Intra-Organizational Influence Tactics: A Review of Literature

Influence tactics in organizations are ways which people used to influence their colleagues and superiors to obtain personal benefits or to satisfy organizational goals. The purpose of this article is to summarize the research on influence tactics in organizations within the past 30 years, and in an effort to assess the current state of the literature. The paper firstly discussed the concept development of influence tactics briefly. Then reviewed the structure, reliability and validation of three main measurement scales of influence tactics as well as the findings related to antecedents and outcomes of influence tactics. The cross-cultural research, especially the characteristics of influence tactics between the East and the West were addressed. On the basis of this review, the article finally concluded the limitation of existing studies and put forward the corresponding proposals for future research.