Political Skill and Manager Performance: Exponential and Asymptotic Relationships Due to Differing Levels of Enterprising Job Demands

Abstract

Political skill, a social competence that enables individuals to achieve goals due to their understanding of and influence upon others at work, can play an important role in manager performance. We argue that the political skill–manager performance relationship varies as a nonlinear function of differing levels of enterprising job demands (i.e., working with and through people). A large number of occupations have some enterprising features, but, across occupations, management roles typically contain even greater enterprising expectations. However, relatively few studies have examined the enterprising work context (e.g., enterprising demands) of managers. Specifically, under conditions of high enterprising job demands, we argue and find that, as political skill increases, there is an associated exponential increase in enterprising performance, with growth beyond the mean of political skill resulting in outsized performance gains. Whereas, under conditions of low (relative to other managers) enterprising job demands, political skill will have an asymptotic relationship with enterprising job performance, such that the positive relationship becomes weaker as political skill grows, with increases on political skill beyond the mean resulting in minimal performance improvements. Our hypotheses are generally supported, and these findings have important implications for managers, as the performance gains in managerial roles were shown to be a joint function of manager political skill and enterprising job demands.