Leader political skill and employee reactions: A social-political perspective

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.