Stresses, Swaps, and Skill: An Investigation of the Psychological Dynamics That Relate Work Politics to Employee Performance.

We develop and test an integrative framework that identifies the underlying psychological mechanisms that relate organizational politics to task performance, citizenship, and counterproductive behaviors. In addition, we identify political skill as a moderator of the effects of politics on proximal outcomes, including strain and psychological contract breach. Data from 285 supervisor–subordinate dyads supported the majority of hypothesized relationships, indicating that both strain and psychological contract breach mediated the effects of perceived politics on work attitudes, which in turn linked politics to task performance and citizenship behaviors. In addition, our results indicate that political skill attenuates the negative effects of politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]