Political skill is a construct that was introduced more than two decades ago as a necessary competency to possess to be effective in organizations. Unfortunately, despite appeals by organizational scientists to further develop this construct, it lay dormant until very recently. The present article defines and characterizes the construct domain of political skill and embeds it in a cognition—affect—behavior, multilevel, meta-theoretical framework that proposes how political skill operates to exercise effects on both self and others in organizations. Implications of this conceptualization are discussed, as are directions for future research and practical implications.

This study examines the role of social support in work-family conflict. Although previous research has examined social support as a promising coping mechanism, questions as to how social support affects work-family conflict remain unanswered. Social support is examined as an antecedent, an intervening, a moderating, and an independent variable in the stressors to work-family conflict relationship. Results suggest that social support may be best viewed as an antecedent to perceived stressors. From this, a more full model of work-family conflict is developed and tested. Discussion centers around how social support reduces the likelihood that situations will be perceived as stressful, thus, indirectly affecting work-family conflict through perceived stressors.

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To better understand how individual differences influence the use of information technoiogy (IT), this study models and tests relationships among dynamic, IT-specific individual differences (i.e.. computer self-efficacy and computer anxiety). stable, situation-specific traits (i.e., personal innovativeness in IT) and stable, broad traits (i.e.. ''Cynthia Beath was the accepting senior editor for this paper. trait anxiety and negative affectivity). When compared to broad traits, the model suggests that situation-specific traits exert a more pervasive influence on IT situation-specific individual differences. Further, the modei suggests that computer anxiety mediates the influence of situationspecific traits (i.e., personal innovativeness) on computer self-efficacy. Results provide support for many of the hypothesized relationships. From a theoretical perspective, the findings help to further our understanding of the nomological network among individual differences that lead to computer self-efficacy. From a practical perspective, the findings may help IT managers design training programs that more effectiveiy increase the computer self-efficacy of users with different dispositional characteristics.

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