Definition
Playing politics is to say and do things for political reasons, instead of doing what is right or best for the corporation or other people.
Explanation
Right. Okay. This is going to be a long one.
“Playing politics” is a term nearly always used in a negative frame. It is used by nearly all junior people about their bosses, and it is used by bosses about each other, while being categorically denied outright by everyone.
Unfortunately, just because you don’t like the label doesn’t mean you’re not doing it. All of us inside any given corporation do politics because it has a genuine purpose. It is simply that the term now has such a negative framing that everyone will avoid the label.
Most definitions of politics involve a state or country, so you have to go back to the root etymology of the word to make it make sense inside a corporation. One of the earliest meanings is essentially:
“pertaining to or concerning governance”.
That’s it.
So, in your corporate world, politics is when you’re having to deal with the governance of something.
I’m going to include two additional terms because I think they are wrapped up in governance in a corporate environment: ownership and responsibility. 1
So, politics in a corporation is about the governance, responsibility and ownership of something. That’s our hard corporate definition.
Now, if we go back to the “playing” bit: if you do something that is not for the greater good of the corporation and instead provides an advantage to yourself or your department, and the tools you use to do that are governance, ownership and responsibility, then you are playing politics.
TLDR;
Doing politics in a corporation is anything pertaining to or concerning governance, ownership or responsibility of a system or area.
Playing politics in a corporation is “doing politics” but for the advantage of yourself rather than the corporation.
- There ARE legal differences between the 3, i.e., ownership tells you who possesses and controls the item. Governance tells you who directs it, and responsibility tells you who takes care of it, but in the vast majority of corporate politicing, they will nearly always boil down to an individual. [↩]