Office Politics: Invitable Dealings at Workplace

Organizational dynamism and competition between the organizations is universal phenomenon. Likewise employees in the organizations are also exhibiting their competitive behavior among their colleagues. Competition is appreciable when it is healthy and delivers constructive results but unethical approach to gratify one’s needs or greed is termed in this research paper as ‘politicking’ or ‘politicking behavior’. ‘Taking advantage of situation’ is primarily indicated in politicking behavior. Every organization is operating with profit motive or service motive; same way every employee picks any one among these to ensure he/she makes profit in career. Organizations enhance profit by adopting different strategies through using technology and human capital in the right direction. In this process cutthroat competition emerges and fittest survives. Fittest in this context is the organization gives best quality of products and services for the best price. Here consumer or buyer is benefitted. Few organizations opt backdoor to curb and destroy their competitor by scheme which is unethical or illegal and it is predominantly used against their rival company. In this process cutthroat competition may emerge but smartest only can survive. As companies encounter rivals who are competing in the market and who can be threat or speed breakers, employees also presume, pursue that a colleague can be a hurdle for their career growth if he/she is allowed to perform in the same organization. This perceived thoughts creates insecurity which leads such employee to have a strategy, ‘which can be performing better than perceived competitor’, or ‘destroy him through an unethical mean’ which is quoted here in this research ‘politicking in the organization’. This research made an attempt to explore reasons for politicking behavior of employees; circumstances encourage such behavior, and steps to be taken by the management to handle politicking behavior in preventing damage to organization.