Common sense and experience dictate that there will always be office politics at work, but what happens when we remove the office?
This question is more pertinent than ever because for the first time in history, a large portion of the industrialized workforce has been detached from its physical habitat. Can technology erase, or at least sanitize, the invisible forces that govern the power dynamics of an organization? Do toxic Machiavellian strategies still have a place in a digital-only world? Are political skills still a strong career lubricant in the seemingly sterile age of Zoom meetings? And if all this is gone, are we actually better off?
There is a long tradition within organizational psychology to study office politics. This is defined broadly as any attempt to operate outside formal organizational processes to accomplish personal objectives, often at the expense of the organization. Although office politics have a bad reputation, they have generally been seen as inevitable. Some academics say there can be a bright side to politics. By helping coworkers negotiate between different alternatives, an employee may reach a consensus that balances their own and the organization‘s interests. Politics are also an essential ingredient of trust and reciprocity, so they strengthen interpersonal relations at work, whether for positive or negative purposes.
Good or bad, researchers always studied politics in the context of physical or analog interactions between coworkers. From rumors, gossip, and tacit deals around the mythical office watercooler, to the now very distant after-hours networking at a bar, organizational politics always presumed offline contact between people, in part because these interactions were harder to trace and register. Many of the key ingredients that fuel office politics (chemistry, charisma, culture fit, attractiveness, and social skills) are more likely to manifest in the real world rather than online.
Moving the office online, and making every interaction between employees (and their bosses) standardized and digitized by technology does make a difference. For instance, people spend a day during a traditional, offline board meeting interacting individually, during breaks, at the bar, and at a post-meeting dinner. The whole time, they are able to monitor each others’ expressions live.
On a videoconference call, despite all the advanced features and gizmos to replicate the real world, we find people distracted and multitasking while attempting to follow a linear presentation, and making their comments known to everyone else. Of course, people can still send individual messages and there’s a reason why this happens outside company channels on WhatsApp or text message. But that requires a great deal of effort and concentration, and there is still no offline chemistry or rapport to read the room and use proper political skills.
Research does show that when the office moves from the physical to the virtual world, politics diminishes. There is less of a temptation to schmooze and seduce, to charm and negotiate, to persuade and influence. The typical skills that enable manipulative and influential people to achieve this—most notably charismatic introverts with a narcissistic and morally feeble disposition—are less effective in the digital world.