Henrik Bresman
This paper considers the contingent effects of context on the relationship between upward lobbying and knowledge sharing in organizations. Existing research has indicated that organizational groups frequently rely on lobbying tactics to acquire knowledge and that this has significant performance effects. But how the effectiveness of such tactics depend on the task context is not clear. In R&D teams in the pharmaceutical industry, I investigated the effects of upward lobbying on knowledge acquisition in contexts involving different kinds of knowledge and with varying levels of inter-group competition. In contexts of high competition, upward lobbying was positively associated with acquisition of codified knowledge, but it had no effect on non-codified knowledge. In contexts of low competition, upward lobbying was negatively associated with acquisition of non-codified knowledge, and had no effect on codified knowledge. Furthermore, I found that acquisition of both codified and non-codified knowledge was positively associated with performance. The findings highlight the importance of context in understanding how political behavior can help, or hurt, knowledge acquisition and performance in organizations.
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