I believe that people participate in office politics to try to get an unfair advantage over their colleagues. For example, if you are better at something than your colleaguesl, some colleagues consider the best way to better themselves is to diminish the value of what you do.

I also believe that many people use office politics as a way of brown noising. If the boss doesn’t like someone who is accomplished, one way to get in good with the boss is to make the person the boss doesn’t like look bad and let the boss know that you did.

At the University of Oklahoma Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communicati9on, where I worked for the last 13 years of my professor career, both were rampant. It was because of office politics that I decided it wasn’t good for my physical or psychological heath to continue working there. So I took early retirement and started my own business. Now I make much less, but I’m also ill and stressed much less. I think the trade-off was worth it. But each of us have to make up our own minds what we are capable of putting up with for a salary.

Now let’s look at office politics from a small business perspective. If you’re trying to build a business, can you afford to loose your best employees, because your less competent ones make your work environment hostile for them? And how does a hostile work environment influence what all your employees say about your business? Tax supported organizations may be able to get by with it because bosses aren’t held accountable for making a profit or even bettering the organization. But small business owners can’t afford anything that distracts from survival – making a profit.

Warmly,

Linda

I guess we live in a sales driven society where its more about money than anything else. Is this really progress?

I agree and I’ve known people like that. In fact I hired one about a year and a half ago.

Market segmentation is so helpful because it gives human resource managers more than just how the person acts and what they say. Knowing characteristics by the potential employee’s demographics reveals much information that the person wouldn’t volunteer.

Of course there is a line of research related to knowing when people are lying, but I don’t know it.

Warmly,

Linda

Thanks for your comment. Sorry I missed it earlier.

You’re right without traffic Internet marketers can’t survive.

Warmly,

Linda

I can’t seem to get the ratings to change. I’ll keep working on getting them fixed.

During my stint as Corporate HRM, I have always emphasized that ‘keeping the right employees’ starts at selection, not the other way around. This means that, when the right candidates with values that are in tuned with an organization’s corporate culture are thus selected, they are likely to stay longer (if not for good) with the company and will surely provide value to its over all competitiveness.