Causes of Organizational Politics
Causes of Organizational Politics: Organizational politics arise for a number of causes, one of which being the human desire to be mischievous at times. Here are just a few of the factors that contribute to political behaviour in enterprises and organisations of all sizes and levels. With this in mind, we must acknowledge the possibility of organisational politics. If this is the case, improving your political intelligence is critical to controlling your performance and future.
Organizational politics is caused by the following factors:
Causes of Organizational Politics
- Change that never stops
The contemporary manager is bombarded with projects like as quality improvement, continuous improvement, and business process re-engineering. When fast technical advancements are coupled, the consequence is an atmosphere of continual change.
Change may be frightening, and it often produces winners and losers. It’s not unexpected that more extreme subtle, underhanded, clandestine, or simply deceptive behaviour emerges when this is the case. People begin to arrange themselves in anticipation of the transformation. Simply maintaining the status quo may frequently lead to such behaviour, if not outright sabotage. It’s no surprise that so many transformation efforts fail.
- Ressource rationing
In today’s ‘global economy,’ you are likely to encounter competition from a wide range of rivals, not only locally but from thousands of kilometres away.
When organisations create budgets to reduce expenses and lower prices to customers, it’s understandable that there’s a lot of pressure to keep spending and investment low. As a result, department heads must compete with their coworkers for a piece of a pot that is seldom substantial enough. Bribes, threats, offers, sales pitches, presents, violence, and devotion will be directed at finance directors who determine these allocations – only that we don’t call it that; we call it politics. Within a group of individuals who are expected to work with each other to the greatest extent on a regular basis, relationships may become strained, if not permanently ruined.
- Promotions are harder to come by.
Cost-cutting generally means less prospects for advancement. As a consequence, ambitious people are more likely to engage in violent behaviour in order to move ahead of their peers and get the rare senior positions they want. Aggressiveness does not include the use of fists, but it does imply battling against coworkers who happen to be on the same team.
There’s nothing shady about this. Everyone ‘knows the score,’ which only helps to maintain an atmosphere of distrust, rumour, and gossip at the expense of getting the work done. Unfortunately, if you want to succeed, remaining out of the conflict isn’t an option.
- A lack of understanding
Because of the fast-paced nature of today’s enterprises, jobs are regularly modified, and job descriptions typically lag behind the new manner of doing things. Due to matrix architecture and a focus on project teams, there is sometimes confusion over who is accountable for what. Events frequently surpass the goals established at the beginning of the year, causing uncertainty and ambiguity among coworkers.
Lack of trust, charges of exceeding power, and territorial infighting are common outcomes. The rumour mill gets going, and people are quickly persuaded by all kinds of views and assumptions that have nothing to do with reality and everything to do with how we choose to interpret others’ actions.
- Rewards schemes that aren’t ideal
Consider the compensation scheme in place in your company’s sales department. Do salespeople readily share knowledge on how to sell items and services? Do they keep to themselves any strategy that they feel provides them an edge, considering that they are basically competing against each other to win the vacation abroad or the bonus for the greatest numbers in the period?
Similarly, ‘performance-related awards’ ignore the reality that the majority of professions need cooperation. Why should colleagues allow themselves to be diverted from their own goals in order to assist others in achieving theirs?
- Changes at the top
When a new senior executive is appointed, it is one of the key drivers for perceived political behaviour in firms. Individuals set to work polishing their credentials in order to take advantage of any promotions, appointments, or restructures that may occur.
It is probably healthy and appropriate if the action is open and above board. When behaviours like as badmouthing coworkers, questioning talents or reputations, spreading rumours, and generally causing discontent are involved, it is mainly due to a few people who perceive a way to gain ahead of others by deception.