Political Skill and Relevance to Nursing: An Integrative Review

Purpose:

An integrative review was utilized to define political skill and to describe the competencies that influence perception of the professional self, its effect on others, and the ability to navigate organizational politics with relevance to nursing. 

Methods:

 The five stage framework by Cooper (1998) and Whitemore (2005) were used to guide this integrative review: problem formulation, literature search, evaluation, analysis and presentation of findings.  NVIVO(R), a qualitative analysis software, was utilized to organize and guide analysis of this review.  The NVIVO Toolkit was utilized to guide the completion of five stages of analysis: (a) assigning attributes to articles, (b) organizing and node coding based on word searches and word frequencies, (c) analysis using queries, (d) author matrix by thematic nodes and relationships, and (e) constant reflection to move from lower order to higher order themes. 

Results:

 After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, 38 articles met criteria for this review.  Of these, one was instrument development, one was a meta-analysis, two were qualitative, two were quasi-experimental, seven were theoretical and 25 were descriptive.  Six were from nursing literature with two being theoretical and four descriptive studies.  

Conclusion: Political skill influences leadership and one's ability to navigate organizational politics, performance evaluation, interpersonal skills, networking ability, stress level, and social captial within the modern work environment.  Political skill is relevant for nurses interested in understanding how to intentionally influence and navigate organizational politics and professional self-development.  Political skill has been extenively studied in organizational psychology but has had limited attention within nursing research.  Further research is needed to assess political skill in nursing and contribute knowledge to support the development of emerging nurse leaders.