How Social Media Can Impact the Organizational Political Process

The world of work is a political arena. Managers, employees and organizational groups vie for power and influence within organizations in both formal and informal settings for personal and organizational benefit (Ferris et al., 1989; Drory and Vigoda-Gadot, 2010; Vigoda-Gadot and Drory, 2006). A significant body of work has looked into how to understand how organizational politics processes take place and how they impact organizations. While we have learned much about how organizational politics unfold in organizations, to date little attention has been given to the impact of changing technologies on the organizational political process, with the exception of work on influence tactics in virtual teams (Elron and Vigoda-Gadot, 2006; Steizel and Rimbau-Gilabert, 2013). Technology has transformed not just how people engage in job behaviors, but also how individuals communicate and connect. One particularly important communication technology is social media