Organisational politics: the shadow side of leadership

TL;DRAbstract

Purpose Effective leadership action requires managers to harness power that is intrinsically political. This paper studies and characterises the political nature of a manager’s behaviour when taking leadership action. Design / Methodology / Approach The methodological approach is qualitative and examines three organisations over a three year period when these entities experienced a major product failure. The paper analyses the actual managerial behaviour of managers and provides insight into the factors that most strongly influence the effectiveness of managers when taking leadership action. Findings We can conceptualise political behaviour when taking leadership action in terms of rationality and emotionality and, in so doing, clarify how we must modify behaviour to ensure that leadership action is consistently effective. Research Limitations / Implications A case study of three multi-national engineering companies engaged in the design, development and manufacturing of turbomachinery

Chat with Paper

AI Agents for this Paper