Gender Differences in the Perceptions of Organizational Influence Tactics

[Drory, Amos and David Beaty (1991) Gender Differences in the Perceptions of Organizational Influence Tactics, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Vol. 12, No. 3 (May, 1991), pp. 249-258]

Organization politics is referred to as attempts to informally influence others to enhance or protect one’s share of organizational resources or benefits - often through use of power – and is generally associated with conflict. This paper explores extant literature on organization politics, and then tests some of the stereotypical beliefs about gender vis-à-vis organization politics.

Past studies indicate that attitude towards organization politics is affected by cultural and organizational variables, as well as supervisory position, in addition to characteristics of the behavior. This study explores attitudes and perceptions towards organization politics based on another variable – gender. It is commonly perceived that men and women behave differently when it comes to using power. The general perception is that women exploit less, have less need for dominance, do not understand organizational power as well as men do, are less skilled compared to men in handling informal networks, and are not as direct as men in using influence tactics. The study concerns itself with a two-fold purpose – first, to assess if men and women have different attitudes towards political behavior, and second, if gender affects judgment of organization politics.

An experiential instrument – a short critical situation in which one person (manipulator) tries to influence another (target of influence) - is used to test the hypotheses derived from questions above. The sample of male and female respondents to the given situation are differently grouped to assess responses based on four influencing combinations - (1) Male influencing male, (2) male influencing female, (3) female influencing male, and (4) female influencing female. Respondents are asked to describe their attitude towards the manipulator (friendly-unfriendly, pleasant-unpleasant,considerate-inconsiderate, and cunning-straight), and towards the behavior (aspect of morality, negative effect to the organization, and willingness to behave in a similar way).

Contrary to popular belief, the experiment shows that men and women are guided similarly in matters of power and politics based on the perceived effect of situations on their gender group. Thus both males and females perceive manipulators of their own gender more favorably, consider manipulating a person of the opposite gender less immoral compared to manipulating a person of the same gender, feel manipulating a person of the other gender less detrimental to the organization, and prefer to exert political influence over the opposite gender. These findings also indicate that both males and females consider gender to be a meaningful affiliation group.

The paper proposes that similar studies be undertaken to test attitudes towards organization politics among other affiliation groups such as work units, or professional groups.

We feel that certain aspects of the paper can be improved. The paper cites some issues about organization politics in relation to women during formulation of hypotheses, raising expectations that these issues will be addressed subsequently; these are not followed through. For example, the authors’ suggestion that this study challenges the stereotypical view that women accept male superiority at work, or that they are discriminated against, is unsupported by the experiment design. Similarly, the citation that males indulge more in organization politics as compared to women is not assessed by the instrument design. It is suggested that future research explore these assertions as well.

[submitted by Nidhi Sharma, Ph D Scholar, 2017]