Do organizational politics and organizational commitment affect budgetary slack creation in public organizations?

Abstract

New public management promoting efficient use of public resources has increasingly drawn attention for the last three decades. However, the problem of inefficient use of public resources has not been resolved yet. Investigating the budgetary slack concept may be useful in solving this efficiency problem. To this end, this research focuses on propensity of managers who work in public organizations to create budgetary slack and factors affecting their propensities such as perception of organizational politics and organizational commitment. Results demonstrate that the effects of "general political behavior" and "go along to get ahead", which are the sub-dimensions of organizational politics perception, on managers' propensity to create budgetary slack are positive. It is also found that organizational commitment has a statistically significant and negative impact on general political behavior and go along to get ahead. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.