ORGANIZATIONAL POLITICS AND EMPLOYEE ATTENDANCE

Organizational politics has been conceptualized as a source of stress and conflict in the work environment, with the potential for dysfuncti onal outcomes at both the individual and organizational level. One pos sible consequence of politics is the exercise by employees of withdraw al behaviors, particularly absenteeism. Further, the likelihood of neg ative outcomes may be substantially enhanced by the lack of understand ing. The present study investigated the extent to which such understan ding, measured as tenure working for supervisor, moderated the percept ions of politics-employee attendance relationship. Moderated regressio n results (after controlling for quality of supervisor-subordinate rel ationship) provided support for the hypothesis, demonstrating that und er conditions of lower tenure working for supervisor, increases in per ceptions of politics were associated with lower attendance, whereas no relationship was found between politics and attendance under conditio ns of higher tenure working for supervisor. Implications of the result s are discussed.