Organizational politics, work attitudes and performance: the moderating role of age and public service motivation (PSM)

ABSTRACT

Little research has been conducted on organizational politics and its effects on individual outcomes within public organizations in a non-Western culture. We explored how the perception of organizational politics affects the organizational performance and work attitudes including job satisfaction and organizational commitment of public employees. We also examined how age and PSM moderate the politics perceptions–outcomes relationship. The interactive relationship between organizational politics and age or PSM on the one hand and performance and job attitudes on the other was examined using a sample of public employees from the central government in South Korea. The results indicate that politics perceptions in organizations lower organizational commitment and individual performance. Moreover, 1) politics perceptions have the most deleterious effect on commitment to their organization for older public employees, and 2) employees with high levels of PSM are more vulnerable to workplace politics than employees with low levels of PSM.

KEYWORDS:

• Organizational politics
• job satisfaction
• organizational performance
• organizational commitment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jungwon Park

Jungwon Park is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration in the College of Social Science at Andong National University, Korea. His research interests are public management, regulatory policy, and health services administration.

Keon-Hyung Lee

Keon-Hyung Lee is a Professor in the Askew School of Public Administration and Policy at Florida State University. His research interests are comparative public management, performance management, and health services administration.