Managers, Engagement and Political Behaviors: A Nonlinear Relationship

ABSTRACT 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. JEL Code: D72, G32, C2.