Learning Political Will in Organizations: A Social Learning Theory Perspective

• Other Authors: Maher, Liam Patrick (author)
• Format: Others
• Language: English; English
• Published: Florida State University
• Subjects: Organizational behavior; Statistics
• Online Access: http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/2018_Sp_Maher_fsu_0071E_14422

The past several decades have seen great advances in the field of organizational politics. At the individual level, political skill has garnered the majority of the scholarly focus, whereas it's motivational counterpart, political will, has gone relatively unexamined. Political will represents the motivation to engage in political behavior, which, regardless of the skill with which it is executed, potentially has tremendous effects on myriad different organizational outcomes. Thus, it is critical for scholars to understand how political will spreads through work units. This dissertation synthesizes theories of political will, political skill, social identity, social learning, and relationship quality to explain the process of how followers learn political will from their leaders and environments. Specifically, I plan to show that when leaders possess political will, they engage in political behavior. Followers will learn the virtues and drawbacks of political behavior from their leaders, both vicariously and through direct mentoring, and thus their political will should be a function of their leader’s political will. Leaders and their many followers differ in their levels of leader-member relationship quality, political skill, and self-concept congruence, it is proposed that these differences will drive the level of learning that occurs. The proposed model is tested using data from 406 government workers and their 78 direct supervisors. The primary analyses only supported the hypothesis that leader political will predicts leader political behavior. Exploratory analyses that employed follower rated measures of leader political behavior provided evidence that follower political will is a function of follower perceptions of their leader’s political behavior and their own histories with organizational politics. Strengths, limitations, and opportunities for future research are discussed. === A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Management in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. === Spring Semester 2018. === April 6, 2018. === Identity, Leader Member Exchange, Political Behavior, Political Skill, Political Will, Social Learning Theory === Includes bibliographical references. === Gerald R. Ferris, Professor Directing Dissertation; Christopher Schatscheider, University Representative; Wayne A. Hochwarter, Committee Member; Chad H. Van Iddekinge, Committee Member; Gang Wang, Committee Member.