Aoife Lyons
Dublin City University
Aoife Lyons is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist who is currently studying part time for her PhD in Dublin City University Business School. Aoife works with the Public Appointments Service in Dublin, supporting the recruitment of staff for the Irish Public and Civil Service.
Managers are facing unprecedented challenges in the face of political developments and global uncertainty. Meeting these challenges often requires the ability to develop a diverse and fluid network and then gain the maximum benefit from that network to meet personal and business objectives.
This paper will explore two constructs that may assist in supporting this: Political Skill which is defined as “the ability to effectively understand others at work, and to use such knowledge to influence others to act in ways that enhance one’s personal and/or organisational objectives” (Ahearn et al., 2004, p. 311) and Social capital; “the sum of the actual and potential resources embedded within, available through and derived from the network of relationships possessed by an individual” (Nahapiet and Ghosal, 1998, p. 243).
Building on existing research in this field, this paper will present a theoretical model to explain how the four dimensions of Political Skill (Social Astuteness, Interpersonal Influence, Networking Ability and Apparent Sincerity) may impact on the structural, relational and cognitive elements of Social capital. Some of the methodological issues in relation to assessing the different dimensions of social capital will also be examined. The relationship between these individual dimensions/elements has not previously been examined. A better theoretical understanding of the relative importance of the dimensions of Political Skill on an individual’s Social Capital, especially as Political Skill has been shown to be something that can be developed in managers, will mean a framework that will support managers in developing their networks, utilising the resources available in that network and getting more from their direct reports, peers, senior managers and individuals external to their organisation.
In light of the importance of academic research contributing to business outcomes, this paper will also explore the links between the various dimensions of Political Skill and Social Capital and a number of measures of job performance. Task performance will be explored in the context of Basic Task performance, Core task performance and performance against competencies. The relationship between Contextual performance will be explored with reference to Interpersonal Facilitation and Job Dedication.
In a review of the area of Political Skill by Kimura (2015), there was a call for more exploration of the Social Capital/ Political Skill relationship at the dimensional level. While there have been some recent studies exploring the link between Social Capital and Political skill, this research has been very focused on the structural elements of Social Capital (Fang et al.,2015; Bolander et al., 2015). The contribution of this paper is the development of a theoretical model that encompasses all of the dimensions of both Political Skill and Social Capital, examines the interaction between these dimensions and then explores the impact maps these on to a range of job performance outcomes.
