The contingent nature of the political skill-employee performance relationship.

The prevailing perspective in the organizational politics literature is that political skill facilitates heightened employee performance. Indeed, meta-analytic results have consistently found a positive relationship between political skill and both task and contextual performance. However, the literature has neglected the possibility of a contingent relationship between political skill and employee performance, despite arguments that organizations are political arenas in which employees also need political will. This is problematic because although politics are described as an ever-present facet of organizations, the extent to which work environments are politicized varies (Pfeffer, 1981), and such contexts can either constrain or enhance organizational behavior (Johns, 2006, 2018). Therefore, underpinned by the multiplicative framework of performance (i.e.,