Person-Group Political Orientation Fit: Relations with Workplace Friendships, Job Satisfaction, Organizational Identification, and Turnover Intentions

The workplace is a life domain in which people meet others who share their political views tovarying degrees. However, potential relations between employees’ person-group politicalorientation fit and important work outcomes have been largely neglected. Accordingly, based onperson-environment fit theory and the social identity perspective, we hypothesized positiverelations between person-group political orientation fit (i.e., operationalized as self and otherleft-wing vs. right-wing, liberal/libertarian vs. conservative/authoritarian, state/social justice vs.market freedom political orientations, respectively) and workplace friendships, job satisfaction,and organizational identification, and a negative relation between person-group politicalorientation fit and turnover intentions. Results of a survey study with 1,325 employees fromvarious occupations provided support for three of our four pre-registered hypotheses. A greaterperson-group political orientation fit was associated with higher-quality workplace friendships,higher job satisfaction, and higher organizational identification. In contrast, person-grouppolitical orientation fit was not significantly associated with turnover intentions. Overall, in timesof increasing political polarization, these findings contribute to a better understanding of howperson-group political orientation fit relates to important work outcomes.