Abstract:
Organisational leaders have used political skill to influence employees who are similar to the
leader. Yet, extant literature has directed little attention to leaders who exert political skill to
influence employees who are different from the leader, particularly when considering the
process of transformation of an organisation. Leaders face political tensions when using
political skill to transform organisations to become more diverse and inclusive, based on race
and gender. Anchored in political influence theory and drawing on social identity, the study
examines employee perceptions of a leader who exercises political skill to manipulate resistant
employees if a leader is different from employees. In contrast, the employee may cooperate
with a collaborative leader who uses political skill to influence employees, where the leader is
similar to the employees.
This research conducts a survey to collect data of junior lecturers to full professors’
perceptions of direct managers who exercised political skill to influence academic employees
during the transformation of two public higher education institutions located in KwaZulu-Natal,
South Africa. Leaders have influenced employees who were divided according to race and
gender during apartheid, and integrated during democracy, amid workplace transformation
tensions. The study shows that employee perceptions of a leader who uses political skill are
influenced by social identity categories of race, gender, nationality, and language differences.
This research closes the gap by contributing social identity categories of race, gender,
nationality, and language differences to the political influence perspective characterised by
irrational leaders who oversee limited resources distributed amongst competing employee
interests in the workplace.
In contrast, the study demonstrates that employees are likely to act cooperatively towards a
collaborative leader who uses political skill to influence employees if the leader and employees
have a similar gender identity, rather than race, nationality as well as language identities.
Employees prefer to work with a leader who shares a similar gender identity with employees
if the leader is collaborative towards employees for the transformation progression in the
workplace. Since employees prefer to socially interact with a collaborative leader of a similar
gender to the employee for a sense of belonging, leaders ought to promote gender difference
as a mechanism to build gender transformation beyond race, nationality, and language
differences, to become more diverse, inclusive, and equitable.
