The Impact Mechanism Of Perceived Supervisors’ Political Skills On Subordinates’ Work Adjustment: A Mediating Moderation Model From Socialized Learning Perspective

With the evolutionary waves, the uncertainty and political behaviors happened in organizations brought by the changes raises a higher demand for adaptability to every employee. That is political skills could help employees survive successfully. Thus, this study aimed at exploring the impact mechanism of supervisors’ political skills on subordinates’ work adjustment, and then building a mediating moderation model in the organizational context.In this longitudinal study, we adopted several questionnaires including political skills scale, perceptions of organizational politics scale, work adjustment scale, job performance scale, and organizational citizenship behaviors scale. We collected data from 177 subordinates and 49 their direct supervisors and launched a series of statistical analysis including description statistics, reliability analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis, and multiple hierarchical regression analysis.The regression results indicated that subordinates’ perceptions of organizational politics could facilitate the positive relationship between supervisors’ political skills and subordinates’ work adjustment through their own political skills’ full mediating effect. Moreover, the negative linkage between subordinates’ political skills and job performance rated by their supervisors two-week later, could be weakened partially through work adjustment’s mediating effect.From socialized learning perspective, this present study emphasized the critical role of observational learning in the interaction between subordinates and supervisors, which would serve to the exploration of political skills’ mechanism. Meanwhile, the warranted demand to organizational management practice for strengthening the political skills training of both leaders and employees is raised to survive changes.