Popular press accounts and emerging research suggest that organizations increasingly face the prospect of managing employees who are highly entitled, yet relatively little research has explored entitlement in work settings. Moreover, in the limited existing research, scholars have considered entitlement through a narrow lens, primarily viewing it as a stable individual difference without consideration of the social context that surrounds the individual. The conceptualization presented here, which we label “work-situated entitlement,” depicts entitlement as a socially determined work condition that reflects a misalignment between perceptions of the individual employee and perceptions of the workgroup. Situating entitlement in the work context allows for explanation of both the processes through which work-situated entitlement develops and its emotional and behavioral effects. This model provides a broader conceptualization of entitlement and illustrates how organizations might intervene to limit its deleterious work-related consequences.

The present research was developed to examine the conceptualization and measurement of the political skill construct and to provide validation evidence for the Political Skill Inventory (PSI). The results of three investigations, involving seven samples, are reported that demonstrate consistency of the factor structure across studies, construct validity, and criterion-related validity of the PSI. As hypothesized, political skill was positively related to self-monitoring, political savvy, and emotional intelligence; negatively related to trait anxiety; and not correlated with general mental ability. Also, the PSI predicted performance ratings of managers in two samples. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are provided.