7. Exercising Control over Dysfunctional Politics

Organizational politics is necessary and inevitable, but it can hurt an organization and its members when carried to excess. Excessive politicking can result in lower morale, higher turnover and wasted time and effort, thus, lowering performance. To avoid these negative consequences, leaders according Mitchell (2005) should combat political behavior when it is excessive and dysfunctional in the following ways:

  • To control politics, organizational leaders must be aware of its causes and techniques. For instance, during downsizing, the CEO should be on the alert for instances of back stabbing and genuine and transparent attempts to please him/her.
  • Open Communication could also constrain the negative impact of political behavior. Open communication helps everyone to know the basis for allocating resources thus reducing the amount of political behavior. Open communication also makes it more difficult for some people to control information and pass along gossip as a political weapon.
  • Avoiding Favoritism is a strong way of minimizing politics within a group, if group members believe that getting the boss to like men is much less important than good job performance in obtaining rewards, they will try to impress him/ her through task-related activities.
  • Setting good examples of the top management level reduces the frequency and intensity of organizational politics. When leaders are non-political in their actions, they demonstrate in subtle ways that political behavior is not welcome. It may be helpful for the organizational leader to announce in a staff meeting that devious political behavior is undesirable unprofessional, unethical, unacceptable and is not tolerated
  • Goal congruence: Every member of the organization shares the same goals, with thorough understanding of what they mean. If politics will interfere with the organization and individuals achieving their goals, staff with goal congruence are less likely to play office politics excessively.
  • Politics can also be constrained by a threat to discuss questionable information in public forum. People with devious politics usually operate secretly and privately. They are always willing to drop hints and innuendoes and make direct derogatory comments about someone else, provided they will not be identified as the source. An effective way to stop this is to offer to discuss the topic publicly.