Two Faces of Impression Management: The Contradictory Impacts of Impression-Management Tactics

We explore the negative interpersonal implications of impression-management and the moderating role of impression-management motives (IMM). To this end, we argue that impression management is positively related to leader-member exchange, resulting in better performance evaluations, and to coworkers’ contempt, leading to more social undermining. We also propose that IMM mitigates the positive association between impression-management tactics and leader-member exchange, which strengthens the impact of impression-management tactics on coworkers’ contempt. Specifically, we hypothesize two effects of impression-management tactics and IMM—a beneficial impact on performance evaluations through leader-member exchange and a detrimental impact on social undermining through coworkers’ contempt—and suggest a boundary condition that may change the associations among the variables. We test our hypotheses in a study of 116 employees on 29 teams in organizations active in manufacturing, publishing, service, and finance in South Korea. The results support our overarching theory.