The Roles of Political Skill and Political Will in Job Performance Prediction: A Moderated Nonlinear Perspective

Organizational politics are ubiquitous in organizations. Because organizational politics and political behavior represent inescapable realities in organizational settings, it is important to identify the individuals who are motivated to engage in such behavior, and the consequences of such behavior. It is also important to understand why certain individuals successfully execute their political agendas, while others achieve no such success, or, worse, experience social backlash that has strategically counterproductive consequences. Political behavior can be conceptualized as how "individuals strategically invest themselves in ways that risk their social capital in efforts to influence others and attain personal objectives" (Treadway, 2012, p. 529). These behaviors can be either self-serving or other serving in nature (Hochwarter, 2012; Treadway, 2012), but the primary goal is to attain one's own strategic objectives. Political skill and political will are two key factors that contribute to individuals' desire to engage in these behaviors, and to those individuals' potential for success and effectiveness in their execution of political behavior.