Employees\' understanding of the phenomenon of dark networking: A Phenomenographic Study (in Persian)

Purpose: The purpose of this research was to study the experiences and perceptions of the employees to explain the concept of dark networking. Methodology: To deeply understand the concept of dark networking, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eighteen managers and specialists of the Electricity Distribution Company of Qom Province using purposeful sampling method and considering the theoretical saturation of data. Coding method was used to analyze the interviews. The intercoder reliability was applied to measure the validity of the codes extracted from the interviews. There was agreement among key terms, variable elements, invariant elements, and categories. Findings: Individual class (personality and undiscovered mind control), interpersonal class (dark tactics and destructive interactions), and organizational class (poisoning) are obtained. Personality includes extreme opportunism, megalomaniac illusion, sadism, and personal attraction. Undiscovered mind control includes learned helplessness, dark mental reconstruction, and value inversion. Dark tactics include roguish secrecy, political destruction, hidden emotional manipulation, and foolishness pretension. Destructive interactions include enthusiastic collusion and formation of friendly and unfriendly groups. Poisoning includes downfall of both intellectual and social capital. Originality: This research aimed to explain an organizational phenomenon that is the concept of dark networking. Other research has dealt with it briefly, and a review of the research background has shown that no model applying phenomenological approach has ever been presented in this field. Recommendations: To achieve better employee performance in the organization, management should develop an appropriate mechanism to evaluate the status of employee networking to reduce the undesirable effects of networking.