You are stunned. So is your boss. As you leave the meeting, everyone is convinced that the other side did a better job of political maneuvering. Only one more board member voting for your side would have made the difference. The fallout of the battle is felt for years after.
Workers are angry and from time to time try to get even.
It depends on whom you ask. The proposal in this example got into trouble when people let the idea of how to help the company take second place to the fight for personal political power. Office politics can be innocent and harmless and can even accomplish very good things for an organization as long as people put the welfare of others ahead of their own. We call such actions statesmanship . Statesmanship is the high road of working within an organization.