Amos Drory

The Definition of Organizational Politics: A Review

A survey of the literature on organizational politics (OP) reveals a lack of consensus among authors on a definition of this term. This paper presents a review and discussion of the various OP definitions in an attempt to further clarify the nature of this intriguing and important field of study. The definition elements are discussed in terms of their implications for future research toward the understanding of OP in work organizations.

Perceived Political Climate and Job Attitudes

The present study examines the relationships between perceived Organizational Politics (OP) and job attitudes. Questionnaires containing scales of perceived OP climate and job attitudes were administered to a sample of 200 employees in several organizations. It was found that variables reflecting on the employees status in the organization such as Gender and Supervisory Position moderate the relationships between perceptions of organizational politics and job attitudes. The association between climate and negative job attitudes was stronger for employees of lower status than for those of a higher status. It was speculated that organizational politics has a potentially damaging effect on lower status employees, who react to a climate of politics by showing increasingly negative attitudes towards the organization.

Effects of Organizational and Life Variables on Job Satisfaction and Burnout

The purpose of this study was to examine the relative effect of three sets of variables, namely, organizational characteristics, task characteristics, and extraorganizational variables, on job satisfaction and burnout. A total of 266 prison guards from four prison facilities in Israel were administered questionnaires containing scales of intraorganizational conflict, ambiguity, management support, and task charac teristics, as well as measures of family role conflict, community support and appreciation of the employees job, job satisfaction, and burnout. The results suggest that both intraorganizational variables and external variables account significantly for the two criteria. Extraorganizational support and appreciation was the single best correlate of job satisfaction, while management support was the major correlate of burnout. The results are discussed in terms of their practical implications for organizational diagnosis and intervention, and in particular the importance of dealing with extraorganizational factors in OD practice.

Occupational Tedium among Prison Officers

This study describes sources of occupational stress in the prison officers job and investigates their relationships with tedium—defined as a general experience of physical, emotional, and attitudinal exhaustion. Custodial personnel from four maximum security Israeli prisons participated in the study (N = 201). The measured sources of stress incude role conflicts of several types, fear and danger, role overload, role ambiguity, job scope, working conditions, and several types of social support. The variables making the largest unique contributions to the variance in tedium are role overload, management support, and societal support. The relationships between job tenure, sources of stress, and tedium are also explored, and the practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Effects of Rest and Secondary Task on Simulated Truck-Driving Task Performance

The study was designed to examine the effects of extra task stimulation and extra rest on performance and fatigue of haul truck drivers engaged in a simulated driving task. Sixty male subjects, randomly selected from the population of truck drivers in a large mining company, operated a driving simulator for a period of 7 h. A 2 x 3 experimental design was employed including two levels of rest conditions and three levels of secondary-task manipulations. The results show that performance and perceived fatigue were significantly higher when a secondary task involving voice communication was added to the basic driving task, but an added vigilance task had less effect. An extra 30-minute rest period in the middle of the experimental session significantly alleviated the reported experience of fatigue but did not affect performance. The results are discussed in terms of their relevance to actual industrial driving tasks.

Sign registration in daytime and nighttime driving.

Drivers were stopped 200 m after passing a warning sign and were tested for recall and recognition of the sign. It was predicted that at night, when the view of the road ahead is severely restricted, sign registration levels would be higher than during the day, when drivers can obtain most of their information directly from their view of the road ahead. The results supported this hypothesis; sign recall levels ranged from 3 to 6% during the day and from 14 to 18% at night. Other variables that were measured (sign content, roadway environments, and subjective levels of fatigue and boredom) had no significant effects on sign registration.

The effects of roadway environment and fatigue on sign perception

Drivers were stopped 200 m (656 ft) after passing a warning sign and tested for their recall and recognition of the sign. An average of 5 to 10% of drivers registered the sign under various conditions, but these results were independent of specific sign content or roadway environment. Both objective and subjective measures of fatigue were related to the probability of seeing a sign on a straight and level road but not on a hilly and winding road. It was concluded that under normal daylight conditions warning signs are either redundant (contain information directly available) or irrelevant to the drivers perceived needs and the driving task. Before ruling out their usefulness, warning signs should be evaluated under conditions of degraded visibility.

Impression management behavior: effects of the organizational system

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to compare patterns of impression management in two organizational systems, namely, organic and mechanistic.Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative data were gathered from 23 employees by means of in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews. In addition, questionnaires pertaining to the use of impression management strategies toward superiors and peers were given to 208 employees from military and R&D organizations.Findings – The results suggest that employees in mechanistic systems engage more in impression management behavior and direct their efforts more often toward their superiors than toward their peers, most frequently by using the strategy of “Ingratiation”. On the other hand, employees in the organic system sample use impression management to a lesser extent, and they direct it more equally toward superiors and peers. Their predominant strategy is “Initiation.” These results are discussed in light of the differences in the norms and structural characteristics of ...

Political behavior in organizations—A cross-cultural comparison

The purpose of this study is to explore the differences in the meaning attached to organizational politics (OP) across cultures. A critical incidents scale was distributed to two samples of university faculty, one in Canada and one in Israel. Three aspects relevant to the perception of OP were investigated : (1) the role that elements previously identified in the literature play in the actual perception of OP by employees; (2) the extent to which OP is perceived as moral; and (3) the degree to which OP is perceived to be prevalent or likely to occur in the subjects’ organization. The results showed that the Canadian sample perceived the various elements in the scale as generally more political, less moral, and less prevalent in their organization than the Israeli sample. Both samples considered informal influence attempts as more political than formal or illegal ones. The two samples also considered illegal influence attempts as less moral than formal or informal ones. Elements defined in our study as circumstantial, i.e, “conflict,” “power attainment,” “concealment of motive,” and “acting against the organization,” were found to make a smaller contribution to the perception of situations as political than elements defined as behavioral, i.e., “formal,” “informal,” and “illegal,” influence attempts.

GRAPHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENTS FOR PERSONNEL SELECTION: CONCERNS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR RESEARCH

There is an inconsistency between the spreading practice of graphology as a selection tool and the insufficient research support for the technique. The present paper identifies some major concerns about the current status of available knowledge on the employment of handwriting analysis for personnel selection. Drawing on the extensive psychological literature about personnel selection, personnel evaluation, and attribution processes, variables that may moderate the reliability and validity of script assessments are suggested. Four categories of such variables are identified: attributes of the writer, attributes of the graphologist, attributes of the job, and the organizational context. Conceptual and empirical methods for improving the psychometric properties of graphological assessments are suggested. And, the relationship of general problems in personnel-selection research to the use of graphology for personnel selection is discussed. The intent is to propose a research framework that will allow psychologists and managers to make valid judgments about the benefits, as well as limitations, of employing graphology in making personnel recommendations.