doi.org
Prosocietal but powerless: the struggle to persuade and lead for ethical goals - Review of Managerial Science
This study explores whether prosocietal individuals can use influence tactics to gain power and reduce socially harmful practices in organizations, despite resistance from peers prioritizing short-term gains. By theoretically driven integration of championing, CSR/ESG, and organizational politics literature, we introduce Benevolent Machiavellianism, i.e., prosocietal organizational politics. In a behavioral task with four-person groups (N = 466), participants repeatedly withdrew funds from a charity pool before competing for votes on decision-making authority. Widespread antisocial behavior persisted, as prosocietal players failed to curb it. Those who deviated from group norms received fewer votes, showing the importance of group alignment over traditional influence tactics. While political skill boosted confidence in persuasion, it had little impact on actual outcomes. Meanwhile, malevolent Machiavellianism and power motives predicted greater charity withdrawals in the final stage. By treating the rarity of Benevolent Machiavellians (estimated to consist around 1.5% of the sample) as the focal issue, we theorize structural powerlessness as a norm- and incentive-based barrier to prosocietal insider change.
