Games At Work: How to Recognize and Reduce Office Politics

Chapter 3. Fertile Ground: Why Games are So Pervasive in Modern Corporations

As long as organizations have existed, people have played games. Reading about the machinations of the Roman Senate thousands of years ago or the Italian princely courts at the time of Machiavelli, we can see that people have engaged in games for hundreds and even thousands of years. Human beings have devoted considerable time and energy to games throughout history.

This makes perfect sense when you realize that games are a reflexive response to anxiety. Today, they help employees deal with the anxieties of organizational life. Games serve a purpose: they are a coping mechanism (at other people's or the organization's expense) that enables people to function in challenging ...