Is it fair to get ahead by playing politics? The ambiguity of the merit of political maneuvering enables self-serving judgments

We investigate how people judge the merits of prosocial tactics and political tactics--two different strategies that people use to get ahead at work. We propose that people generally see prosocial tactics as meritorious and legitimate advancement strategies, but that they have more flexible judgments of Machiavellian, political maneuvering. Specifically, we suggest that when people see others advance using political maneuvering, they see those others as lacking merit and the process that rewarded that person as unmeritorious; however, when individuals themselves get ahead through political maneuvering, they see themselves as meritorious and the process as meritocratic. We test this hypothesis in four experiments (N = 2,703). We find that people hold uniformly positive views of prosocial tactics, but they are less negative about their own (vs. others') political behavior (Studies 1-4), because they think they demonstrated personal abilities that can help organizations achieve its larger goals (Studies 2-4). Moreover, this reconstrual of political maneuvering and its merits comes from people's motivation to preserve their view of themselves as good and moral individuals (Study 3).