Establishing Functional Organizational Politics: A call for Inquiry

Abstract

Organizational politics is omnipresent phenomenon and cannot be ignored. It has the potential to make or break an organization. Literature is filled with the significance of the political strategies, its influence on leadership, power plays and even the management at all the levels. However, the context in which the term is commonly used is partial and many are disdained by the shady behavior it conjures. Current analysis of the literature testifies that most of the researchers and scholars corroborate the negative opinions of the people regarding organizational politics and see it as a manipulative and self-serving malevolence. It won’t be wrong to emphasize the importance of the capacity building exercise which is required by the researchers to eliminate the sole pejorative view of this construct.

The primary goal of this research is neither to negate the dysfunctional aspects of organizational politics nor to make a sudden paradigmatic shift in organizational politics’ establishment as an absolutely functional and positive but, to provide the readers with a balanced and neutral facet of the phenomenon. In order to accomplish this goal a qualitative mode of inquiry will be opted and grounded theory approach will be taken to come up with some explanation for this. Data will be collected from the academic sector of Pakistan and interviews will be conducted from the faculty members from various domains. The qualitative inquiry might offer some pattern and logic to the current literature which appears to be lopsided in its attempts in explaining the phenomenon.  

Keywords: Organizational politics, functional organizational politics, dysfunctional organizational politics, qualitative