Abstract
Many researchers within the organizational sciences have considered the influence of personality and learned behavior differences between individuals, and some have given thought to how the political landscape of the organization shapes employee competencies. However, few have examined how personality and learned behaviors, which both have a broader domain than the organizational setting, influence the development of political skill within the organization. In addition, although some have found that political skill influences the individual’s stress process, little attention has been given to how that takes place. The present study assessed how specific personality traits and learned behaviors differentially predict dimensions of political skill. Moreover, it investigated the role that political skill has in the stress process.
The findings indicated that although personality characteristics had several relationships with learned behaviors (i.e., Reactive Responding) and political skill, there was little mediation of the personality-political skill relationship by learned behaviors. In addition, the results suggested that two dimensions of self-reported political skill (i.e., Interpersonal Influence and Networking Ability) play a role in the stressor-strain relationship and that supervisor-rated political skill (i.e., Networking Ability) has a direct impact on job performance. The implications from these results are that personality appears to have mostly direct influences on learned behaviors and political skill and that political skill plays several roles in the stressor-strain-behavior process.
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