Organisational Politics: The Impact on Trust, Information and Knowledge Management and Organisational Performance

Organisational politics, both on intra-and inter-organisational level breaks down trust and becomes a barrier to effective collaboration, information sharing and knowledge management. Literature agrees that organisational politics strongly conflicts with the interests of both employees and the organisation. Employees need to share, collaborate and learn in order to further their personal career development, whereas organisations rely on information sharing and knowledge absorption to promote an innovative culture, enhance performance and achieve competitive advantage. To enable these positive outcomes, the negative effects of organisational politics have to be eliminated or at least minimised. In this paper we investigate the impact of organisational politics on trust, information-and knowledge sharing. A number of propositions are developed, suggesting that organisations adopt a trust-based approach to curb the negative effects and promote a culture of information sharing and knowledge absorption towards enhanced innovation, improved organisational performance and sustainable competitive advantage. The paper includes findings from a reverse brainstorming session with information and knowledge management practitioners and consultants, as well as an online discussion with knowledge management experts. Furthermore, exploratory case studies with semi-structured interviews are currently conducted in the Healthcare industry of Australia. The initial data collected support the propositions and indicate the need for such a trust-based approach in these organisations.