Relationship between Age, Perceptions of Organizational Politics and Job Satisfaction

Organizational politics is an important ingrethent of organizational life, which refers to behavior in which personal interests are safeguarded rather than organizational interests.Mintzberg (1983) defined organizational politics as promotion of one's own benefit and such activities that are performed without any regard of organizational objectives. OP is relatively new area of research in Pakistan and needs further explanation and investigation for its practical implications. Most of the studies in this research area have been conducted to find its relationship with different employees' outcomes and attitudes like organizational commitment, job satisfaction, job involvement, stress and turnover intentions. We are not able to measure the phenomenon of organizational politics itself but can know how someone perceives OP is his or her work setting. Perceptions of organizational politics are different for different persons in various contexts. The research in this area has been conducted along two different constructs, political behavior and politics perceptions. Political behavior is revealed in organizations through lobbying and making power groups, showing biasness in pay and promotion policies without consideration of merit. Such type of behavior is very common in the organizations in Pakistan. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of age in the relationship between POP and job satisfaction.Organizational PoliticsAlthough Pettigrew (1973) was among the first to investigate and conceptualize the OP but Gandz and Murray (1980) were among the pioneers to investigate this area empirically. After the Ferris, Fedor, Chachere and Pondy (1989) model of OP, this area of research got attention of many researchers of organizational behavior and even now many dimensions are still hidden. The literature is consistently looking for its relationship with attitudes like job satisfaction, organizational commitment and other work related attitudes. In a recent study, Bodla and Danish (2008a) found the negative relationship of OP with different variables at work like job satisfaction, organizational commitment and job involvement. However, turnover and stress were found to be correlated positively. Cropanzano, Howes, Grandey and Toth (1997) argued that organizational politics is a subjective phenomenon and its experience is personal to every individual (which was also confirmed by Gandz & Murray, 1980; Ferris & Kacmar, 1992). This negative correlation between perceptions of politics and employees outcomes is due to breach of implied social contract that is between employer and employee within an organization because an organization can also be termed as market place. The idea of a market place was further strengthened by Bodla and Danish (2009). Reactions of employees in this market place are not positive and they perceive that pay and promotion policies are biased which are made based on political decisions rather than on merit (Witt, Andrews & Kacmar, 2000). Now the focus of researchers is to find moderators that can restructure or minimize the negative effects of the perceptions of organizational politics.Age in Work SettingAge is an important variable that can predict different behaviors at work. According to Longman English Dictionary (2003, p. 28) age has been defined as,"the number of years someone has lived or something existed (How old)", "one of the particular periods of someone's life" (such as old age, middle age, etc.), "the state of being old", and "a particular period of history". However, according to Arking (1998) age is not just the accumulation of time. It has certain considerations regarding the experiences that are gone through within this particular time period. Age is actually a very versatile concept that is not easy to confine into a single definition. It points to many changes in organic, psychosomatic as well as social or even community functioning over time (Sterns & Miklos, 1995). …