Organizational politics is often destructive to individual employee productivity, given the competitive and conflicting interests of colleagues fighting to assert dominance over one another. Whether productive or counterproductive, organizational politics originate from common reasons such as resource scarcity and poor job clarity. The case of Kristen Peters exemplifies organizational and political influence on behavior and productivity, especially when onboarding and orientation practices need to be included or better organized.
This paper analyzes the impact of politics on organizational competitiveness at a time when talent is critically essential for beating external environmental dynamics affecting business performance. The primary argument in this analysis is that unchecked organizational politics creates a counterproductive work environment where manipulations and miscommunications are likely to affect talent and workplace development processes.
Case Overview
Behavioural uniformity Organizations introduce new talents to the culture and behavioral expectations at the onboarding stage, a critical role achieved through orientation and mentorships. Organizational politics can impede onboarding, especially when new talents have to figure out job responsibilities, organizational behavior, and power dynamics without assistance. Kristen Peters’ experience with organizational politics became magnified when she secured an internship with Taylor Reed (TR), a top Wall Street firm dealing with Private Wealth Management (PWM) (Abrahamson et a., 2013).
TR’s undefined onboarding process and split power dynamics reflected a deeply-rooted bureaucracy detrimental to organizational politics. One of the most critical mistakes with TR is that top executives and other manager employees could bypass the talent onboarding process if they had informal relationships with an applicant. Kristen Peter’s involvement with TR began on a negative note when she skipped interviews with the human resources department (Abrahamson et al., 2013). The impact of failing to undergo an interview is that the human resource personnel needed to identify the applicant’s values or how they relate to TR’s organizational culture.
A poorly defined career path, performance evaluation standards, and employee developmental expectations created employee vulnerability and room for enhanced workplace politics characterized by employee manipulations. One such instance is when Mr. Crawford, the human resource personnel, resented Kristen Peters’ ‘networking up’ tendencies by meeting seasoned salespeople outside the organization (Abrahamson et al., 2013).
Mr. Crawford’s observation showed traces of insecurity by limiting Kristen Peters’ robust development beyond TR. In other words, the human resource personnel used unclarified performance evaluation expectations to accuse Kristen Peters of networking with other individuals at the expense of the human resource personnel. Kristen Peters had numerous disappointing performance evaluation feedback, mostly from behavioral expectations that were not made clear during TR onboarding. A possible reason for shifting appraisal dynamics is that Kristen Peters did not fit in with the other interns, especially on housing arrangements and appointment procedures. The following analysis of the workplace key issues regarding the TR organization draws from Kristen Peters’ experiences to showcase the negative impacts of workplace politics.
Key Issues: Anxiety and Mistrust
First, these issues are important from the person’s and company’s point of view: personal motivation often correlates with satisfaction and involvement, which in turn determines the effectiveness of the employee. On the other hand, the consequences of a negative outcome are disastrous, as will be discussed below. Organizational culture open sabotage is a vital issue where politics and ill motives push higher-ranking officials to reflect their insecurities on junior employees. The TR workplace environment openly sabotaged organizational culture by making themes and practices that personnel did not practice.
According to Abrahamson et al. (2013), employee orientation during the summer internship classes focused on communicating the firm’s culture. Although TR emphasized teamwork, collaboration, a flat organizational structure, and positive working relationships, the human resource team appeared controlling and intrusive on employee privacy. An example of TR’s openness culture is with offices fitted with glass walls, yet the PMW leader spied on Ms. Peters’ office conversation and openly inquired about the discussion (Abrahamson et al., 2013). TR executives’ and managers’ failure to uphold organizational values was a red flag concerning the interpersonal relationships and political dynamics that could be detrimental to employee and company progress. Therefore, TR’s cultural sabotage showcases how internal politics can hinder employee autonomy in an environment where privacy is not guaranteed.
Organizational politics directly impact employee anxiety and stress, especially in manipulative work environments where job security is difficult to guarantee. Kristen Peter’s short stint with TR allowed her to showcase her performance and secure full-time employment (Abrahamson et al., 2013). According to Landells and Albercht (2019), mistrust is the most significant factor promoting workplace stress among employees.
Unlike TR’s organizational culture, which fosters teamwork, collaboration, and openness, the human resource department creates divisions regarding workplace perks and communication channels for reaching out to new interns. The company declared itself in the light of servant leadership, but in reality, the style of autocracy came out, which was ineffective. According to Abrahamson et al. (2013), Kristen Peters did not receive any facilitation for house allowance because she did not stay at the hotel like other interns. The divisions created mistrust between Peters and the other group, who would brainstorm market data and other job performance trends when Peters was away.
Anxiety and mistrust also worsen in organizational environments where politics hinder secrecy and dignified interactions that should remain strictly formal. Landell and Albercht (2019) observed that employees develop stress and anxiety if they cannot share their challenges with colleagues. An appropriate example of critical stakeholders of this issue is Ms. Peter’s interaction with Ms. Buckley regarding her appraisal challenges with TR executives. The fact that Mr. Crawford followed up on the discussion indicates the poor organizational secrecy codes and the vulnerabilities associated with junior employees’ confidential information.
For instance, Mr. Crawford could cower Kristen Peters to disclose her discussions with Ms. Buckley. The tension and anxiety during such an exchange could make the intern more secretive the next time, implying that she cannot share any personal challenges even with fellow interns. Landell and Albertch (2019) observed that organizational politics get between positive value sharing and meaningful job engagement without solid leadership management. Individuals are likelier to keep to themselves and miss out on other workplace developmental opportunities in a politically radical workplace like TR.
Leadership Incompetence
Organizational politics affect workplace knowledge management and information dispatch, where bosses can hoard communications to trap their junior targets. These questions are essential because, in this case, such companies have no future in the modern world. After all, qualified applicants will not put up with such an approach. Pheko (2018) noted that organizational politics thrives in workplaces with weak cultural values and disharmony, where bosses can recruit followers to perpetrate bullying and mobbing on targets. Employee recruits are more likely to pick on the boss’s enemy, manipulating information about the target and passing it in the desired form for victimization (Pheko, 2018). Kristen Peters encountered targeted attacks from more than one human resource evaluator.
For some reason, the human resource personnel focused on the intern’s weaknesses by downplaying her strengths and limiting the chances that she could get permanent employment. Abrahamson et al. (2013) detailed an incident when Kristen Peters went for an evaluation with an executive only to be reminded of mistakes she committed during the first week of the internship. The only information that needed to be included from the executive’s evaluation file was that Ms. Peters’ enthusiasm to learn promoted her improvement from ‘low energy to the most committed project intern at TR. As discussed above, Peters embraced servant leadership values by being a dedicated employee who hurried to the rescue. However, the goals achieved by management are entirely contrary to methods that are not based on human values or social responsibility, which makes this approach incompetent. This issue needs to be directly understood in the discussion of stakeholders.
Political dynamics in disharmonized organizations depend on misinformation to create the power distance between executives and their subordinates. Pheko (2018) observed that some managers use gossip and misinformation as psychological manipulators for persuading followers and vilifying a target. However, misinformation with malicious intent is easy to identify, given the bold expressions of envy and social undermining (Pheko, 2018).
Widened power gaps ease subordinate manipulation, where isolation and demotivation make an employee vulnerable and desperate to please other colleagues. Ms. Peters had to work extra hard to prove her worth by staying in the office until 11 p.m. when her colleagues would leave at 6:30 or 7 p.m. (Abrahamson et al., 2013). She also had to drop her projects to focus on Mr. Wagman’s TR-unrelated projects. Misinformation and manipulation due to workplace politics border narcissism, especially if an employee stays isolated and picked on without the opportunity to prove or disprove false allegations.
Favouritism
Workplace politics promote employee demotivation if the reward systems appear aligned with favouritism at the expense of clarified job expectations on performance. The reason for conducting regular performance appraisals at TR should be to identify employees’ honest inputs and reward them accordingly. Such control systems are essential in transformational leadership when employees continuously aim to improve their qualities. However, the value background with corporate ethics should be favorable. Abrahamson et al. (2013) detailed that TR’s reward system for interns focused solely on offering long-term PWM employment to exemplary performers.
Ms. Peters’ motivation was to complete her projects in time, excel at networking, and sustain TR proficient performance despite market changes and a looming depression (Abrahamson et al., 2013). The intern pushed against all odds, such as stress, misinformation, and isolation, to emerge as a vibrant and performance-oriented PWM employee. TR organizational politics aggravated Ms. Peters’ demotivation because the human resource executives seemed to push her beyond the limits, only to write negative reviews despite her efforts (Abrahamson et al., 2013). A functional human resource system with upheld organizational values should promote fair employee treatment and developmental opportunities, as recommended below.
Recommendations
Culture and Ethics Code
An adaptation stage always accompanies the change process, so the company’s management needs to consider this moment. First of all, TR should develop a unified code of corporate ethics, which is a value that will support and a moral basis that will reflect the mission and vision of the company and also postulate specific rewards and punishments for misbehavior or the initiation of a conflict. At first glance, such changes may be coldly received by employees who have been with the company for a long time and are satisfied with the current bonus system.
On the one hand, the TR management may lose support in the form of support for this stuff, but on the other hand, only in this way can the vector for long-term and sustainable development be taken. It is because such a code unambiguously regulates conflicts and opinions of employees in adverse situations, leaving no room for selfish maneuvers and violations of the atmosphere in the team, provided that the code itself is drawn up correctly (Saha et al., 2020). In turn, employees will become more confident in their own operational and social activities, and they will know their rights and obligations better and, accordingly, will be less likely to get into stressful situations.
These cultural changes must also have a theoretical basis of leadership since the leadership must initiate them and, accordingly, rationalize them in the eyes of the collective. At the same time, in this case, there are several possible ways of development: leadership can become transformational or even with servant elements instead of a particular form of laissez-faire, applied with many disadvantages (Robert & Vandenberghe, 2021). Accordingly, to eliminate anxiety and distrust, it will be necessary to introduce a unified corporate ethics code that unambiguously regulates conflicts and issues of confidentiality of the information and personal space and makes employees more confident and less anxious.
Leadership Responsibility Transformation
The example of Kristen Peters showed that TR management does not put employees and their needs at the top of the list of values. On the contrary, they often use them as tools to achieve goals that only sometimes correspond to the company’s mission and social responsibility. In addition, the HR department colluding with management and veteran employees of the company constantly benefits from the fact that they profit from the redundant work of newcomers. Thus, the rights and responsibilities of each department need to be reviewed, with particular emphasis on HRM practices. Firstly, it is possible to introduce the practice of mentoring, when an old employee helps a new one, and at the same time give veterans a special responsibility that does not allow a newcomer to stay at work significantly over time, to take work above their load.
Secondly, old employees often have an experience that is not directly available to management since they are much more connected to operations. Consequently, managers’ responsibility in working with newcomers will decrease, and such a program will allow controlling relations and the atmosphere within the team, putting both old and new employees in a single position. Such an approach will allow better management implementation of the laissez-faire style policy, making its application more adequate: new employees will not be stressed and tired due to overtime, and managers will not have to restructure their usual processes (Susser, 2020) significantly. This approach can be efficient, specifically in the case of Peters, as it will allow her to reduce the load and better fit into the team.
Performance Assessment System
Although TR has a particular system of motivations and bonuses at the moment, it could be better and is aimed not at encouraging current results but at a long-term stay in the company. On the one hand, this approach is viable, as it can, under other adequate conditions, contribute to the involvement and commitment of the profession on the part of employees, thus creating additional motivation (Lohana et al., 2022).
On the other hand, the methodology must be implemented in an already supportive environment that is not filled with favoritism and management misbehavior. New employees in TR should be evaluated on the same metrics as old ones, as this creates a lively competition based solely on professional skills. Such assessment systems should be transparent, with available statistics constantly available to each employee without possible interference from management (Lohana et al., 2022). As a result, favoritism based only on the opinions of managers and the duration of employees in the company will be eliminated. To resolve conflicts resulting from such changes, it is possible to propose introducing any non-financial incentives for loyalty to TR in the form of individual holidays, souvenirs, or inclusion in a kind of “hall of fame” brand.
Summary
Kristen Peters’ case at TR covered key events showing a non-standardized recruitment process, serious sabotage of organizational culture by senior employees, and poorly defined appraisal processes that kept disappointing the intern. TR’s operational strategy, especially human resource management, lacks the standardization techniques that could promote uniform outcomes across all employees.
Kristen Peters’ experiences also exemplify the negative impacts of organizational politics on general performance. Although the executives and human resource personnel picked on Ms. Peters for her conspicuous approaches to networking and job learning, the reactions showcase how detrimental organizational politics and power struggles can be to employee mental health and wellbeing. Critical issues identified in the case are exacerbated mistrust and anxiety that lead to stress, intentional misinformation to control power dynamics, poor concentration, and enhanced employee demotivation. All these factors lead not only to a nominal decrease in the efficiency of the considered business processes and an individual applicant, but moreover, they contribute to negative consequences on a personal level for an employee and a reputational level for a company.
Recommended approaches to TR workplace politics’ key issues are changes in organizational culture, new ethical information-sharing guidelines, and transparent reward systems for employee performance management. New ethical codes of conduct can improve integrity, responsibility, and accountability over the executive and managerial decisions. The best approach to improving the TR workplace is to ensure a due diligence culture where personnel pause and reflect on decision impacts before acting. Kirsten Peter’s case showed how organizational politics could affect performance and employees’ well-being. The case implication to modern organizations is that company executives must collaborate with human resource personnel to ensure the standardization of employee management processes and fair outcomes for all employees.
References
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