The Relationship Between Political Skill and Career Success: The Mediating Effect of Leader-Member Exchange

Abstract

Political skill which can be described as the ability to understand others in organization by observing them, to influence others effectively, to adjust his/her behaviors to changing situations, to develop networks with people, and to appear to others as being sincere (Blass and Ferris, 2007:9), has drawn considerable attention from scholars in recent years. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether there is a significant effect of the political skill and the quality of leader-member exchange on the career success. The sample of the study is branch banks in Bal?kesir and Bursa. The datas were collected through questionnaires. In this frame, three hundred twenty five questionnaires were analyzed. The results of the study showed that the political skill has a significantlly positive effect on the quality of leader-member exchange (? = 0.392, p < 0.01) and career success (? = 0.412, p < 0.01). On the other hand, the quality of leader-member exchange influences the employees? career successes positively (? = 0.149, p < 0.01). Besides, it was found that the quality of leader-member exchange has a mediating effect on the relationship between political skill and career success. It can be said that, those employees who are politically skilled and have high quality relations with their supervisors, have high career successes.