How Frequent is Organizational Political Behavior?

Magazine article, 2004

This article investigates the extent to which Swedish managers have reported that political behavior existed at their companies during change activities. Several scientific case studies lend support to the change management writers who argue that political behavior is an important factor in organizational change. There is, however, a lack of studies that use large samples and quantitative analysis methods which report upon observations of concrete actions. This study was thus designed to report upon observed political behaviors from 491 workplaces in Sweden. The results showed that the explored political behaviors existed at 95% of the workplaces, but only to a moderate extent. The article also reports upon the kind of political behaviors that were most frequent, with the authors discussing how managers, industry and the academic system could use these findings in order to become aware, better prepared and more able to handle organizational politics and political behavior.