Research On The Effects And Mechanisms Of Organizational Political Climate On Organizational Innovation And Organizational Performance

Organizational political climate refers to the organizational members' shared perceptions of the behaviors that are self-interested and shortof organizational recognition happen in an organization.The stronger the organizational political climate is,the greater extent to which such behaviors happen in the organization.As the focused/facet-specific climate closely related to organizational politics,organizational political climate is defined by some scholars as a type of negative climate.Some scholars argue that compared with the beneficial effects of the positiveorganizational climate(e.g.climate for innovation),the impeditive effects of negative organizational climate(e.g.organizational political climate)may be more significant and profound.Therefore,to understand the nature and effect mechanisms of organizational political climate is crucial for providing corporations with the guidance to prevent or cope with its potential negative effects.In Chinese context,people value "Guan Xi" in interpersonal interactions,and bureaucracy still takes a role in the social culture.Accordingly,managers of Chinese firms likelyto have the tendency of "rule of man" and "favoritism" when they make decisions.Such characteristics of social culture and management mode are more likely to offer appropriate surviving environment to the political climate.Thus,it is practically significant to explore the effects of organizational political climate on corporations operated in China.Unfortunately,although organizational politics and organizational climate have long been two important domains of organizational management research,study on the cross-domain objective—organizational political climate,is still in infancy.Literature onorganizational political climate,especially the literature onempirical studies,is very limited.Moreover,the limited present empirical studies mostly focus on the impact of organizational political climate on employees' attitudes or behaviors,while little research attention has been paid to examining the relationship between organizational political climate and firm-level outcomes.Organizational innovation and organizational performance are two important firm-level outcomes.A lot of research has been conducted to explore their antecedents,an abundance of conclusions obtained.Nevertheless,most previous research tries to analyze the antecedents that can benefit organizational innovation and organizational performance,whereas the negative factors are highly neglected.Although organizational political climate is categorized as one of the negative climates,the lack of empirical examination and evidence makes it still unknown whether organizational political climate may have negative effects on organizational innovation and organizational performance.Based on aforementioned analysis,to fill in the research gap,based on knowledge-based view and social exchange theory,the present study explores the effects and mechanisms of organizational political climate on organizational innovation and organizational performance.Specifically,the following objects are discussed:First of all,what are the effects of organizational political climate may have on organizational innovation and organizational performance?It should be pointed that,in line with some previous research,organizational innovation in this research is comprised of two types of innovation—technological innovation and administrative innovation.Secondly,what are the mediating mechanisms through which the organizational political climate may influence organizational innovation and organizational performance?Drawing on the literature review and theoretical analysis,the present study will discuss the intervening effects of shared vision and knowledge sharing.Thirdly,is there any contextual factor that may affect the effects of organizational political climate on organizational innovation and organizational performance?To be specific,the moderating effect of environmental competitiveness will be discussed.To examine the hypotheses related to the research questions forementioned,the present study randomly surveys firms located in several different cities or provinces in China.The respondents for the questionnaires are top managers(CEO excluded)of the firms.The final sample consists of 235 corporations,of which the age,industrial distribution,ownership type,etc.,are wide.Through examining the data of these 235 firms,the empirical results indicate that:1.Organizational political climate has significantly negative effects on two types of organizational innovation(technological innovation&administrative innovation)and organizational performance.Moreover,organizational political climate also negatively influences the shared vision and knowledge sharing between organizational members.These results imply that the organizational political climate does have extensive and profound effects on the corporations.It also provides empirical support for the statement thatpolitical climate is a type of negative climates.2.Shared vision and knowledge sharing both play mediating roles in the process through which organizational political climate influences organizational innovation and organizational performance.The explicit conclusions are as follows:(1)Knowledge sharing mediates the relationship between organizational political climate and technological/administrative innovation.It also mediates the relationship between organizational political climate and organizational performance.In other words,organizational political climate acts as the obstacles to both organizational innovation and organizational performance by weakening the firm's internal knowledge sharing.(2)Unless its direct effect on knowledge sharing,organizational political climate also indirectly affects knowledge sharing through its influence on shared vision.Namely,shared vision partially mediates the relationship between organizational political climate and knowledge sharing.Thus,organizational political climate will bring adverse effect to knowledge sharing by harming the shared vision between organizational members.(3)Organizational political climate will influence organizational innovation and organizational performance through shared vision and knowledge sharing successively.The above conclusions help to open the "black box" of the effects of organizational political climate on organizational innovation(technological innovation&administrative innovation)and organizational performance.It implies that to strengthen a firm's innovation and performance,recognizing the importance of internal knowledge sharing is a must.Furthermore,it suggests that there is a closely linkage between knowledge sharing and shared vision.If a firm wants to enhance knowledge sharing by developing shared vision,it has to firstly cultivate a proper work environment,including avoiding the emergence of strong organizational political climate.3.Environmental competitiveness moderates the relationship between knowledge sharing and organizational innovation as well as the relationship between knowledge sharing and organizational performance—the more competitive the external environment is,the more significant the positive effects of knowledge sharing on organizational innovation and organizational performance will be.This result helps us to understand the boundary condition of organizational political climate.Furthermore,it also emphasizes the significant effect of knowledge sharing for a firm when faced with high competitive external environment.4.Although not mentioned in the part of hypothises,considering the argument in previous literature that organizational innovation may be an important antecedent of organizational performance,the present research adds empirical examination of the relationship between these two variables.It shows that both technological innovation and administrative innovation can promote organizational performance while their interaction is negatively related with organizational performance.The results are useful to understand the actual effects of technological innovation and administrative innovation on corporations in Chinese context.In summary,the present research demonstrates that rganizational political climate will have adverse influences on both organizational innovation and organizational performance.It also articulates how and when such influences may take place,deepening our understanding about the influence process and boundary condition of organizational political climate.This paper not only enriches the research on organizational political climate,fulfilling the relevant research gap,but alsoexpandstheliterature of organizational politics,organizational climate,organizational performance,andorganizational innovation,etc.Furthermore,this paper provides serveral theoretical implications for future research and managerial implications for the managers.