Office politics: a contagious disease

This week Krungthep Turakij TV delved into an issue that is so common that few people recognise how harmful it is. Harassment at the workplace is believed to occur almost everywhere, albeit to varying degrees. Everyone hates it. Everyone deplores it. But the truth is, everyone more or less plays a part in it. And that’s why this is a problem that’s so difficult to tackle.

Operating hand in hand with abuse of power and manipulation, this is a problem that’s hard to address because it takes place from top to bottom in the staff hierarchy, and often more intensely the higher you go. This is why the warning that office politics can jeopardise an entire organisation often falls on deaf ears. The destruction does not occur overnight, but slowly undermines the very soul of an institution. As with politics anywhere else, politics in workplaces can produce winners who aren’t necessarily the ones with the sincerest intentions toward the organisation.

Another characteristic of office politics is that you feel “others” are playing it and you’re merely on the wrong end of it. In most cases it’s a two-way battle that lets the winners tell their side of the story loudest. Participants in office politics fight primarily to survive and, like politics at the national level, ideals are invoked only to paper over indefensible acts.

Office politics can come under the guise of “constructive confrontation”, although in reality there is a fine line between that and a destructive environment, where success can be cornered by those who use more carefully honed political strengths than actual abilities. 

Most people, some with a sense of resignation, believe that office politics is unavoidable and permanent. This fact of corporate life is for everyone to live with, so the question is not how to stop it, but how to go with the flow while trying to minimise the damage to one’s conscience. This, however, should not detract corporate leaders from another fact, which is that if office politics is allowed to fester, overall decline could be hard to reverse.

For one thing, few corporations can have the best of both worlds. Few employees obsessed with office politics are able to focus on improving their professional or ethical standards. In most cases, it’s one thing or the other. In big corporations the problem might take a long time to have a major impact, and if they’re lucky, sheer size might keep the issue from turning into a human-resources crisis. No statistics have been kept on corporate failures in relation to office politics, but complacency is inadvisable.

Two other words deeply associated with office politics are “nepotism” and “favouritism”. Again, these are practices that appear blatant only when other people are guilty, whereas when we practise them ourselves, it’s out of good and necessary judgement. Here we have another reason why office politics is such a slippery issue to address. To contain the problem requires a collective conscience, and while there are no textbook solutions, the “should-do” list includes avoiding smear campaigns, staying true to professional values and sharing credit and blame.

If this sounds like common sense, it is anything but common practice. Yet, to keep office politics at manageable levels, it is essential.