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Political skill is the capacity to understand others in working life effectively, and to apply such knowledge to induce others to act in ways that add to one's personal or organizational goals. The present investigation reported the results of 2 studies designed to examine the job performance prediction effectiveness of political skill when investigated in conjunction with general mental ability (GMA) and personality characteristics. The results demonstrated that political skill accounted for a significant proportion of job performance variance beyond GMA and personality variables cross-sectionally in Study 1, and predictively (i.e., using a 1-year timeframe) in Study 2 examining effects on multiple dimensions of job performance. The implications of these results, strengths, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship among key issues discussed in positive organizational behavior (POB) and the implications for organizational success. One of the key outcomes of this paper is to have a better understanding of the relationship between work and a person's broader purpose of existence, and how work helps to accomplish one's purpose of life. In addition, quantitative measures are used to determine the relationship between work and happiness; a positive organizational culture and firm performance; and positive employee characteristics and employee performance. Through various statistical analyses, positive relationships were found among typical measures of positive psychology, positive organizational behavior, and employee performance. Implications for organizations and utilizations of research findings to create sustainable competitive advantages are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two studies examined supervisors' satisfaction with subordinates, and its predictors and importance to supervisors. Study 1 found entity relationships in the form of similarity between supervisors' and subordinates' values were uniquely related to satisfaction with subordinates. Liking of subordinates (from LMX theory) appears to link leadership and job-satisfaction domains. In Study 2, entity relationships, functional relationships, and job performance of subordinates were related to supervisors' satisfaction with subordinates. Functional relationships were the strongest and job performance the next strongest predictors. Performance was related moderately to similarity of supervisors' and subordinates' values and functional relationships. Satisfaction with subordinates was not related to supervisors' global satisfaction and turnover intention in either study, suggesting that subordinates may not be very important to supervisors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Widely accepted cognitive models of job attitudes suggest that a person's job attitude results from the linear combination of attitudes toward individual job features (feature-based processing). This is a relatively difficult cognitive process. We suggest that people act to economize scarce cognitive resources by using knowledge about job categories to generate job impressions when presented with category-consistent job features. People use feature-based processing when presented with job features that are inconsistent with a job category. Our results suggest that impressions do depend on the descriptive consistency of job features with a job category. The implications of the model for job perceptions in the workplace are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]