Some people get on by lobbying: staying close to the boss, praising, managing how they look. Others just do the work. Does lobbying pay, what does office politics cost a team, and what should a manager do about it?

Does impression management pay? Not in pay or promotions, in this Swiss data. A 2024 paper reports two studies of employees in Switzerland. It looked at five "impression management" tactics:

• ingratiation (making yourself liked, for example by complimenting colleagues);
• self-promotion (for example, talking up your experience or education);
• exemplification (appearing dedicated, for example staying late so people see it);
• intimidation;
• supplication (appearing needy).

The authors grouped people into four profiles by how they combined them.

• Study 1 (237 employees, online survey). People in the "passive" profile, who used all five tactics at low frequency, reported the highest salaries and the most promotions. That held after the authors controlled for age, tenure, workload and leadership position, and they note it ran "counter to our initial expectations". People in the "positive" profile, who used ingratiation, self-promotion and exemplification more than others, felt most successful in their careers; the passive profile felt least successful. Salary and promotions were self-reported.
• Study 2 (268 employee–supervisor pairs from various Swiss companies). Supervisors rated how strongly they would recommend each employee for rewards. The passive profile received the highest recommendations, significantly higher than the positive profile. The authors had expected the reverse.

A note on the paper. Its abstract says the positive profile received the highest reward recommendations in Study 2. Its results section and results table say the passive profile did. We follow the results.

The authors write: "we cannot determine the direction of causality with this data".

Where politics is seen, stress is higher. A 2019 study surveyed two groups of mostly Australian employees:

• 303 people from a range of organisations, reached through the first author's professional networks (a snowball sample);
• 353 employees of a large government organisation (a 15% response rate). The abstract gives 373; the Methods give 353.

In both groups, people who saw more politics reported more stress.

Engagement, through stress. Seeing more politics went with lower engagement. In the authors' full model, though, politics had no direct link with engagement in either group: the link ran through stress and, more weakly, through how meaningful people found their work. The link with meaningful work was weak. The authors write that "the association was not strong".

Limits of the Australian study. The data were self-reports collected at one point in time, and the authors note that "cross-sectional studies do not permit interpretation of causality". In the government organisation, staff agreed only partly on how political the place was. The authors say this may point to different climates in different units, or may reflect how agreement is measured.

Where politics is seen, the intention to leave is stronger. A 2025 paper reports a 2024 online survey of 235 academic staff at private universities in Mogadishu, Somalia, recruited through snowball sampling. 500 questionnaires were sent and 235 analysed; the abstract says 236.

• Intention to leave: perceived politics was strongly associated with it.
• Commitment: perceived politics was weakly associated with lower commitment. The paper calls it "professional commitment", but its items ask about staying at the university.
• Islamic work ethic: the study asked whether a strong Islamic work ethic softened these links. In this sample it did not significantly soften either one.

The authors read this in the light of Somalia's post-conflict context. They say structural reforms, transparent governance and fair policies, should complement ethical frameworks, not replace them. The design was a single self-reported survey, so it cannot show cause and effect either.

Flattering the boss goes with exhaustion. A 2020 study surveyed employees and their supervisors in six manufacturing firms in China, in three rounds one month apart:

1. Round 1: employees rated their own ingratiation towards their supervisor on a four-item scale (a sample item: "I praised my supervisor for his accomplishments").
2. Round 2: they rated their exhaustion.
3. Round 3: their supervisors rated their counterproductive behaviour at work.

Of 395 employees at the start, 216 matched pairs with 61 supervisors completed all three rounds. More ingratiation went with more exhaustion and, through it, with more counterproductive behaviour. The links were modest in size.

But not for everyone. For employees whose acceptance of hierarchy ("power distance orientation") scored above average, ingratiation showed no significant link with exhaustion. The exhaustion cost appeared among those who scored below average.

The authors list their own limits:

• the study was done in China only;
• it used a scale developed elsewhere;
• it did not record whether the ingratiation worked;
• its limited sample size may bias the estimates.

The case for politics: it is part of how work gets done. Building relationships with people who decide, presenting your work well and lining up support for an idea are not misconduct. A manager who treats all influence as suspect may punish people for doing their job well. On that view the problem is not influence but unfair influence, and the remedy is fair decisions, not less politics.

The Swiss study gives this view little support. People who used the friendly tactics most felt the most successful in their careers. But the people who used the tactics least reported the highest pay and the most promotions, and in the second study supervisors recommended them more for rewards. The study cannot show that the tactics harm careers either: it cannot show cause and effect. Meanwhile, two of the four studies measure the perception of politics, which cannot tell legitimate influence from self-serving manoeuvring.

The direction problem. All four studies are surveys, and none can show cause and effect. The Australian and Somali studies each collected everything at one moment. Stressed or disengaged people may simply see more politics around them. The Chinese study, the only one with time between its measures, still relies on employees' own account of how much they flatter, measured at the same time as their acceptance of hierarchy.

The hierarchy finding cuts both ways. Among people who accept hierarchy more, praising the boss showed no measurable exhaustion cost in that study. It may be ordinary courtesy to them. That does not make it a fair basis for decisions, but it warns against reading every deferential gesture as politics.

The missing study. Neither side has what a decision-maker most needs: a study showing what happens to a team's results when a manager makes decisions more transparent. We found none.

Do not let lobbying pay. This is our practical recommendation, informed by limited evidence; no study here tests it. Influence is part of work, and you cannot remove it. What you can control is whether it decides outcomes. If ratings, promotions and the best assignments go to people who lobby, everyone learns that lobbying is the job.

Confidence, claim by claim:

• Whether lobbying pays: low. One paper, two studies in Switzerland. In both, the people who used impression tactics least came out ahead: on self-reported pay and promotions in the first, on supervisors' reward recommendations in the second. Those who used the friendly tactics most only felt more successful. One country, no cause and effect, and the paper's abstract contradicts its own results on the second study.
• Seeing politics goes with stress: moderate. Two samples in one mostly Australian study, all self-reports at one point in time.
• Seeing politics goes with a stronger intention to leave: low to moderate. One survey, in one sector, in Somalia. The link is strong in that study, but there is only one study, and it measured intention, not actual departures.
• Flattering the boss goes with exhaustion: low to moderate. One study with three rounds of data and supervisor-rated behaviour, in China, with heavy drop-out, and no measurable cost for people who accept hierarchy more.

1. Write the criteria down first. Before a rating round, a promotion or a stretch assignment, write down what will decide it. Afterwards, tell people which criteria decided it.
2. Decide on ability, not attention. The authors of the Chinese study advise managers to value "the personal ability of employees", not "behavioral factors that exceed normal work behaviors", when making decisions. Check your last few decisions: did they go to the people closest to you?
3. Check what your reward recommendations rest on. (Our suggestion, following the Swiss authors' advice.) The authors suggest managers "reflect upon the extent that decisions that concern their subordinates are influenced by the subordinates' combined use of IM tactics" (IM: impression management). Before signing off bonuses or raises, compare each recommendation with the criteria you wrote down.
4. Ask about politics in your survey. (Our suggestion.) The Australian study measured politics as perceptions about relationships, resources, reputation, decisions and communication channels, with three items each. Adding a few such items, broken down by unit, can show where people see politics. A shortened version has not been tested.
5. Watch stress and intention to leave where politics is high. In these studies, seeing politics went with stress and with a stronger intention to leave. Reading a high politics score as a reason to look at a unit's turnover is our inference: neither study measured actual departures.
6. Pair values with fair structures. The Somali authors call for transparent governance and fair policies to complement ethical frameworks. Shared values alone are not a plan.

None of these studies was done in the Gulf. Two findings are worth weighing in Gulf workplaces. Both are our interpretation, not findings from the region.

Hierarchy. The Chinese study found that employees who accept hierarchy more showed no measurable exhaustion cost from flattering the boss. That was measured as each person's own attitude, not as a workplace norm. Even so, in workplaces where deference to seniority is expected, managers should be careful not to read every courteous gesture as lobbying, and equally careful not to let it decide outcomes.

Work ethic. The Somali study tested whether a strong Islamic work ethic softens the link between politics and the intention to leave, and found no significant effect in its sample. Its authors tie that result to a post-conflict setting with weak governance, and say the effect "may depend on institutional and cultural contexts". What carries over, in our view, is their recommendation: fair structures alongside shared values.

The four research sources below are open access, published under CC BY 4.0, with the licence verified per article through Crossref. All are academic journal articles; none was published by a company that sells HR services.

1. Perceived Organizational Politics, Engagement, and Stress: The Mediating Influence of Meaningful Work — Frontiers in Psychology, 2019
2. Perceived organizational politics, turnover intention, and commitment in higher education institutions: the contingent role of Islamic work ethics — Frontiers in Education, 2025 (survey conducted in 2024)
3. How Ingratiation Links to Counterproductive Work Behaviors: The Roles of Emotional Exhaustion and Power Distance Orientation — Frontiers in Psychology, 2020
4. Reaching the Top? Profiles of Impression Management and Career Success — Journal of Business and Psychology, 2024