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Relationships and Organizational Politics

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Relationships in Organizations

Abstract

It has been suggested that the most motivating and fundamental force in social life is interpersonal power. Organizational politics represents Lhe contextual and behavioral manifestations of power in the workplace, and researchers have invested a great deal of energy into framing the most fundamental relationships in organizations through the power and politics lens. From leadership to performance appraisal, organizational politics has demonstrated itself to be a valuable framework to investigate. Despite the abundance of research on politics in organizations; very little of that research has attempted to fully integrate political and relational perspectives.

The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense that Energy is the fundamental concept in physics … The laws of social dynamics are laws which can only be stated in terms of power, (Russell, 1938,, p. 10)

State University of Mew York at Buffalo

Technische Universität München

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© 2013 Darren C. Treadway, Jeffrey R. Bentley, Angela S. Wallace, Stephanie R. Seitz and Brooke A. Shaughnessy

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Treadway, D.C., Bentley, J.R., Wallace, A.S., Seitz, S.R., Shaughnessy, B.A. (2013). Relationships and Organizational Politics. In: Morrison, R.L., Cooper-Thomas, H.D. (eds) Relationships in Organizations. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137280640_4

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