Perceived Organizational Politics and Age, Interactive Effects on Job Outcomes

Studies conducted previously on the role-played by age in association with perceived organizational politics (POP) with different outcomes of job calls for more attention toward this domain. The current piece of research observes the effect of POP on job outcomes that include turnover intentions (intent to leave), job stress, and job satisfaction. It also sheds light on the age moderation in the POP association with job outcomes. The data used in this research were diverse and collected through self-administered and cross-sectional questionnaires. Multiple regression analysis was used as data analysis technique. Precisely, this research discovered that POP has a positive connection with job stress and intent to leave, while having no connection with job satisfaction. Moreover, POP impacts on job satisfaction and job stress was found to be positive in younger employees whereas in older employees, it affected both these variables negatively.


Introduction
When we talk about organization, there is a formal agency setting and from agency theory perspective both the principal and agent are self-interest maximizers. This self-interest maximizing behavior is affected by the organizational environment and results in perceived organizational politics (POP) that serves as a potent stressor in any workplace, affecting the employees' in-role performance in particular. No workplace can be separated from POP. Its impact on employee performance is therefore worthwhile to be studied. Various research works (Bozeman et al., 2001;Chang et al., 2012;Ferris et al., 2002;Indartono & Chen, 2011) posit that individual differences have major contribution in affecting the nature of relationship of perception of politics with performance. Chang et al. (2009) pointed out that there is lack of a theoretical base of how POP impact employee performance and called for future researchers to analyze contextual difference as well as individual difference factors playing moderating role in such associations.
Based on Treadway et al. (2005) work, this study examined the age moderation in relation to POP and job performance. Age of employees is precursor of various aspects of an organizational culture and their reactions to the environment. Although age is not much studied phenomenon in the context of organization politics but the need of hour is to deeply investigate the affects of workplace politics on older and younger employees distinctively. Ferris et al. (1989) suggested that different individuals have different preferences regarding political behaviors and age is one of the predictor of politics perceptions in organizational setting. But strength and direction of such type of relationship has not reached to some conclusions due to much diversified findings (Ferris, Frink, Galang, et al., 1996). However, later studies suggested that age should be considered as moderator of the POP and outcomes relationship rather than the predictor of this relationship (Ferris et al., 2002). They argued that age should be treated as important moderating variable, which can help to predict the reactions of individuals to organizational politics.
Current literature is dominated with negative stereotypes (such as low energy and enthusiasm, decreased productivity, and reluctance for change) related to older workers (Armstrong-Stassen & Lee, 2009;Kroon et al., 2018;Urick, 2017). However, this view point is potentially biased. When real work scenarios were compared with the findings of this study, a predominantly opposing viewpoint and robust theoretical support were found for social cognitive theory, social learning theory, and cognitive development theory. This study targets to find out the true nature of the POPperformance relationship while being moderated by age. Due to strong theoretical base moderating effect of age in totally opposite direction as by Treadway et al. (2005) is expected. That performance of older employees is not likely to affect with high perception of politics as compared to younger employees. Higher POP is likely to affect the performance of younger employees due to less experience, emotional stability, and low cognitive ability to handle stressors. Hence, the objectives of this study can be summed up as follows: • • To investigate impact of POP on outcomes (job stress, intent to leave, satisfaction); • • To investigate the moderating role of age on POPoutcomes (job stress, intent to leave, satisfaction) relationship.

POP
Organizational politics refer to the actions and events happening in an organization for getting hold of power and resources such that it can generate preferred results (Ferris et al., 2019;Pfeffer, 1981). Organizational politics is a pervasive and inescapable part of an organization's social fabric (Dappa et al., 2019;Pfeffer, 2013). According to Abbas et al. (2014), POP defines how a person thinks about the self-centered behaviors of people working around him or her and how frequently he finds them manipulating the organizational policies by hook or by crook while affecting the others. These highly subversive behaviors are never in line with the interests of organization as well as other individuals (Vigoda, 2000). This construct is based on the fact that individuals rely on their perceptions much more than reality (Lewin, 1936). Later on, Ferris et al. (1989) also supported this finding. POP is considered more prejudiced than objective (Gandz & Murray, 1980). Moreover, it comprises voluntary actions formed to fulfill personal rather than organizational goals (Johnson et al., 2017;Ullah et al., 2019). The model presented by Ferris et al. (1989) served as a ground-breaking development in this regard. This model pioneered in highlighting the concept behind this construct and its possible outcomes. POP is called a stressor because it triggers a process of energy reduction whereby an employee puts in continuous effort to cater to the perceived demands while raising the level of compensatory actions and psychological processes, resulting in the depletion of that person's individual resources (E. R. Crawford et al., 2010). Recognizing the influence of workers' perceptions of POP on affective and behavioral reactions of staffs in the organization is important to understanding the pervading effects of POP (W. S. Crawford et al., 2019;Cropanzano et al., 1997). Moreover, Chang et al. (2009) conducted a meta-analysis for the POP as a hindrance stressor to figure out a link between stress and job performance.
Organizational politics has various dimensions as a construct (Drory & Romm, 1990;Madison et al., 1980). Earlier studies (Ferris et al., 1989) described it as having three different dimensions, that are internal and external, legitimate vs. illegitimate, and vertical vs. lateral. Ferris and King (1991) first measured this construct. Referring to its three dimensions, a measure of 12 items was created for testing this construct. Several researches (Nye & Witt, 1993;Valle, 1995) put effort to test the utility of this scale. Kacmar and Carlson (1997) put forward a measure of 15 items with few more improvements for studying this construct.
POP and job satisfaction, job stress, and turnover intentions. POP are regarded as unhealthy for the individuals as they can start facing challenges in their organizational citizenship behaviors, job satisfaction, job stress, job performance, and turnover intentions. Ferris et al. (1989) used their model to predict the prominent effect of POP on various job outcomes. The perceptions of politics affect employees' feelings about their organization, colleagues, and the mentors, hence altering job satisfaction (Robb, 2012). Organizational politics somewhat outlines the culture of organization of any working environment and it affects satisfaction of employees (Dappa et al., 2019). POP research show that it has negative association with a number of work outcomes such as depressed moods (Cho & Yang, 2018;De Clercq & Belausteguigoitia, 2017;Kane-Frieder et al., 2014) and inattentive behaviors (Meisler & Vigoda-Gadot, 2014). Employees will be dissatisfied if they perceive the organization to be unfair in deciding their rewards and promotion. Usually, researchers say that many damaging work outcomes are a result of political organizational environment (e.g., Munyon et al., 2015;Wiltshire et al., 2014). Absence of justice can lead to organizational politics, hence leading toward strange attitudes and behaviors (Saleem, 2015). In a work setting infused with politics, employees tend to feel more helpless and targeted by political behaviors of their colleagues. Hence, to in such environment, they bend toward the impression management tactics, which diverts their attention away from the actual job and decreases their motivation and job satisfaction considerably (LePine et al., 2005;Rosen et al., 2009). Hence, it can be inferred that increased politics perception leads to lower job satisfaction at work.
In addition, another study found that POP and organizational justice significantly contribute to employees turnover intentions (Shafiq et al., 2017). As the employees feel highly lacking in control and disturbingly distracted from their work duties, some employees tend to shy away from work most of the time; they also stop interacting with other people on job and become more detached from the organization itself (Folkman & Lazarus, 1985;LePine et al., 2005). Consequently, all these factors result in decreased job satisfaction and heightened turnover intentions and stress. There is a direct association of POP with turnover intension (Labrague et al., 2017). Employees' turnover creates negative consequences for organizations as the distress of reduction in productivity comes up. In recent literature, it is clear that turnover meaningfully destructively affects productivity causing millions of dollars materialistic cost (Moon et al., 2018). When an employee feels dissatisfied with the unreasonable organizational policies and practices or gets frustrated due to the political behavior of co-workers or supervisors, it can make him or her emotionally exhausted, indifferent toward the job duties, and/or lacking in professionalism. These factors affect the individual negatively, leading to various physical and mental difficulties, for example, fatigue, headaches, depression, anxiety, and negative impact on family and social relationships. This condition might exacerbate the tendency to quit the job, mostly ending in turnover (Huang et al., 2003). The current research is in consistent with results of previous readings that perceive organizational politics is the main reason that leads toward turnover intention (Kafeel & Alvi, 2015).
The current research further highlights the fact given by Vigoda (2000) that an adverse association exists between POP and job performance. This finding has been corroborated by various other pieces of research (Bozeman et al., 2001;Cropanzano et al., 1997;Poon, 2003). Two metaanalytical efforts have studied the association of job outcomes and POP. These studies (e.g., Chang et al., 2009;Miller et al., 2008) posit that there exists positive connection between POP and turnover intentions while negative association exists with job satisfaction and job stress.
Recent literature found that POP has negative influence on job satisfaction, and affect positively the negligent behavior and intent to leave (Rawwas et al., 2018). Study by Abbas et al. (2014) establishes that POP, job satisfaction, and job performance are related negatively. They also found these factors related positively to turnover intentions. POP has been found to exacerbate the negative effects of felt accountability on job satisfaction due to increased uncertainty (Breaux et al., 2009).
Employees who get dissatisfied have trended to go for alternative jobs where they do cost-benefit analysis and finally decide to leave the current job (Walton, 2018). In fact, perceived politics are detrimental to the smooth running of organizations and their components. Hence, the following hypotheses can be proposed: Hypothesis 1: POP and job satisfaction are related negatively. Hypothesis 2: POP, turnover intentions, and job stress are positively related. Witt (1998) compared the objectives of the leader and follower and found their similarity affecting the association of perceived politics and job performance. A meta-analysis focused on the job performance and individual differences relationship and discovered a positive relation between employees' age and performance on the job whereas indices of productivity played a major part as a measure (Waldman & Avolio, 1986).
In addition, as per Treadway et al. (2005) research, individual differences are likely to affect the association of perceived politics with job outcomes. Individual differences were introduced as a corroborating argument for moderation by Treadway et al. (2005) and mentioned Ferris et al. (2002) for this purpose.

Cognitive Development, Social Learning and Social Cognitive Theory
The very well cited theory by Piaget (1972) is Cognitive Development Theory which states that individual's assimilate new knowledge by linking them to effects they previously faced. However, accommodation concept in this theory is allied to impact when the schema readjusts to take in new facts. Equilibration is defined as a continuous process to balance assimilation and accommodation (Piaget, 1990). This theory focuses on four divergent stages in which each one is associated with complicated opinion. The order of stages always remains the same, and each builds on the knowledge obtained from the earlier stage (Fischer, 1980). These stages are Infancy, Sensor motor stage, Pre-operational stage, Concrete operational stage, and Formal operational stage. Although this theory is based on children's Learning exposure, it strongly provides support to this notion that individuals learn from their previous experiences and cope well with the present stressors. Therefore, the argument built by Treadway et al. (2005) on conservation of resources (COR) theory is being challenged by this study on the basis of Cognitive development theory. Older employees will cope with the stressors well and high perception of politics will not affect their performance as compared to younger employees. Bandura's (1986) Social Cognitive theory, on the other hand, provides a framework for conceptualization of changing human behavior. It favors the argument that behavior is modified by the environment. Behavior can be modified and changed with the passage of time (Bandura, 1977(Bandura, , 1989(Bandura, , 2001. Different individuals behave differently to the same stimulus in different situations (Jones, 1989). This theory will also support our argument that older employee's behavior will be changed in accordance with the stressful environment, and they will cope better in case of high perceived politics as compared to younger employees. Bandura's (1977) Social Learning Theory says that individuals get learning from their experiences and on the basis of positive outcomes or negative punishments they feel reinforced to adopt positive rewarding behaviors and avoid negative punishing behaviors. In this situation, on the basis of more experience, older employees have more tendency to cope with stress to high perceived politics and show high in role performance. Hence, this theory also supports our argument against Treadway et al. (2005) that older employees' performance will not be affected by high politics perception due to more exposure and experience as compared to younger employees.

Age Moderation in POP-Job Outcomes Relationship
Majority of the literature contradicts when it comes to the age and perceived politics relationship. Each study depicted a different connection between these variables. However, understanding of age in the workplace is important to motivate employees and to satisfy them. Ferris, Frink, Bhawuk, et al. (1996) discovered an adverse connection of age with POP. Chivakidakarn (2000) showed age and POP to be positively related. Another study concluded that older employees have a higher tendency to be affected by the POP as compared to employees with low levels of age (Valle, 1995). Nevertheless, another study concluded age and perception of politics to be unrelated totally. Some results controversially posit that there is no link between age and POP (Parker et al., 1995). Similar controversy exists for association of POP with job performance. Treadway et al. (2005) took this disagreement as the base of their moderation argument and introduced that age moderates the relation of POP with in-role performance. Witt et al. (2004) utilized the same controversy and introduced moderation of age in the relationship of organizational politics with commitment. This study also going to use age as a moderator between POP and job performance. This research opposes the study of Treadway et al. (2005) and theories of Cognitive Development, Social Cognitive Theory, and Social Learning theories are being provided to predict that perceived higher politics will partially affect the performance of older employees as compared to younger ones. Politics are often discussed as workplace stressors as it increases stress (Harris & Kacmar, 2005). There are two results of pressure which may happen genuinely or mentally when an individual sees a danger exists in the working environment. Physical results incorporate exhaustion, sleeping disorder, and other substantial encounters (Cropanzano et al., 1997). Psychological result would prompt negative work demeanor, for example, decreased employment fulfillment (Ferris et al., 1989;Meisler & Vigoda-Gadot, 2014). Thus, employees with high levels of POP would have low job satisfaction in comparison with those possessing low level of POP.
However, due to moderation effect of age, younger employees are more likely to be affected by perceived politics in terms of performance and satisfaction as compared to their older counterparts. Moreover, older worker may have more satisfaction with their family, social networks, hobbies, and interest outside the organization that play an important role in their satisfaction with their job. Based on the arguments above, we propose the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 4: Age moderates the negative association of POP with job satisfaction.

Age as a Moderator Between POP and Turnover Intentions
Studies suggest that the accumulation of experiences and individual skills gained with age impact how they interpret and react to various stimuli coming from their environment (George et al., 1985;Pond & Geyer, 1987). Carstensen et al. (1999) posited that younger and older employees have different psychological makeup in terms of age. The older employees focus on the positive aspects of their experiences and have greater control over their emotions depending on the situation. They are more pragmatic than younger employees, try to identify more with the organization, and cherish their organizational ties.
Older employees have weaker turnover intentions (Kabungaidze et al., 2013). Clark (1996) stated that older workers do not aspire for higher objectives as they consider themselves having limited choices due to their age. Moreover, the aged employees do not go for turnover easily compared to the younger employees because they value experience as a potent tool for their career (Malik et al., 2009). This experience and skills give them an edge while dealing with the POP; hence, they do not let the politicized work environment force them to quit the job.

Hypothesis 3a:
Age moderates the positive association of POP with turnover intentions.

Age as a Moderator Between POP and Stress
Previous studies concluded that age is associated with employees' job attitudes and well-being. Hence, older employees usually come up as doing well with positive job attitudes as compared to the younger ones (e.g., Diener et al., 1999;Ng & Feldman, 2010). A few explanations attempt to clarify this argument. First, as per socioemotional selectivity theory by Carstensen et al. (1999), older employees have strong positive emotions experienced frequently, and tend to think more positively than younger ones. As older employees do not consider their future opportunities to be diverse and do not give it much thought (Carstensen et al., 1999(Carstensen et al., , 2003. Therefore, they emphasize the positive events. There is great argument about older employees feeling less stressed at job than employees with lower age as they possess multiple coping mechanisms and more work experience than the younger colleagues (Aldwin & Levenson, 2001;Barnes-Farrell et al., 2002;Diehl et al., 1996). Since, POP is a stressor that could result in taxing experiences yet, older employees being more experienced, skillful and positive will cope effectively with it as compared to younger employees and the consequent job stress will be less. Hence, it is proposed that due to moderation effect of age, younger employees will more likely be affected by high perceived politics in terms of stress as compared to their older counterparts. Stamps (1977) proposed that personality traits have a great impact on job satisfaction. As these traits are variable, hence age stands important among them. Therefore, an individual's job satisfaction is likely to change with that employee's age. Ferris et al. (1989) discovered that the more the organizational politics perceived, the lower an employee's job satisfaction goes. Whereas Malik et al. (2009) found that job satisfaction of older employee's decreases with increased POP. The reason that older worker's job satisfaction decreases due to organizational politics perceptions is that they fall short of their coping resources against such political behavior. Workplace politics constantly affect a workplace in every aspect; hence, employees keep taking more and more effect from it over time. Therefore, older workers might get frustrated due to the political process and feel a sheer decrease in their job satisfaction (Cropanzano et al., 1997;Rashid et al., 2013).

Age Moderation in POP and Job Satisfaction Relationship
Older adults focus on social relationships in pursuit of rewards (emotional satisfaction) and emotional intimacy, but politicized work environment leaves them uncertain about everything and decreases their job satisfaction.

Hypothesis 4:
Age negatively moderates the association of POP with job satisfaction.

Sample and Procedures for Data Collection
A self-administered and cross-sectional questionnaire was used to collect data from diverse business organizations of Lahore, Pakistan. These questionnaires were completed by employees working full-time in banks, a local university, and a multinational manufacturing firm. Convenient sampling was used to select the sample for this research. In total, 250 copies of questionnaires were circulated to the employees. Out of these 250, we receive 164 completed questionnaires. Each questionnaire had a cover letter explaining the purpose of the study and ensuring the confidentiality of the responses.
Male respondents were around 80% of total sample. In all, 31.08 years was the average age. Average experience was found to be 6.9 years. Respondents from the middle management accounted for about 12%, while the lower management accounted for about 88%. Around 2% of total respondents had completed intermediate-level studies, 29% were done with Bachelors, 62% with Masters, and 1 % had PhDs.

Measures
Self-reported instruments were used to measure all the variables. A 5-point Likert-type scale was used for the responses with the anchors ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. For all measures, higher scores showed higher levels of a construct.
Perceptions of organizational politics (POP). POP was measured using 11-item scale established by Ferris and Kacmar (1992) Outcomes. Employees' turnover intention was measured using a 3-item scale of Vigoda (2000). The reliability was .76 for this measure. A 5-item scale introduces by Agho et al. (1992) was used to measure overall job satisfaction. Likewise, a 13-item scale established by Parker and DeCotiis (1983) was used to measure job stress. Also, we got the data for respondents' age, tenure, and gender. Table 1 illustrates bivariate correlations, standard deviations, means, and reliabilities (coefficient alpha) for all variables of this research. Age had a negative relationship (r = -.27, p < .001) with job stress and turnover intention (r = -.19, p < .01), whereas it was found to be in positive association (r = .15, p < .01) with job satisfaction. Similarly, POP was in positive connection (r = .25, p < .01) with job stress and also with intent to leave (r = .17, p < .05); nevertheless, it had no association (r = .04, ns) with job satisfaction.

Results
All main effect hypotheses were tested through multiple linear regression analysis. Experience and gender were entered first and independent variables later. Table 2 displays the regression results for age and POP (Step 2) of main effect.
negative with values of B = -.77, p < .000 for older employees for job satisfaction (Figure 1). Likewise, slope of job stress for employees with lower ages was significant with values of B =.49, p < .000. Nevertheless, the slope was observed to be significant but negative for older employees with values of B = -.70, p < .000 (Figure 2).  Note. POP = perceived organizational politics.

Discussion
Regardless of general agreement among scholars, empirical studies have discovered variations in the effect of POP on job outcomes. The current study not only examined the age moderation for some of the detected variation in effects, but also integrated strong theoretical base to understand how age can contribute in employee efforts to cope with POP as a hindrance stressor.
Our results clearly care the assertion that employee possess low satisfaction when there is POP and increase the chances that they will leave the organization. These results give strong support to the idea that POP is detrimental to job outcomes. The consequences of our reading also upkeep the idea that there is positive influence of psychological capital on job outcomes but not on the turnover intention.
During the last two decades, organizational politics' research has advanced a great deal. Nevertheless, individual difference as a moderation variable demands for more attention. The current study throws light on the earlier attempts to examine the moderation of age in the association of POP and outcomes. Considering the work of Ferris et al. (2002), present study considers moderating role of age in the connection of POP with job satisfaction, turnover intentions, and job stress.
We discovered that POP impacted job stress in younger employees positively while it impacted job stress negatively in employees with higher age. These findings are in line with research of Dello Russo et al. (2017) according to which age-related motivational differences may upsurge the POP for younger employees, as their worry about career development and knowledge gathering is expected to occupy the lens through which they perceive their environment, making them more delicate to all the problems that might hamper their career. Contrariwise, older employees may show lower POP since the aging process has given rise to a supportive motivational orientation at job that leads them to have a more benevolent view of the workplace to avoid interpersonal conflicts and improve meaningful relationships and positive emotions. We further establish that POP positively affected job satisfaction for younger employees, whereas for older employees negatively affected job satisfaction. These findings are in line with the study of Mauno et al. (2013) where age strengthened the relationship between workplace stressor and job satisfaction. Similarly, Malik et al. (2009) discovered that POP was negatively linked with job satisfaction in older employees. These results concluded that older employees, as stressors have capability to deal with POP in an effective manner; however, they stay discontented due to the political activities going on around them. Moreover, younger employees take more stress due to high politics; however, they might have greater satisfaction under political conditions as they are able to find better career advancement opportunities in these circumstances.

Practical Implications
The findings of this study are equally insightful for managers as they may use these findings for making hiring and promotion decisions. This study highlights age as an important factor in dealing with workplace stressors. Since older employees have lower intent to leave and stress levels as compared to their younger counterparts therefore managers must invest into older employees as they can be retained for the long term. Though existing literature highlights that younger employees receive more trainings as compared to older employees (Tourigny & Pulich, 2006) and managers are reluctant to invest in older employees, yet these findings suggest that older employees are more resilient in stressful situations hence efforts must be made to retain them and satisfy their needs.
Specially, those sectors where work environments are generally stressful need to retain older employees as they will help them in facing adverse situations effectively. Moreover, while making hiring or promotion decisions age of the candidate should not be overlooked. Along with other factors like education, skills, and so on, age should also be considered as it will help the mangers in foreseeing the behavior of the candidate in strenuous situations.

Limitations and Directions for Future Research
Some limitations of current research are notable. If anybody working in an organization since long time, he may have developed different coalitions or interest groups. Group dynamics and aggregate behaviors of employees need to be investigated which was missing in this study. Moreover long tenure employees must have developed stereotypes, which are very important to study as it can modify the relationship largely. Longitudinal research is required to distinguish between age and age cohort, which can produce different causal effects. The study is also based on self-report that can create biasness. Selection of old and young employees is also very subjective which may affect the research.
Future studies in this filed should inspect the role of other moderators like contextual and individual moderators in the connection between POP and outcomes. Upcoming studies must also focus on facilitating the researchers with a more detailed examination of the POP dimensionality and their relative effect on job outcomes.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.