Political skill and manager performance: exponential and asymptotic relationships due to differing levels of enterprising job demands

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this recordPolitical skill, a social competence that enables individuals to achieve goals due to their understanding of and influence upon others at work, can play an important role in manager performance. We argue that the political skill–manager performance relationship varies as a nonlinear function of differing levels of enterprising job demands (i.e., working with and through people). A large number of occupations have some enterprising features, but, across occupations, management roles typically contain even greater enterprising expectations. However, relatively few studies have examined the enterprising work context (e.g., enterprising demands) of managers. Specifically, under conditions of high enterprising job demands, we argue and find that, as political skill increases, there is an associated exponential increase in enterprising performance, with growth beyond the mean of political skill resulting in outsized performance gains. Whereas, under conditions of low (relative to other managers) enterprising job demands, political skill will have an asymptotic relationship with enterprising job performance, such that the positive relationship becomes weaker as political skill grows, with increases on political skill beyond the mean resulting in minimal performance improvements. Our hypotheses are generally supported, and these findings have important implications for managers, as the performance gains in managerial roles were shown to be a joint function of manager political skill and enterprising job demands

What You See Is Not What You Get: Social Skill and Impulse Control Camouflage Machiavellianism

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Academy of Management via the DOI in this record.Recent studies found that social skill can transform negative workplace outcomes from dark triad traits (e.g., narcissism, psychopathy) into positive outcomes. Going one step further, we hypothesized that social skill would effectively mask Machiavellianism with dire consequences for organizations and coworkers if additionally combined with high impulse control in target Machiavellians. We tested our hypotheses in a triangular multisource design in two complementary workplace samples comprised of both target workers and coworkers with a total of N = 1,438 participants. In Sample 1, we found that high political skill and impulse control effectively masked and reinforced Machiavellians’ image building at work. The results of Sample 2 showed that when tenure was high, individuals high in Machiavellianism, political skill, and impulse control reported exponentially increased levels of counterproductive work behavior. Thus, what coworkers see is not what organizations and coworkers get in the long run. Implications and limitations are discussed

Political skill camouflages Machiavellianism: Career role performance and organizational misbehavior at short and long tenure

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this recordOn the basis of socioanalytic theory (Hogan & Shelton, 1998) and mimicry-deception theory (Jones, 2014), we hypothesized that political skill would effectively mask Machiavellianism (socioanalytic theory) with consequences for coworker perceived career role performance and actual counterproductive work behavior at low and high levels of job tenure (mimicry-deception theory). We tested our hypotheses in a triangular multisource design in two complementary studies comprised of both target workers and coworkers with a total of N = 1438 participants. In Study 1, we found that when political skill was high, targets received high career role performance ratings from coworkers, and this was also the case when targets had high levels of Machiavellianism (socioanalytic masking effect). For targets with low political skill, the career role performance ratings of high Machiavellians was low at long tenure. The results of Study 2 partly disconfirmed mimicry-deception theory: Individuals high in Machiavellianism and high in political skill did not tend to avoid engaging in overtly mean behaviors toward others and extracting organizational resources at short tenure. Implications and limitations are discussed