The influence of political skill on career success in an Ecuadorian family firm

Abstract

Human capital attributes, such as political skill, motivate employees and relate to their success. While political skill is associated with greater objective (i.e. salary) and subjective (i.e. career satisfaction) career success, the strength of these relationships has been inconsistent. Grounded in social identity theory, therefore, we propose and test the hypothesis that in certain types of contexts, political skill may be more strongly associated with subjective career success than objective career success. The sample (N ¼ 856) was taken from a large family-controlled financial services firm in Ecuador. Using Smart Partial Least Squares (PLS) structural equation modeling, our results showed that, in the unique Ecuadorian context, political skill is more strongly related to career satisfaction than to performance evaluations or salary. In addition, the relationship between political skill and career satisfaction is partially mediated by affective commitment. Theoretical explanations of how political skill operates in non-Western contexts have not been addressed in the extant literature. As such, our single-culture context provides an elaboration-type advancement in political skill theory by testing the boundaries of the theory in very specific contexts. This work contributes to cross-cultural management research by providing a reason for why specific employee skill sets may be developed in different ways depending on cultural specifics. As such, excelling at certain work skills may be much more socially complex when cultural dynamics are taken into consideration.

Forty years of political skill and will in organizations: a review, meta-theoretical framework and directions for future research

“…Such a command on social contexts, thus, shapes politically skilled individuals' attitudes and helps them manage their stress/strain reactions (Ferris et al, 2007;Hochwarter et al, 2010;Perrew e et al, 2004;Zellars et al, 2008). In general, for example, it has been widely established that politically skilled individuals experience job satisfaction and organizational commitment at work (Epitropaki et al, 2016;Hayek et al, 2018;Li et al, 2017;Munyon et al, 2015); even when distrust in management is accounted for (Gallagher et al, 2016). Political skill also indicates a positive association with career satisfaction (Fidan and Koç, 2020), whereas it demonstrates a negative association with turnover intentions (Garc ıa-Chas et al, 2019;Sun et al, 2022).…”

Investigating social capital, trust and commitment in family business: case of media firms

“…Indeed, commitment is a critical issue in any family business. On the other hand, according to some studies such as that of Herrero's (2018) and Sanchez-Ruiz et al's (2019) findings, the relational dimension of social capital is somehow connected to it (Hayek et al, 2018). In this respect, we believe that social capital's relational aspect is critical in improving commitment in family businesses.…”

“…The first part of the questionnaire includes demographic variables (gender, age, marital status, educational levels, professional experience), and the second part contains questions related to the research variables, which were prepared based on 25 questions on the Likert scale based on previous studies. Questions regarding the relational, cognitive, structural dimensions of social capital were drawn from Muniady et al (2015), and trust and commitment-related questions were drawn from Eddleston and Morgan (2014) and Hayek et al (2018). The independent and dependent variables are social capital and family business development, respectively.…”

Relational antecedents of innovation in family firms: The complexity role of non-family employees' commitment

“…Thus, non-family employees with low SC tend to me more sensitive than those with high SC regarding their commitment to the family firm (Khan, Ali, Khan, & Jehan, 2019). On the other hand, AC is related to a high identification and voluntary commitment to the company (Hayek, Randolph, Atinc, & Montalvo, 2018). Following Franco and Franco (2017), if family business employees have an emotional connection in the context in which they are situated, then their AC has a positive influence on contextual performance.…”