The relationship among organizational politics, global self-esteem and interpersonal trust in a service-based industry

Problem. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among political behavior, global self-esteem, and the interpersonal trust in the management population of a service industry. The study also addressed how these variables related to position held and to tenure in current position.; Method. The Kipnis Scale of Influencing Manager and Subordinate, the Short Form of the Anderson Dysfunctional Office and Organizational Politics Scale, the author-designed Behavior Scenario Scale, the Trustworthiness subscales of the Wrightsman Philosophies of Human Nature Scale, and the Gordon Personal Profile were administered to 112 management-level employees of a luxury hotel group. Resulting data were analyzed by applying correlational and partial correlational techniques. Multiple regression techniques were used to establish path coefficients. In addition, a structural equation model was generated to confirm the relationship among the variables.; Results. As hypothesized, the present study revealed a significant negative relationship between interpersonal trust and political behavior and a significant positive relationship between global self-esteem and interpersonal trust. No significance was found for a relationship between global self-esteem and political behavior. The present study also found that those who had been in their current positions between five and ten years tended to experience the highest level of political behavior and that those holding the position of executive had significantly lower levels of trust. No significant differences were found for generating political behavior and either position or tenure in current position.