An expanded self-consistency perspective on the effects of perceived politics

This paper introduces the notion of perceived supervisor politics (PSP), suggests that it differs from perceived organizational politics (POP), and develops an expanded self-consistency perspective to explain the effects of POP and PSP. Based on cognitive dissonance theory and its self-consistency assumptions, we suggest that POP represents a threat to self-consistency for employees with high organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) but not those with low OBSE. In contrast, based on self-verification theory, we suggest that PSP provides self-verification opportunities for low-OBSE employees but not for high-OBSE employees. Reflecting these ideas, we expected to find unique interactions between POP vs. PSP and OBSE in predicting turnover intention. Moreover, by combining insights from cognitive dissonance and self-verification theories, we argue that PSP disrupts employees’ psychological consistency when the self-verification experience implied by the combination of PSP and OBSE conflicts with their overall experience of self-verification with their supervisor. We expected that the resulting three-way interaction would predict turnover intention. Two time-lagged studies were conducted with participants from the US (Study 1) and China (Study 2) to examine these ideas. Consistent with our hypotheses, Study 1 found PSP to be associated with reduced turnover intention among individuals with very low levels of OBSE, whereas Study 2 showed the predicted three-way interaction to explain turnover intention. Detailed findings, along with their implications and future research directions, are discussed.