Chapter 7: Research Methods in Organizational Politics: Issues, Challenges, and Opportunities

Scientific inquiry has identified, casually discussed, informally examined, and vigorously investigated organizational politics phenomena for over a century (e.g., Byrne, 1917; Ferris & Treadway, 2012; Lasswell, 1936). In reality, politics work goes back even further if we consider the publication of Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince, initially written in the 1500s and first published in 1903 (Machiavelli, 1952). Delineations of organizational politics are abundant in the existing literature (many would claim ‘too many’ with little overlapping agreement; Lepisto & Pratt, 2012). The expanding research base notwithstanding, the field has yet to offer an agreed upon theory-driven definition. Foundationally (and historically), organizational politics has been cast in a mostly pejorative or negative light, referring to the self-interested behavior of individuals, groups, or organizations (e.g., Ferris & Treadway, 2012). Ostensibly, this view has driven previous empirical research, with only a small number of exceptions (see Franke & Foerstl, 2018; Landells & Albrecht, 2013).