A Contextual Approach to Modeling the Decision to Participate in a "Political" Issue

?-) 1982 by Cornell University. 0001-8392/82/2701 -0000/$00.75 This paper examines the processes by which individuals both inside and outside an organization decide to become involved in organizational political issues. We use the theory of authority-task problems and expand it to include boundary-spanning authority-task problems. We assume that the contexts in which insiders and outsiders maketheir decisions influence their decision processes. Two models were developed to describe the contextual factors, one model for insiders, the otherfor outsiders. The models were tested using experienced university administrators and governance figures. Counterexamples were discovered in the course of the study, and the models were revised accordingly.