Social Influence and Interpersonal Power in Organizations: Roles of Performance and Political Skill in Two Studies

This is an author's peer-reviewed final manuscript, as accepted by the publisher. The published article is copyrighted by Sage and can be found at: http://jom.sagepub.com/.The present two-study investigation framed performance as one potential form of influence that\ud interacts with political skill to affect power assessments. It was hypothesized that favorable\ud performance is more likely to be leveraged into higher levels of interpersonal power when\ud individuals possess high levels of political skill, but not for individuals low in political skill.\ud Study 1 (N = 97) demonstrated that individuals with positive performance were more likely to\ud possess higher levels of interpersonal power if they were high in political skill. Furthermore,\ud higher levels of performance were not related to power for individuals low in political skill.\ud Thus, these results from Study 1 established support for the hypothesis. Study 2 (N= 384)\ud constructively replicated these findings, using a multisource design. Contributions to theory and\ud research, strengths and limitations, directions for future research, and practical implications are\ud discussed