The impact of leadership on organisational politics

Today‘s workforce consists of employees with diverse personalities, cultural backgrounds, nationalities, needs and wants, thus creating new challenges for today‘s leaders. One of the primary functions of leadership is the management of employee perceptions that influence organisational outcomes. Among these perceptions the perception of politics is an influential type of organisational phenomenon. There is no denying the fact that leadership greatly affects the performance of organisations. According to DuBrin (2010:8), an overview of research on managerial succession conducted over a 20 year period provides support that leadership has an impact on organisational performance. The analysis of the research found that leaders might be responsible for somewhere between 15 per cent and 45 per cent of a firm‘s performance. From the above mentioned research, it can be seen that the importance of leadership cannot be underestimated when regulating the effect of politics in the working environment and to achieve the company goals and objectives. Part of the challenge today‘s leaders face is to help employees to see the different perspectives of political actions as a positive force, rather than seeing these as negative processes that cause internal competition for resources, recognition and promotions. Company politics does not have to be about back stabbing, internal rivalry, manipulation for power and lack of trust. With the development of proper skills and personal and organisational goals, positive organisational politics provides the real foundation for competitive advantage to benefit the employee as well as the organisation. The main purpose of this research paper is to identify the influence of leadership on organisational politics. The first step was to complete a literature study on the iii selected factors which contribute to organisational politics. The factors selected were those of job ambiguity, scarcity of resources, personality, uncertainty and fairness. The literature study also includes the outcomes of organisational politics. These outcomes include job satisfaction, job performance, turnover intention and job stress. An empirical study was then used to analyse the views of staff in various departments. These questions were based on the selected factors mentioned in the previous paragraph. This involved the staff completing questionnaires. Based on the findings of the literature study and the empirical study, the last step is to make recommendations to the selected company on managing the perceptions of organisational politics. Recommendations are also made as to what leadership styles would best fit different situation