Does organisational politics moderates the relationship between organisational culture and employee efficiency?

PurposeThe study aims to examine the relationship between organisational culture and employee efficiency and how organisational politics strengthens or weakens that relationship in the public sector of Ghana due to the perceived inefficiency of public sector employees.Design/methodology/approachThe study employs cross-sectional survey design and quantitative approach to collect the data from public sector employees in Ghana. The analysis is done using descriptive statistics, correlation and hierarchical regression models.FindingsThe results show that negative organisational politics is the predominant perceived politics in the Ghanaian public sector. Further, organisational culture and employee efficiency have significant positive association and organisational politics (positive and negative) significantly moderate the association. However, negative organisational politics depicts negative interaction effect, meaning that negative organisational politics affects the positive influence of organisational culture on employee efficiency.Practical implicationsThe findings imply that strategies such as formulation of organisational policy and strict enforcement of same to eradicate or minimise the practise of negative organisational politics, whilst positive organisational politics is encourages and awarded to induce employees to be efficient. This will enhance the overall effect of organisational culture on employee efficiency.Originality/valueThe study contributes significantly to extant literature by providing empirical evidence that organisational politics (positive and negative) effectively strengthens the association between organisational culture and employee efficiency from a developing country perspective.