Leaders’ political skills and organizational change

Abstract

We studied the impact of leaders’ political skill on employee support for organizational change and the effect of the latter on change fatigue and change outcomes. Drawing from the theoretical characterization of the political skill construct domain proposed by Ferris et al. (2007), we posited that leaders’ political skill during organizational change plays an important role in garnering employee support for change and, ultimately, in achieving positive change outcomes. To conduct the study, we used survey data collected through SurveyMonkey on 197 participants working in Canadian organizations and used structural equation modeling techniques to analyze the data. We found that two dimensions of leaders’ political skill—their networking ability and apparent sincerity—positively affected employee support for change, which, in turn, positively affected change outcomes. However, neither of the other two dimensions examined (interpersonal influence and social astuteness) had a significant relationship with employee support for change. We also found that employee support for change and change fatigue were not significantly related, although change fatigue itself negatively affected change outcomes. From a theoretical perspective, this study is among the first to empirically test and confirm the impact of different dimensions of leaders’ political skill on employees’ change support. We also contribute theoretical knowledge by showing the detrimental effect of change fatigue on change outcomes. From a practical perspective, our findings imply that change leadership roles should be assigned to people who exhibit networking skills and apparent sincerity. Moreover, change leaders should prioritize seeking and securing employees’ support for change.