Developing a conceptual managerial model to minimise organisational politics at state-owned electricity providers in emerging markets

Economies the world over heavily rely on electricity as an energy source. The state-owned electricity providers in the Sothern African Development (SADC) have experienced an electricity generation crisis for almost three decades, and the situation is seemingly getting worse, with organisational politics arguably behind the crisis. The crisis has even spread to other African countries threatening economic stability of the entire continental region. The study therefore investigates the perceptions, and the effects of organizational politics, vis-a-vis the managerial practices to deal with negative political behaviour with a goal to develop a conceptual model to manage organisational politics. The study employed a quantitative research methodology. The closed ended Likert-scale questionnaire was used to gather data from a target population of 2210 employees. A sample of 1400 participants was randomly selected, representing 63.35% of the population. From the sample size of 1400, only 358 completed questionnaires were returned by the cut-off date. Of the 358, 11 were discarded as they were incorrectly completed, giving an effective response rate of 24.78%. Data was analysed using the statistical software programme SPSS 21.0. To develop the framework, the study performed factor analysis on the perceptions, effects of organisational politics, and managerial practices to minimise organisational politics. Before factor analysis could be performed, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy, exploratory factor analysis, Bartlett’s test of sphericity; and Cronbach Alpha’s reliability coefficient were performed. The study revealed that organisational politics was rife in state-owned electricity providers and recommended the development of conceptual model to manage such politics. The study also identified several factors which include among others, managerial behaviours, poor communication of objectives, unhealthy managerial practices positive department actions as factors that can be considered in the development of the conceptual model to manage politics.