Employee Ingratiation: The Role of Management

Ingratiation, a political process to seek one's own self-interest, may be detrimental to an organization if it becomes excessive. Traditionally, ingratiation has been viewed as a set of individually-initiated behaviors. This paper attempts to show that ingratiation is organizationally induced as well as individually initiated and that it is the interaction of these two forces that determines the amount of ingratiatory behavior in an organization. A set of potentially testable propositions regarding causes of ingratiation is developed and discussed.