Predicting the Prevalence of Organizational-Political Behaviors Based on Different Types of Organizational Climates

Organizations have been formed according to social needs and for meeting those needs and every organization actualizes its general or particular objectives for the society by performing specific duties (Kodisinghe, 2010). To do this, staff of organizations take fundamental responsibilities to meet organizational objectives and they are considered as the most vital elements and the most fundamental strategies in increasing the effectiveness of the organization (Nabatchi 2007, Zhang & Lee 2010). In other words, organizations are formed by individuals with their personal plans acting as if to achieve power and influence on others. Such work plan or game is called the organizational policy world (Rezaeian, 2010). Moreover, individuals’ attempts in meeting their own objectives lead to appearance of political behaviors in an organization. Besides, one of the variables effective on staffs’ political behavior is the type of climate governing the organization (Litween & Strinch 2005) so that it has the same result and it determines the political behavior of individuals and groups in the organization (Pritchardand, R and Karasick 1973; Schneider 1972). Therefore, studying and analyzing the prevalence of organizational-political behaviors in different organizational climates are of great importance. In other words, organizational climate surrounds all aspects of the work life of the members of the organization and also has a significant effect on employees’ behavior and therefore the effectiveness and efficiency of the university. So the organizational climate affects the employees’ organizational, social, administrative and political dimensions. This study is to investigate the relationship between different types of organizational climates and the prevalence of organizational political behaviors at Shiraz University.
Material & The present study is descriptive and correlational. The statistical society of the research includes the whole staff of Shiraz University, of whom research subjects were selected randomly based on gender, working background, and educational status. The data was gathered by two scales of organizational-political behavior based on political games aspects, political tactics, and power games in form of 60 questions of five options from the type of Likert Spectrum and also Moharer’s organizational climate scale (2011) based on four types of developmental, internal, logical, and collective climates in the form of four-option questions similar to Likert Spectrum. Validity and reliability of tools were measured by Question-Analysis Method and Cronbach’sAlpha. Besides, the Variance Analysis Method, repeated measurements, mono-sample T-test, and Multi-Variable Regression Analysis were used to analyze the research questions.
Discussion of Results & From staffs’ view, the prevalence level of political behavior in Shiraz University has been relative but it has not reached the critical status. The dominant political behavior is political tactics. Other findings demonstrate that there is not only one dominant organizational climate in the university, but a combination of different developmental, internal processes and a rational organizational climate is prevalent in different departments. Moreover, the ability to predict different organizational climates in the amount of political behaviors prevalence proves the fact that the developmental climate is not the significant predictor of any organizational-political behaviors (political games, power games, and political tactics). The internal process climate is the positive and significant predictor of political behaviors (political games, power games, and political tactics). The rational climate is also the positive and significant predictor of political behaviors (political games, power games, and political tactics) and the collective climate is the positive and significant predictor of political games and tactics and the negative and significant predictor of power games.