This chapter describes the development of an organizational politics maturity model based on a qualitative study of organizational politics involving 14 individual in-depth interviews conducted across three organizations. The organizational politics maturity model integrates and extends previous conceptualizations of organizational politics and acknowledges the reality of both “good” and “bad” organizational politics. Existing definitions, dimensions and measures of organizational political behaviour, political skill, perceptions of organizational politics and power bases are first described at varying levels of analysis. Next, we overview our recent qualitative research aimed at developing a greater understanding of organizational politics in contemporary organizational contexts, including whether employees perceive organizational politics to be both positive and negative. We then propose a maturity model of organizational politics that can help organizations assess, manage and develop organizational politics in their particular context. The maturity model proposes five levels of organizational politics perceptions: unaware, reactive, reluctant, strategic and integrated. The maturity model also incorporates five categories of political behaviour that correspond to five established bases of organizational power: connection power, information power, coercive power, positional power and personal power. We conclude by considering the practical, theoretical and research implications of the model. We aim to contribute an understanding of organizational politics that both integrates and extends existing negatively skewed conceptualizations and that, looking into the future, will have useful application for theory and practice.

Organizational commitment is a well-established work-related psychological construct that has long been considered one of the core barometers of the individual_organization relationship. More recently, the concept of employee engagement has emerged as an important stand-alone construct that also helps to define and index the individual_organization relationship. Whilst there has been a lack of consensus regarding the definition and measurement of both commitment and engagement, the degree to which the two constructs are distinct has also been the subject of ongoing debate. This chapter describes research evidence regarding the nature, direction, and strength of the relationship between employee engagement and organizational commitment. The chapter also provides an overview of the theoretical platforms underpinning each construct, the evidence regarding the antecedents and outcomes associated with each construct and its dimensions, the stability of each construct over time, and the nature and efficacy of different interventions that have been applied to develop each construct. Finally, an agenda for future research is offered.