Managers, Engagement and Political Behaviors: A Nonlinear Relationship

Context: usually linked to power and decision making, managers are much closer to the effects of the Perceptions of Organizational Politics, a counterproductive phenomenon, but inherent in the very existence of institutions. Objective: the purpose of this paper is to investigate how managers from different companies and with different Work Engagement levels face the presence of political behavior in their organizations. Method: we performed cluster analysis with data from 1498 managers; The hypotheses were tested using multiple linear and nonlinear regression analyzes. The methodology includes descriptive statistics and ANOVA. Results: in most cases, resilience, involvement and concentration, mitigates the perception of political behavior in the organizations. However, there was a paradigm shift among the highly engaged: Engagement impacted on the increase of Perceptions of Organizational Politics. Conclusions: work Engagement and Perceptions of Organizational Politics has a curvilinear relationship, indicating that they are not necessarily antagonistic. The study indicates that emotionally and cognitively structured managers tend to increase their engagement even in the face of a heightened perception of a political ambience, revealing a positive perspective on management practices: fostering greater understanding and connection with the organizational environment will possibly yield more effective results than trying to restrain or neglect political behaviors.