender melhor essa competência, sua relação com o desenvolvimento na carreira, o aumento da reputação e a atribuição de legitimidade das lideranças no contexto das organizações brasileiras. Para tanto, foram utilizados métodos mistos (quantitativo e qualitativo). A pesquisa foi desenvolvida em duas etapas, sendo a primeira a validação de questionário pré-existente em inglês para o português, o qual possibilita a avaliação da competência política (obtiveram-se 200 questionários válidos). Na segunda etapa, foram realizadas entrevistas com 21 gestores, com um roteiro de 12 perguntas abertas e aplicação do questionário. As questões foram elaboradas com o objetivo de identificar como as organizações e os gestores brasileiros percebem o ambiente político e como eles se sentem em relação ao aspecto político da função do gestor e se as lideranças brasileiras se consideram politicamente competentes e como elas são percebidas por seus pares e superiores nesse quesito. Buscou-se ainda verificar se a competência política é reconhecida como uma competência importante e positiva para os gestores. Para tanto, explorou-se a perspectiva positiva da política nas organizações, nos sistemas de carreira e na liderança. Outro ponto avaliado foi se as descrições feitas pelos entrevistados a respeito da reputação e legitimidade podem ser associadas à caracterização de lideranças consideradas politicamente competentes. Embora a visão mais comum da política seja negativa, os resultados mostraram que os profissionais brasileiros reconhecem o ambiente político nas empresas, seus aspectos positivos e a importância da competência política no desenvolvimento de suas carreiras. Na conclusão, discutiram-se as contribuições da pesquisa, suas limitações e sugestões de estudos futuros. / Although political behaviour is an intrinsic characteristic of organizations, it is necessary to recognize that different managers can use such a competence more or less effectively, according to their personal abilities. Political Skill is perceived as an essential aspect for the efficiency and the development of the leadership career. This research looks at such a competence and its relation to aspects as career development, increase in reputation and granting leadership legitimacy in the context of Brazilian organizations. To this end, mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative) were used. The research was carried in two stages, and the first one was the approval of a pre-existing questionnaire, translated from English into Portuguese, which allows the evaluation of political skill (we obtained 200 valid questionnaires). At the second stage, interviews were made with 21 managers, and they included a script of 12 open questions, as well as the completion of the questionnaire. The questions were created with the objective of identifying how Brazilian organizations and managers perceive the political environment and how they feel about the political aspect of the manager\'s role. Another debated issue was if Brazilian leaders consider themselves politically competent and how they are seen by their peers and superiors with regards to this matter. Besides that, another goal was to verify whether a political skill is recognized as an important and positive competence for managers. To do so, we looked into the positive outlook of politics in organizations, career systems and leadership. In addition, we evaluated whether the interviewees\' descriptions of reputation and legitimacy could be associated with the characterization of politically skilled leaderships. Even though most were under negative impressions regarding politics, the results showed that Brazilian professionals recognize the political environment in companies, their positive aspects and the importance of political skill in the development of their careers. In the conclusion further contributions of the research will be discussed, as well as its limitations and suggestions for future studies.

This study attempted to expand previous research on employee retaliation against abusive supervision by evaluating both overt and covert retaliatory behaviors and the different mechanisms behind these behaviors. Initial confirmatory factor analysis did not find substantial support for a two-factor retaliation construct, but this may have been a result of the nature of behavioral retaliation items that composed the measures. Correlational analyses did not demonstrate clear discriminate validity between overt and overt retaliation; additionally, regression analyses did not find support for high performing or highly political skilled employees retaliating primarily through one form of retaliation. Highly political skilled and high performing employees performed less retaliatory behaviors overall when experiencing high amounts of abusive supervision. Although initial analyses did not support the distinction between overt and covert retaliation, mediation analyses did find some support for differential pathways. Specifically this investigation found that the relationship between abusive supervision and overt retaliation was mediated by feelings of hostility towards employees’ supervisors, whereas the relationship between abusive supervision and covert retaliation was mediated by perceptions of interactional injustice. Overall, this investigation provides mixed support for the distinction between overt and covert employee retaliatory behavior.

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Abstract The early years as a project manager are full of dangers and there is high risk of getting scars that follow you throughout your career and life. This thesis is a first step to study political astuteness in the project management context. Experienced project managers have been interviewed and shared their perceptions of political astuteness in their role as project manager. The results are presented in four main themes; “The Character of Political Astuteness in Project Management Context”, “The Dirty Tricks”, “The Politically Astute Project Manager”, “The Street Smart Project Manager: Use the Force-The Sensing”. The first main finding is that the results of this study are aligned with previous research around political astuteness in public service manager context, and existing frameworks could be applied in future research. The second is that results show similarities with the phenomenon street smart and further research could make contributions when developing future individual baselines in professional project management organisations. The third is the findings around intuition and sensing which is not explored and can have great value for future development of project management if investigated further. The fourth is that diverse, complex, and multicultural context is perceived as the main source for development of political astuteness for project managers. Keywords: Project Management, Political Astuteness, Political Skill, Street Smart / Sammandrag De tidiga åren som projektledare är fulla av faror och det är stor risk att få ärr som följer dig genom hela din karriär och ditt liv. Detta examensarbete är ett första steg för att studera politisk skicklighet i projektledningssammanhang. Erfarna projektledare har intervjuats och delat med sig av sina uppfattningar om politisk skicklighet i rollen som projektledare. Resultaten presenteras i fyra huvudteman; "Karaktären av Politisk Skicklighet I Projektledningskontext”, "De Fula Tricken", "Den Politiskt Skickliga Projektledaren", "Den Street Smarta Projektledaren: Använd kraften - Kännandet". Det första huvudsakliga fyndet är att resultaten av denna studie är i linje med tidigare forskning kring politisk skicklighet i offentlig förvaltningskontext, och befintliga ramverk skulle kunna tillämpas i framtida forskning. Den andra är att resultaten visar likheter med fenomenet street smart och ytterligare forskning kan ge bidrag när man utvecklar framtida individuella baslinjer i professionella projektledningsorganisationer. Det tredje är fyndet kring intuition och känsla som inte är utforskat och kan ha stort värde för framtida utveckling av projektledning om det undersöks vidare. Den fjärde är att mångsidiga, komplexa och mångkulturella sammanhang uppfattas som den främsta källan till utveckling av politisk skicklighet för projektledare. Nyckelord: Projektledning, Politisk skicklighet, Politiska färdigheter, Street smart

I examine individual innovation in organizations from a social network perspective. I employ two theoretical lenses to examine innovation outcomes in three separate empirical studies. First, I use a sociopolitical framework to examine how political skill and social network structure interact to predict successful innovation initiation and, ultimately, career success. I find that innovation initiation mediates the relationship between political skill and career success. Moreover, structural holes in employees’ social networks moderate the mediated relationship between political skill and career success such that the relationship is stronger for employees with many structural holes in their social network. Second, I use social resources theory to examine how the characteristics of employees’ social network contacts affect individual innovation behavior. Results suggest that there is a positive relationship between the average amount of professional experience of one’s social network contacts and individual innovation behavior. Similarly, there is a positive relationship between the average creativity level of one’s social network contacts and individual innovation behavior. Each of these relationships is moderated by social structure such that the relationships are stronger for those with fewer structural holes in their social networks. Third, I develop and validate a scale to assess employee behavioral orientations toward brokering disconnected social network contacts. The scale is found to demonstrate convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity based on data from two field sites and one student sample. Results indicate that the scale is positively related to innovation support behavior.

The research reported here provides an introduction to a theoretical model of socio-affective competence. This conceptual model of social effectiveness consists of four competencies that are related to the development of effective interpersonal relationships in the workplace. These competencies include: establishing rapport, promoting acceptance of differences, developing trust and cultivating charismatic influence. The socio-affective competence model was formulated in an attempt to integrate research on social and emotional skills that have been linked to performance in organizations. The current research proposed the model and defined its competency areas, designed a socio-affective competence situational judgment test (SAC-SJT), identified the variables that were theoretically related and unrelated to the construct, and provided initial evidence in support of the criterion-related validity of the socio-affective competence framework. Results from two different studies established the foundation of the socio-affective competence nomological network and demonstrated the predictive validity of the SAC-SJT on job performance, relational behaviors, and organizational citizenship performance. The author discusses the benefits of developing interpersonal relationship skills and the relevance of these findings in organizational settings.

L’objectif de la recherche (dans le cadre de trois études empiriques) est d’expliquer comment la perception du contexte organisationnel politique peut être mobilisée pour améliorer la performance et la pro-activité des employés et pour réduire leurs intentions de démissionner. Notre approche théorique s’inscrit dans la théorie de l’auto-détermination (Deci & Ryan, 2000) et s’appuie sur la théorie de la conservation des ressources (Hobfoll, 2002) ainsi la théorie dite de « Human Agency » (Bandura, 2006), et la science de la psychologie positive (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2014). Une étude quantitative est menée au Pakistan pour évaluer les conceptualisations formulées. Nos résultats révèlent que les employés ayant un capital psychologique élevé développent de manière durable des comportements conduisant à la performance et qu’ils demeurent proactifs dans des contextes organisationnels perçus comme fortement politiques. En même temps, ces employés subissent une vulnérabilité psychologique qui les pousse à démissionner. A l’opposé, la perception d’un contexte organisationnel politique offre aux employés politiquement doués une source d’opportunités qui satisfait leurs besoins psychologiques tout en maintenant leurs proactivités. Enfin, en prenant en compte les effets motivationnels du contexte organisationnel politique, nous avons trouvé que ce dernier gêne l’intériorisation de la motivation extrinsèque au travail. En conclusion, l’idée que les jeux politiques ne peuvent pas être éliminés dans les organisations, nous suggérons aux managers d’équiper les employés de ressources psychologiques et sociales afin d’obtenir un fonctionnement optimal à tous les niveaux / This dissertation (in a series of three empirical studies) seeks to explicate how perceived politics in organizations can be used for accomplishing effective employee performance and proactivity, and to lower employees’ intentions to quit. We ground our theoretical frameworks in self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) and also borrow support from conservation of resource theory (Hobfoll, 2002), human agency (Bandura, 2006), and the science of positive psychology (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2014). A quantitative survey was conducted in Pakistan to assess the proposed conceptualizations. Our findings reveal interesting patterns of relationships. We find employees with high psychological capital hold a sustainability demeanor in their performance and proactive behavior, when encountering high perceived politics. At the same time, they experience a psychological vulnerability that drives them to quit. On the contrary, perceived politics presents politically skilled employees an opportunistic / challenging turf that satisfies their innate psychological needs and uphold their proactive activities. Lastly, with regard to the motivational effects of perceived politics, we find that perceived politics hinders the internalization of extrinsic motivation at work. We conclude that employees are an integral part of an organization constituency and their well-being implies an organization’s sustainability. Since, politics cannot be eliminated we suggest managers to equip employees with psychological and social resources for the sake of optimal functioning at all levels