how to control self-promotion

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How to control self-promotionamong performance-oriented

employeesThe roles of task clarity and personalized

responsibility

Eric Molleman, Ben Emans and Nonna TurusbekovaUniversity of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between the performance

orientation of employees and self-promotion in the form of overstating one’s performance. It ishypothesized that this relationship depends on task clarity and personalized responsibility.

Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected by means of a survey among 281 employeesof two Dutch organizations, one active in water management, the other in the justice field.

Findings – As expected, a positive relationship was found between performance orientation andself-promotion, but only when task clarity was low. Personalized responsibility appeared to reduce thestrength of the relationship between performance orientation and self-promotion, but only underconditions of low task clarity.

Practical implications – Inducing high levels of task clarity seems to be generally effective inreducing self-promotion. If it is not possible to increase task clarity, personalized responsibility is asecond best option to reduce self-promotion

Originality/value – The focus on high performance in modern organizations tends to induceemployees to promote themselves as excellent performers. Performance-oriented employees are

especially known to react in this way while they can simultaneously be assumed to refrain from anybehavior that is likely to be noticed as self-promoting. Therefore, it can be hypothesized that factorsthat can enhance the visibility or traceability of self-promotion will lead to a reduction inself-promoting impulses. In the current study, two such factors, task clarity and an employee’spersonalized responsibility, have been investigated.

Keywords Self-promotion, Performance orientation, Task clarity, Personalized responsibility,Goal setting, Accountability, Employees accountability, Task descriptions, Employees behaviour

Paper type Research paper

IntroductionGiven the competitive environment that most organizations find themselves in today, anenduring high quality and level of workforce performance is often the key to their verysurvival. Various business processes and HRM polices are, as a consequence, designed topromote and reward high quality workforce performance. Think, for example, of compensation systems, training policies, and career management. Viewed from theperspective of employees, this state of affairs manifests itself not only as a pressure to dotheir job excellently but also as a pressure to make their job performance appear excellent:that is, it induces them to positively impress those others they see as relevant (Judge andBretz, 1994; McFarland et al., 2003; Wayne and Liden, 1995). This phenomenon has forsome considerable time been labeled “impression management” (Goffman, 1959).

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

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Personnel Review

Vol. 41 No. 1, 2012

pp. 88-105

q Emerald Group Publishing Limited

0048-3486

DOI 10.1108/00483481211189965



Self-promotion, which is one of the impression management strategies (Harris et al.,2007), refers to underlining one’s own achievements and emphasizing one’s abilities,while at the same time downplaying one’s failures in an attempt to elicit attributions of competence (Bolino et al., 2008; Stevens and Kristof, 1995; Turnley and Bolino, 2001).

While making valid claims of competence can generally be an effective behavioralstrategy, exaggerating one’s competence can inflate and distort the information aboutbehavior or performance, which could lead management to erroneous conclusions orfaulty decision-making; for example, when it comes to selection, performanceappraisal, rewards, and career advancement (Bolino et al., 2008). It is this unwelcomeside of self-promotion that we focus on in the present study.

Self-promotion is a strategy used to create and sustain a certain image that radiateshigh abilities. The necessity felt by individuals to create such an image depends onwhat they believe about themselves (Schutz and Tice, 1997), implying thatpersonalities play a role in determining to what extent someone engages inself-promotion. Some individuals may be more motivated to self-promote than others

(Kacmar et al., 2004). A personality variable that has been linked to such motivation is“performance orientation” (Janssen and Prins, 2007; Van Yperen and Janssen, 2002).Performance orientation reflects the extent to which individuals are predisposed to thegoal of demonstrating superior competence and establishing favorable judgments fromothers about their abilities (Button et al., 1996; VandeWalle, 2001).Performance-oriented employees have an extrinsic work motivation as they focus onachieving positive evaluations of their competence by relevant others (Heintz andSteele-Johnson, 2004; Janssen and Van Yperen, 2004; VandeWalle, 2003).Self-promotion might be viewed as a success strategy: to show such superiority andto ensure that others perceive one as highly competent. However, as stated above, if such perceptions are manipulated, and are consequently invalid, this may lead towrong decisions being taken. Therefore, from a managerial perspective, it becomes

important to discover contingency factors that can predict when those with a highperformance orientation are likely to demonstrate such unjustified self-promotion andwhen they are not.

Those with a high performance orientation want to outperform others and aresensitive about how others view their competence (VandeWalle, 2001). Thus, on theone hand, they are motivated to impress others but, on the other, they are motivated torefrain from overstating their abilities and performance if they think that others willnotice this, since this kind of self-promotion will result in unfavorably evaluations(Pfeffer et al., 2006). This ambivalence makes it desirable to find manageable variablesthat enhance the visibility of such self-promotional activities and, as a consequence,discourage those with a high performance orientation from exhibiting such activities.In the present study we focused on two variables, derived from goal setting (Locke andLatham, 1990), performance management (e.g. Den Hartog et al., 2004), andaccountability (Frink and Ferris, 1998) theories, that may increase the visibility ortraceability of self-promotional behavior: task clarity and personalized responsibility(e.g. Kacmar et al., 2004; Sedikides et al., 2002). In the next section, we will elaborate onthe relationship between performance orientation and self-promotion and derivehypotheses on how task clarity and personalized responsibility might shape thisrelationship. These hypotheses were tested in a sample of 281 employees from twoDutch firms.

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We aim to add to existing knowledge in several ways. First, we want to contributeto performance management theory by incorporating constructs from impressionmanagement, goal orientation, goal setting, and accountability theories. Our studyhighlights, for example, the possibility that the performance of those with high and

those with low performance orientations should be managed differently. Second, ourstudy adds to the impression management literature by focusing on a specific type of self-promotion that may negatively affect organizational performance and that has notbeen highlighted specifically in previous research. Third, we contribute to theperformance orientation literature by linking this orientation to two managerialcontextual variables, task clarity and personalized responsibility, both of which mightinfluence the behavior of those with a high performance orientation.

Theory and hypothesesImpression management is the process by which individuals attempt to influence theimage that others have of them (Rosenfeld et al., 1995). This image may pertain to, for

example, being perceived as being nice, important, or competent (Wayne and Ferris,1990). The last of these examples is focused on task-relevant attributes. Behaviorsdirected toward creating an image of being highly qualified to do a particular job arelabeled as self-promotional tactics (Higgins et al., 2003). As such, self-promotion is abehavioral strategy through which individuals want others to see them as highlycapable and competent (Bolino and Turnley, 2003). Where such claims are valid, theinfluence on organizational decision-making may have positive outcomes. If, forexample, during a job interview a candidate is able to convince the selection committeethat he or she is very well equipped to do the job, this is likely to result in a job offer. If the impression created is true, this decision will probably contribute to organizationalperformance. To give another example, if members of a work team openly signal andpromote the abilities they each possess, this may improve task assignment, increase

the proper utilization of abilities, and facilitate the coordination of team work which,overall, will contribute to a good team performance. However, if self-promotioninvolves exaggerating one’s competences this will likely result in invalid and falseperceptions by others. This may lead to wrong decisions in the field of personnelmanagement, which consequently impair firm performance.

Given that the consequences of valid and invalid claims seem to differ substantially,it is remarkable that the impression management literature fails to explicitlydifferentiate between these two types of self-promotion. Some papers describeself-promotion in terms of “using positive statement to describe oneself” (Stevens andKristof, 1995), “pointing out one’s abilities or accomplishments”(Bolino and Turnley,1999), “promoting one’s positive characteristics” (Higgins and Judge, 2004) or“persuading others of one’s abilities” (Kacmar et al., 2004), which all seem to refer topromoting abilities that one actually has. Other papers use terms like “manipulatinginformation” (Wayne and Ferris, 1990), “playing up one’s abilities” (Turnley andBolino, 2001) or “exaggerating one’s abilities” (Harris et al., 2007) which seem toemphasize the overstatement of one’s competences. Some papers use both descriptivetypes (e.g. Bolino et al., 2008) and most self-promotion scales (e.g. Bolino and Turnley,1999; Higgins and Judge, 2004; Wayne and Ferris, 1990) have items that refer torealistic self-promotion (e.g. “making your supervisor aware of youraccomplishments”) as well as items that relate to overstating one’s qualifications

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(e.g. “trying to make a positive event that you are responsible for appear better than itactually is”). Since it is primarily the overstatement of abilities that leads to incorrectdecisions that can impair organizational performance, we will focus exclusively on thistype of self-promotion.

Performance orientation is an individual-level difference variable that indicates thetype of goals that an individual is likely to prefer (Dweck and Leggett, 1988;VandeWalle, 2003). Performance-oriented persons want to show superior performanceand they want others to evaluate their performance and underlying abilities in apositive way (Button et al., 1996; Heintz and Steele-Johnson, 2004; VandeWalle, 2001).Performance-oriented individuals may try to strengthen their image by presentingthemselves as capable and skilled workers (Janssen and Prins, 2007; Van Yperen and

Janssen, 2002).As noted above, the type of self-promotional behavior that we are focusing on in this

study is generally seen as an undesirable type of behavior. Awareness that others maybecome aware of that behavior may, as a consequence, inhibit the tendency of performance oriented persons to display it. (Rosenfeld et al., 1995). If the overstating of one’s performance is revealed, others might feel manipulated and deceived and will,therefore, likely tone down their evaluations of the abilities of the actor substantially(Bolino and Turnley, 2003), which is exactly the thing those with a high performanceorientation most want to avoid. In order to identify contextual variables that candissuade performance-oriented individuals from excessive self-promotion we shouldtherefore look to variables that increase the visibility or traceability of exaggerated anddistorted performance presentation. Such variables can be found in the existingmotivational literature and, more specifically, in the goal setting and accountabilityliteratures.

From this literature, we see that a relevant goal-setting variable that mightdiscourage those with a high performance orientation from demonstrating

self-promoting behavior is task clarity. Task clarity means that there are explicitand unambiguous standards on how to conduct the task, and on the exact requiredoutcomes (Frink and Ferris, 1998). If tasks are clear then the performance expectationsare clearly set, and specific goals are effectively assigned to employees (Yun et al.,2007). The performance management literature also recommends setting clear, specific,and easily observable performance standards as an essential part of a successfulperformance management policy (e.g. Latham et al., 2005). If a task is clear,performance levels can easily be assessed and any overestimation of performanceeasily unmasked (Kacmar et al., 2004; Sedikides et al., 2002; Yun et al., 2007). Thosewith a high performance orientation are very sensitive to the opinions of others andwill have reason, therefore, to refrain from self-promotion when task clarity is highsince this will increase the visibility of overstating performances and will result in

negative evaluations of competencies. If, on the other hand, tasks are vague orambiguous, and performance assessment is, as a consequence, less straightforward, itbecomes more difficult to detect self-promotion and this will encourage those with astrong performance orientation to exaggerate their performance (Kacmar et al., 2004;Yun et al., 2007). Based on this discussion, we can hypothesize (see also Figure 1):

H1. Task clarity moderates the relationship between performance orientation andself-promotion. The higher the task clarity, the weaker the relationshipbetween performance orientation and self-promotion.


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A second variable that seems likely to influence the relationship between performanceorientation and self-promotion is accountability, or personalized responsibility. It implies

that the responsibility for a task belongs exclusively to a specific employee, rather thanbeing dispersed, shared, or undefined (Davis et al., 2007; Sedikides et al., 2002). It entailsthe ability to make causal connections between an individual’s actions and the outcomes;in other words, it ties performance to the identity of the actor (Schlenker et al., 1994).Accountable individuals are aware that they may have to justify their actions to others(Frink and Klimoski, 1998). Being personally responsible signifies that an individual hasbeen personally entrusted with a task, and this increases the traceability of thatindividual employee’s performance (Frink et al., 2008). Employees who are highlyaccountable in this way can be individually evaluated because they are personallyresponsible for specific tasks. Performance outcomes can be linked directly to individualagents and, therefore, any overestimation of one’s own performance can easily beidentified (Sedikides et al., 2002). Those with a high performance orientation are

especially sensitive to how others evaluate them and, therefore, their self-promotionalinstincts will be inhibited if they are given clear personal responsibilities. Thesearguments lead us to the following hypothesis (see also Figure 1):

H2. Personalized responsibility moderates the relationship between performanceorientation and self-promotion. The greater the personalized responsibility,the weaker will be the relationship between performance orientation andself-promotion.

One may question whether either task clarity or personalized responsibility is, in itself,sufficient to dissuade those with a strong performance orientation from demonstratingself-promotion. It is quite conceivable that it requires a combination of these twofactors to bring about this effect, or equally that the two factors do exactly the same joband thus either is sufficient, or that their effects are simply additive, or that theseeffects reinforce each other. Existing theory does not provide clues to the answer to thisquestion. However, as will be elaborated below, there are reasons to assume ahierarchical relationship between the two factors, with task clarity being the moredominant. That is, one might reasonably assume that task clarity can be effective byitself, irrespective of the level of personalized responsibility, whereas personalizedresponsibility is in itself ineffective, and even superfluous, when there are high levels of task clarity.

Figure 1.Research model

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In both of the above hypotheses, the visibility or traceability of overstating one’sperformance served as the underlying mechanism to explain why those with a highperformance orientation will demonstrate less self-promotional behavior if task clarityor personalized responsibility is high. That is, high task clarity results in highly

observable performance standards that make self-promotion likely to be detected, andthis induces those with a high performance orientation to refrain from self-promotionalactivities (Bolino and Turnley, 2003). Similarly, personalized responsibility linksperformance outcomes directly to the actor, rather than to some vague group of people,and this will unmask any self-serving attribution of performance outcomes asself-promotion and, as a consequence, discourage those with a high performanceorientation from embellishing their own achievements. What, however, will happenwhen task clarity is low but personalized responsibility is high? Here, actors still havesome latitude to overstate their performance as they can try to opportunistically markout their responsibility in such a way that poor elements of their performance getoverlooked. If, in contrast, personalized responsibility is low but task clarity high, thelatitude for performance overstatement is arguably zero as misunderstandings of whatis, and what is not, good performance are ruled out. It is these arguments that lead us tohypothesize that task clarity is sufficient in itself to make those high in performanceorientation refrain from self-promotion, whereas personalized responsibility will do sobut only to a lesser extent. If task clarity is sufficient to completely suppress thepositive relationship between performance orientation and self-promotion, this alsoimplies that task clarity can achieve the effects desired of personalized responsibility.If, on the other hand, personalized responsibility is not sufficient in itself to end therelationship between performance orientation and self-promotion, this means thatpersonalized responsibility can only partly achieve the desired effect of task clarity onthe relationship between performance orientation and self-promotion. This brings us tothe following hypothesized three-way interaction (see also Figure 1):

H3. There will be a positive relationship between performance orientation andself-promotion that will disappear if task clarity is high. This relationship willonly partly disappear if personalized responsibility is high and task clarity is low.

Method ParticipantsWe have tested our hypotheses using a sample of employees from two Dutch firms, oneactive in water management, and the other in the justice field. The first is asemi-commercial company with its main activities in water purification. The type of tasksthe employees undertake include laboratory work, issuing permits, IT support, installingwater purification systems, managerial tasks, conducting audits, and administrativetasks. The second organization is a public body, whose primary task is the collectiontraffic fines. The tasks that the respondents performed included managing contacts withbailiffs, IT tasks, commenting on enforcement orders, handling appeals, and court orders.

A survey was sent to 506 randomly-selected employees from the two organizations,of whom 281 eventually participated (response rate: 55.5 per cent). In terms of education, the respondents mostly had vocational training. Of the respondents, 65.5 percent were male and 34.5 per cent female. Their average company tenure was 11.1 years,and their average age 41.3 years. These averages were not dissimilar to thecorresponding figures for all employees in both firms.


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MeasuresSeven-point Likert-type items were used, anchored by strongly disagree (score 1) andstrongly agree (score 7). The respondents were asked to identify a particular task onwhich they spent a considerable part of their time and then answer the subsequent

questions by referring to that specific task. The three predictor variables in thehypotheses were measured as follows. First, performance orientation was measured bythree items (Cronbach’s a ¼ 0:83) based on Janssen (2002), such as “In managing thistask it is important to me that I perform better than others in my workingenvironment”. In the performance orientation literature (e.g. Janssen and Prins, 2007),two types of performance orientation are distinguished: performance-approach goalorientation (i.e. the goal of establishing superior performance evaluations) andperformance-avoidance goal orientation (avoiding negative performance evaluations).Our three items all referred to the first type, because it is this type that we considerrelevant as explained in the introduction section. Next, task clarity ( a ¼ 0:91) wasmeasured using five items (such as “The task is clear to me”) based on Emans et al.(2004), Locke and Latham (1990), and on Breaugh and Colihan (1994). Finally,personalized responsibility was measured with three items ( a ¼ 0

:60) from Emans et al.

(2004) such as “For carrying out this task I do not share responsibility with others”.The scale for the dependent variable in the hypotheses, i.e. self-promotion, had threeitems ( a ¼ 0:66) derived from the Job Focused Tactics of Wayne and Ferris (1990) suchas “In doing this task I try to make a positive event that I am responsible for appearbetter than it actually is”.

Confirmatory factor analysesSince some the Cronbach’s alphas reported above are rather low, we conductedconfirmatory factor analyses (CFA) to find further support for the validity of ourmeasures. We computed parameter estimates using the maximum likelihood methodthat is included in the LISREL 8.80 computer package. We compared three models:

(1) a model with the four intended constructs (performance orientation, task clarity,personalized responsibility, self-promotion);

(2) a model with one underlying construct; and

(3) a model with two underlying constructs, in which the three predictors weregrouped into one factor.

We used the following fit indices and acceptability criteria: Goodness of Fit Index (GFIshould be . 0:90), Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA should be, 0:08), and the Comparative Fit Index (CFI should be . 0:90).

The fit indices for the first model are: GFI ¼ 0:93, RMSEA ¼ 0:06, CFI ¼ 0:96. Forthe second model: GFI ¼ 0

:

55, RMSEA ¼ 0:

27, CFI ¼ 0:

38 and for the third model:GFI ¼ 0:57, RMSEA ¼ 0:26, CFI ¼ 0:44. These fit indices clearly show that thehypothesized model (i.e. the first model) fits our data well, while the other two modelsdo substantially less well. If we compare model 1 with model 2, D x 2 is 1471,54 (df ¼ 6, p , 0:001). If we compare model 1 and model 3, D x 2 is 1346.31 (df ¼ 5, p , 0:001).Further, for the first model, the factor loadings for each item onto their correspondingconstructs were significant at the 0.001 level, indicating that the constructs wereappropriately reflected by their indicators.

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Data analysisOur respondents came from two organizations and, therefore, our data set has a nestedstructure. The number of organizations, however, is too low for a multilevel analysisincluding random organizational effects to have any meaning (Snijders and Bosker,

1999). Instead, we controlled for the nested structure by including a dummy variablefor organization in our regression analyses (i.e. Water management ¼ 0, Justice ¼ 1).To test our hypotheses, we conducted moderated regression analyses following theprocedures recommended by Aiken and West (1991):

(1) standardize the predictors to reduce multicollinearity between these variablesand their interaction term;

(2) multiply together the two standardized predictor variables to calculate theirinteraction term;

(3) include the “main” effects in the model to prevent a biased estimate of theinteraction; and

(4) to depict a significant interaction effect, compute two regression equationsusing values of the predictors that lay ^1 SD from their means.

We tested four models to isolate the contribution of various terms. The first modeltested the effects of our control variable (i.e. the dummy variable representing thecompany). In the second model, the three main effects of performance orientation, taskclarity, and personalized responsibility were added to the regression model; followedby the inclusion of the three two-way interactions between the three predictors in thethird step. In the fourth and final step we included the three-way interaction to explorethe combined effect of our moderators.

Results

As can be deduced from the correlations shown in Table I, there is a positive correlationbetween performance orientation and self-promotion, as we indeed presupposed in ourintroductory section. Further, we see that there are negative correlations between taskclarity and self-promotion, and between task clarity and personalized responsibility.

H1 posited that task clarity moderates the relationship between performanceorientation and self-promotion. The results using Model 2, in Table II, show thesignificant main effects for performance orientation and for task clarity. The weight forperformance orientation ( b ¼ 0:22, p , 0:001) indicates that high levels of performance orientation are associated with high levels of self-promotion. Theweight for task clarity ( b ¼ 20:17, p , 0:01) indicates that the higher the task claritythe lower the level of self-promotion.

Means SD PO TC PR

Performance orientation (PO) 3.74 1.25Task clarity (TC) 5.91 0.76 0.01Personalized responsibility (PR) 3.83 1.41 0.12 20.14 *

Self-promotion (SP) 2.31 0.85 0.20 * * * 20.16 * * 0.03

Notes: * p , 0:05; * * p , 0:01; * * * p , 0:001

TablMeans and stand

deviations of the stuvariables, and th

correlati


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The significant two-way interaction between performance orientation and task clarity

( b ¼ 20:17, p , 0:01; Model 3) indicates that the main effect linking performance

orientation and self-promotion is conditional and depends on the level of task clarity

(Aiken and West, 1991). Following the procedure recommended by Aiken and West

(1991), we have depicted this interaction effect in Figure 2, which clearly shows that the

positive relationship between performance orientation and self-promotion only exists

when task clarity is low. The significant interaction effect indicates that those with a

high performance orientation demonstrate greater self-promotion than those with a low

Figure 2.The relationship betweenperformance orientationand self-promotion for lowand for high task clarity

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4Variables b b b b

Firm 0.08 0.120 0.11 0.10Performance orientation (PO) 0.22 * * * 0.22 * * * 0.27 * * *

Task clarity (TC) 20.17 * *20.19 * *

20.20 * *

Personalized responsibility (PR) 0.01 20.02 20.04PO x TC 20.17 * * 20.28 * * *

PO x PR 20.07 20.14 *

TC x PR 0.11 0.12PO x TC x PR 0.21 * *

Model F 1.93 5.94 * * * 4.97 * * * 5.48 * * *

R2 0.01 0.08 * * * 0.12 * * * 0.14 * * *

Adjusted R2 0.00 0.07 * * * 0.09 * * * 0.12 * * *

R2 Change 0.08 * * * 0.03 * 0.03 * *

Notes: * p , 0:05; * * p , 0:01; * * * p , 0:001

Table II.The interactive influenceof performanceorientation, task clarityand personalizedresponsibility on self promotion

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performance orientation when tasks are vague, but not when the tasks are clear. In otherwords, those with a high performance orientation seem to be sensitive to task clarityinsofar as it constrains their self-promotional behavior, whereas those with a lowperformance orientation seem to be unaffected by task clarity. These results support H1.

H2 argues that personalized responsibility will moderate the relationship betweenperformance orientation and self-promotion. However, Model 3 in Table II shows thatthe interaction between performance orientation and personalized responsibility is notstatistically significant ( b ¼ 20:07, ns). Therefore, we have to conclude that our datado not support H2 .

In H3 we predicted a three-way interaction. More specifically we hypothesized thatthere would be a positive relationship between performance orientation andself-promotion, but that this would disappear if task clarity was high. The proposedrelationship, on the other hand, would diminish, but only to a limited extent, if personalized responsibility is high and task clarity low. Model 4, in Table II, shows thatthe three-way interaction between performance orientation, task clarity, and personalizedresponsibility is statistically significant ( b ¼ 0:21, p , 0:01). Moreover, when thethree-way interaction term is included in the regression analysis, the two-way interactionbetween performance orientation and personalized responsibility, as hypothesized in H2 ,becomes significant ( b ¼ 20:14, p , 0:05). The significant three-way interactionindicates that the two-way interaction between performance orientation and personalizedresponsibility is conditional, and depends on the level of perceived task clarity. Thethree-way interaction is depicted in Figures 3a and 3b. These figures clearly show that theinteraction effect between performance orientation and personalized responsibility onlyexists when task clarity is low (comparing Figures 3a and 3b). If task clarity is low, thereis a positive relationship between performance orientation and self-promotion, and thisrelationship is stronger for low levels of personalized responsibility (compare the dottedand solid lines in Figure 3a). When task clarity is low, a high personalized responsibility

weakens the relationship between performance orientation and self-promotion, althoughthis relationship is still positive (the solid line in Figure 3a). If task clarity is high, there isno relationship between performance orientation and self-promotion, irrespective of whether the level of personalized responsibility is high or low (in Figure 3b, both lines arehorizontal). These results support H3.

Discussion and conclusionsOur study has illuminated the role of task clarity and personalized responsibility in therelationship between performance orientation and self-promotion. We hypothesized andfound that task clarity moderates the relationship between performance orientation andself-promotion. When task clarity was low, we found a positive relationship betweenperformance orientation and self-promotion, whereas there was no such relationshipwhen task clarity was high. We found no support for our second hypothesis, thatpersonalized responsibility would moderate the relationship between performanceorientation and self-promotion, but we did find a significant three-way interaction thatimplied that the hypothesized two-way interaction between performance orientation andpersonalized responsibility was conditional, and existed only when task clarity was low(Figure 3a). Our study shows that task clarity and personalized responsibility are bothimportant situational factors that can, depending on their level, motivate or discouragethose with a high performance orientation to practice self-promotion. More specifically,


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our results indicate that task clarity seems to lower the level of self-promotion amongthose with a high performance orientation to the level found among those with a lowperformance orientation (Figure 2). Further, personalized responsibility also seems toreduce the level of self-promotion among employees with a high performance orientationif task clarity is low, but not to the level found among those with a low performance

orientation (Figure 3a). Below, we highlight the conclusions that can be drawn from thisstudy. Following this, we will discuss some limitations of the study and suggest somedirections for future research. We will conclude by summarizing the theoreticalcontribution and the practical implications of our study.

ConclusionsThe first general conclusion is that one’s performance orientation is an importantantecedent of self-promotional tendencies. People with a high performance orientation

Figure 3.The relationship betweenperformance orientationand self-promotion for lowand high levels of personalizedresponsibility when taskclarity is (a) low and(b) high

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are more concerned with what others think of their performance and abilities thanthose with a low performance orientation. As such, they will try to impress others byoverestimating their successes, and by camouflaging their failures.

The second conclusion that can be drawn is that this is much easier if tasks are

vague or ambiguous. If tasks are vague, it is less likely that relevant others will spotsuch self-promotional behavior and, therefore, these others will tend to develop morefavorable attitudes towards self-promoters. That is, if tasks are vague, demonstratingself-promotion is less risky and will more likely be successful in the sense that it willresult in positive attitudes toward the performer from bystanders who believe, whetherit is true or not, that the actor is demonstrating high capability and competence (Bolinoand Turnley, 2003). If tasks are clear, however, it is likely that others will see throughsuch behaviors. High task clarity brings objectivity and visible performance standardsthat are difficult to ignore or to overlook. As already discussed, people with a highperformance orientation are more susceptible to how others evaluate their performanceand their related abilities (VandeWalle, 2001). Since self-promotion in the sense of

overstating one’s performance will generally result in negative evaluations of competencies, task clarity will strongly inhibit self-promotion among those with a highperformance orientation (Bolino and Turnley, 2003; Pfeffer et al., 2006).

These results are also in line with the work of Tett and Burnett (2003) who argue that,if situations are “strong”, the predictive value of personality traits such as performanceorientation will be reduced. Finding oneself in a burning building is an example theygive for an extremely strong situation. Most people will respond to such a situation in asimilar way, independent of their personality. Another example they give is if one isgiven the choice of turning up to work on time or being fired, most people will respondsimilarly. In our study, if tasks are clear and highly standardized then the freedom to actis reduced. In this sense, a clear task directs behavior much more strongly than a vaguetask. In the terms of Tett and Burnett, we can say that a clear task creates a strong

situation in which the predictive power of performance orientation is reduced (and inwhich all people will respond in more-or-less similar ways).

In many situations, however, such as when tasks are non-routine or cannot easily bestandardized, it will be impossible to enhance task clarity. In such situations, makingthose with a high performance orientation personally accountable for the task can help topartially inhibit self-promotion (Sedikides et al., 2002). Only partially because, whileperformance outcomes may easily be linked to the actor, if, at the same time, the tasks arevague it may still be difficult to diagnose to what extent this performance is exaggeratedby those with a high personalized responsibility. In such situations, the traceability of performance is high, but the visibility of self-promotion may remain rather low. On thisbasis, our third conclusion is that, if it is not possible to increase task clarity, it might bewise to explicitly make actors personally accountable for their tasks.

Combining our findings, we can conclude that those with a low performanceorientation lack a strong desire to self-promote and, therefore, task clarity andpersonalized responsibility will not affect their low level of self-promotional behavior.Those with a high performance orientation are, in contrast, inherently motivated topromote themselves, but this motivation seems to be able to be inhibited to themotivational level shown by those with a low performance orientation by clearlydescribing tasks, because this makes self-promotional behavior more visible. If it is notpossible to clarify tasks, self-promotion among those with a high performance


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orientation can still be reduced by making them personally responsible for their work,but not to the level of those with a low performance orientation. In other words, taskclarity can create the same effect as personalized responsibility, but creatingpersonalized responsibility will add nothing if tasks are already clear (see Figure 3b).

Personalized responsibility, in turn, seems only to partially replicate the effectspossible through task clarity if task clarity remains low (Figure 3a).

Weaknesses and possible directions for future researchA weakness of this study is the method employed; a cross-sectional design with onlyone data source and only one data collection method. It would, however, be difficult toattribute the significant two-way and three-way interactions that we found to commonmethod bias (Evans, 1985). Nevertheless, we would certainly recommend that futureresearch employs a stronger design, such as a longitudinal design, and, if possible, usesmultiple data collection methods and data sources such as peer ratings.

A related weakness might be that the use of self-reporting measures may artificially

increase covariation among the variables (i.e. percept-percept inflation; Crampton andWagner, 1994). However, in measuring performance orientation, it seems logical to askemployees to assess such a disposition themselves. For task clarity and personalizedresponsibility, we similarly think that it is important to measure the workers’perceptions because it is the perception of these attributes that influences the actors. Itmight seem reasonable to ask bystanders to rate the self-promotional behaviors of other actors but, as we have argued, self-promotion will often remain masked and,therefore, one also needs to base this variable on the responses of the employeesthemselves. Nevertheless, when using self-reporting measures it is a good idea tocontrol for participants’ propensities to give socially-desirable responses. This willespecially be the case if one collects information about behaviors that are viewednegatively, such as certain self-promotional activities.

In the current study, we only controlled for the company in which the participantswere employed. There are, however, a number of other variables used in impressionmanagement research that might offer alternative explanations for our findings.Consider, for example, personality characteristics other than performance orientationthat are known to influence the use of self-promotion tactics, such as need forachievement (Heintz and Steele-Johnson, 2004), self-esteem (Schutz and Tice, 1997), andneed for power (Kacmar et al., 2004), or situational factors that are related toself-promotion such as leader-member exchange (Kacmar et al., 2004). Including suchcontrol variables in future research is likely to increase confidence in our findings.

Another concern with our study is the low internal reliabilities of the personalizedresponsibility and the self-promotion scales. A confirmatory factor analysis did,however, indicate that the items appropriately reflected the constructs. Further, theaverage correlations between the items making up these two scales were 0.33 and 0.39respectively, which are considered acceptable levels for items belonging to the samescale (Nunnally, 1967). Nevertheless, it might be wise to expand the scales withadditional items to achieve higher Cronbach’s alphas. In general, reliable measuresmake it easier to detect consistent effects.

Our study shows that task clarity and personalized responsibility do reduceself-promotion among those with a high performance orientation. The discussionabove on relevant control variables suggests that other variables, apart from those we

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considered, may also affect self-promotion among performance-oriented employeesand should be included in future research. One can think, for example, of other taskcharacteristics or other characteristics of the social context. Task autonomy, forexample, is supposed to strengthen feelings of experienced responsibility (Hackman

and Oldham, 1976) that might decrease the inclination to self-promote. Taskinterdependence is another work design feature that might affect self-promotion. If task interdependence is high, each employee needs input from other team members interms of materials or information to fulfill their own task successfully (Van der Vegtet al., 1999). Thus, if task interdependence is high, employees can relatively easily keepan eye on other employees so that self-promotion behavior is more easily spotted. Thisis likely to reduce self-promotion among performance-oriented employees.

Variables related to the social context that might influence self-promotion includereceived feedback from others and the power of relevant others. When presented withfeedback, employees learn about the correctness and adequacy of their behavior (Ashford,1986), and feedback is also known to correct undesirable behavior (Ashford andNorthcraft, 1992). Performance-oriented employees who as a result of feedbackunderstand that others are evaluating their actual performance may be expected toself-promote less. The presence of a powerful audience, on the other hand, is likely to boostself-promotional tendencies (Rosenfeld et al., 1995). For example, performance evaluationsby immediate supervisors may prompt employees to increase their self-promotion. Suchvariables could meaningfully be included in future studies seeking variables thatmoderate the relationship between performance orientation and self-promotion.

Theoretical and practical implicationsThe theoretical contributions of this study can be considered from three perspectivesthat relate to the respective implications it has for performance management models,for impression management theory, and for goal orientation theory. Each of these

perspectives will be elaborated below.The study contributes to performance management literature by linking concepts

from impression management, goal orientation, goal setting, and accountability theory toperformance management. A strong emphasis on high performance may drive certainemployees to try to impress others through self-promotion. If, because of this, othersacquire unjustified positive attitudes toward such actors this might result in incorrectdecisions with respect to, for example, recruitment, wage levels, promotions, and careers.This study has highlighted some variables that could be relevant to theories concerningperformance management. It shows, for example, how task clarity and makingemployees personally responsible for tasks will increase the visibility and traceability of them overstating performance, which in turn will discourage the demonstration of self-promotion. Our results also indicate that the way performance has to be manageddepends on the performance orientation of the employees concerned.

Our study contributes to the impression management literature by focusing on onespecific type of self-promotional behavior that we see as the most likely to result inincorrect decisions with respect to personnel management. That is, we focused onself-promotion in terms of overstating one’s performance, which can lead to overlypositive evaluations. As we argued in the introduction section, self-promotion thataims at positive but valid evaluations can contribute to organizational performance.Past research, however, has shown that if, in a work setting, modesty is the norm then


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valid claims may still be disliked, because they are perceived as boastful and conceited(Bolino and Turnley, 1999; Turnley and Bolino, 2001). This might dissuade employeesfrom emphasizing the positive self. However, the goal orientation literature shows thatthose with a high performance orientation are more interested in positive evaluations

of their performance than on creating positive affective images, such as being liked( Janssen and Van Yperen, 2004; Pfeffer et al., 2006). This suggests that such employeeswill not be discouraged from honestly promoting themselves even if this might beagainst the existing norms. Nevertheless, it might be useful to extend research on therelationship between goal orientation and impression management to include this typeof self-promoting behavior.

The study contributes to the theory on goal orientation by showing that people witha high performance orientation are more prone to self-promotion than those with a lowperformance orientation. The former are especially inclined to demonstrateself-promotion if tasks are vague whereas they are more reluctant to show suchbehavior if tasks are clear or if they are made personally responsible for their tasks.Th is s tud y p rovide s ev ide nc e th at t he se lf -promotion al b eh avior of performance-oriented individuals is conditional on the level of goal-setting andaccountability factors. It also indicates that the presence of goal-setting andaccountability factors strongly affects those with a high performance orientation,whereas it influences those with a low performance orientation much less.

In addition to the theoretical contributions, the study also offers a number of insights that are especially relevant for managerial practices. From a practitioner’spoint of view, our findings give insights into how self-promoting behavior byemployees might be managed, or discouraged, and what levels of such behavior can beexpected based on an employee’s performance orientation, the clarity of tasks, andpersonalized responsibility. First, those with a low performance orientation are hardlymotivated to promote themselves and, therefore, managerial interventions are not

required. Second, if one wants to deter the self-promoting behavior of performance-oriented employees, their tasks should, where possible, be madeapparent by setting clear standards. Third, if it is not possible to make taskstransparent, which can be the case if tasks are highly non-routine as is found in someprofessional occupations (Molleman and Timmerman, 2003), it is wise to makeemployees personally responsible for the tasks they undertake. We would add that, if itis possible to establish task clarity, then it is unnecessary, and possibly evendetrimental, to emphasize personal responsibility. This is because managerialinterventions such as increasing task clarity and personalized responsibility may beviewed by workers as having been undertaken to strengthen the monitoring of employees or to reduce their task autonomy, both of which might reduce intrinsicmotivation or lead to resistance (Ashforth, 1989; Frink et al., 2008; Hackman and

Oldham, 1976). Therefore, if the tasks of those with a high performance orientation canbe made clear it is probably better not to also increase accountability since this will notlead to a further reduction in self-promotional tendencies and may have undesirableside effects such as resistance or lowered motivation.

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Corresponding authorEric Molleman can be contacted at: [email protected]


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