The Cross-Level Effect of Team Politics: A Paradigm of Need Satisfaction

We invoke and extend the need satisfaction paradigm to explain a neglected phenomenon in organizational politics literature - the cross-level effects of organizational politics as a group-level phenomenon. The underlying rationale is that perception of team politics interferes with the satisfaction of the three basic needs proposed by the need satisfaction paradigm (i.e., need for relatedness, need for competence, and need for autonomy) and supervisor abusive supervision irritates this negative effect because it magnifies the dissatisfaction of these three needs. This represents the first attempt to delve into the effect of team politics on both team- and individual-level outcomes and processes, though prior research suggests that such research is necessary to fully comprehend the effects of workplace politics on employee and organizational outcomes. Findings from a multisource and multi-wave study of 92 work teams provided support for the theses that at the team level, (a) perception of team politics hinders team performance through deterring team behavioral integration and (b) supervisor abusive supervision strengthens the negative effects of perception of team politics on team behavioral integration; at the individual level, (a) perception of team politics triggers individual team member’s counterproductive work behavior through diminishing his/her organizational identification and (b) supervisor abusive supervision serves as a stimulus to reinforce the adverse effects of perception of team politics on member organizational identification. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications derived from our research.