“How to conform to the political jungle”: Organizational politics, social capital, and employee performance

Abstract Employee perceptions of organizational politics are mostly negative and lead to negative consequences. Social capital is an intangible asset based on social relationships; in organizations it can be either personal or intra-organizational. This study aims to determine whether employees who perceive their workplace as political can benefit from social capital and how doing so affects their performance. A qualitative pilot study refined variables and hypotheses, and two rounds of quantitative surveys were subsequently conducted 4 months apart, with 907 and 762 participants. The analysis demonstrated that intra-organizational social capital mediated the connection between personal social capital and employee performance and moderated the relationship between perceived organizational politics and employee performance, hence mitigating the negative effect of perceived organizational politics. Consequently, according to the Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) theory, intra-organizational social capital serves as a job resource that can reduce the aversion effect of perceived organizational politics as a job demand.