Impression Management in the Organization

Robert A. Giacalone, Paul Rosenfeld, Robert A. Giacalone, Paul Rosenfeld

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134734931
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Verwaltung

Impression management theory has been popular in sociology and social psychology for many years. This volume offers the first comprehensive application of impression management theory to organizational settings. Researchers and practitioners in organizational settings have recently been using this theory as an explanatory model to focus on the roles and identities that "social actors" utilize in interpersonal situations. The theory of impression management provides a framework for the techniques and strategies people use in order to look good as well as the excuses and justifications they employ to avoid looking bad.

PART I:
PERSPECTIVES ON IMPRESSION
MANAGEMENT IN
ORGANIZATIONS

Section A: The Social
Psychological Perspective

1	SELF-MONITORING PROCESSES IN ORGANIZATIONAL SETTINGS

MARK SNYDER
JOHN COPELAND

University of Minnesota

Organizational settings provide the backdrop for observing a myriad of strategic self-presentational activities. For example, many people try to portray images of themselves during interviews that they believe will help them secure job offers. Often, they continue their impression management while on the job in hopes of increasing their chances for promotion. Organizations themselves may engage in impression management to attract the best possible employees. Through advertisements and other media of communication, including recruiting programs at colleges and universities, organizations may try to portray themselves as enjoyable and profitable places in which to work. These are but a few of the many possible scenarios in which individuals and organizations may employ impression management in pursuit of their goals.

A greater understanding of the strategic dynamics involved in impression management in organizational contexts may be gained by a consideration of individuals’ characteristic self-monitoring orientations. Self-monitoring, as a psychological construct, refers to the observation and control of expressive and self-presentational behaviors (Snyder, 1974, 1979). Assessment of individuals’ self-monitoring propensities is obtained through the use of a 25-item, true-false, self-administered questionnaire consisting of such items as “I would probably make a good actor,” and, “In different situations and with different people, I often act like very different persons,” (although, for alternative perspectives on self-monitoring and its measurement, see Briggs & Cheek, 1988 and Lennox & Wolfe, 1984). People who are high in self-monitoring typically are vigilant to situational cues that guide them in the presentation of what they believe to be appropriate behaviors across a wide variety of situations, even if these behaviors are not wholly consistent with their inner dispositions. Conversely, people low in self-monitoring characteristically display behaviors that are congruent with their inner feelings and beliefs, often risking the possible social impropriety of doing so (for a review, see Snyder, 1987). By viewing the various interactions that occur in organizational settings from the vantage point of the different self-monitoring types, we may better understand the strategies and consequences of employees’ and employers’ behaviors.

In this chapter, we attempt to highlight various stages and settings in the organizational environment in which the different self-monitoring styles may lead to different outcomes. First, we examine how self-monitoring orientations affect an individual’s process of choosing an occupation and an employer, and how organizations might systematically use this information to recruit potential employees. Next, we investigate the role of self-monitoring in personnel selection interviews. We then turn to the implications of self-monitoring for job performance and job promotion. We conclude with a look at how self-monitoring may affect the manner in which people end jobs and leave organizations. Throughout the course of the chapter, we examine research relevant to the role of self-monitoring in organizations. We should note, however, that although some of these areas have received a good deal of empirical attention, much work remains to be done to fully understand how the self-monitoring orientations contribute to organizational events, processes, and outcomes.

CHOOSING A JOB

Let us begin our examination of organizational processes with the potential employee who is deciding what type of job to seek. This vocational choice, to an extent, involves an effort on the part of job seekers to fit their personality to the job they select (Super, Starishevsky, Matlin, & Jordan, 1963). In trying to fit their personality to an occupation, would-be applicants must decide on the type of company in which to work, the type of position for which to apply, and the potential benefits desired from the array of possible employers. Self-monitoring may be implicated in these decisions.

High self-monitors, who place a great emphasis on understanding the dynamics of the social environment around them, may go to great lengths in searching for a job to assess the occupational environments and work settings provided by their potential employers. In fact, Latham (1985) found significant associations between self-monitoring style and job search preparation. Specifically, he noted in his study that high self-monitoring job seekers engaged in a greater amount of preparation, including researching the organizations for whom they wanted to work and analyzing their own interests and abilities, than did the low self-monitoring job seekers. High self-monitors also used social networks of friends and acquaintances in finding employment leads, whereas low self-monitors tended to work through more formal channels, such as employment agencies.

Self-monitoring propensities also are involved in the processes by which job applicants seek and find definition and structure in occupational roles. In one study, Snyder and Gangestad (1982) discovered that high self-monitors preferred jobs whose roles and responsibilities were clearly defined and specified; low self-monitors in this study preferred occupational roles that happened to coincide with their own personalities. For these reasons, high self-monitors may be more willing to mold and shape themselves to clearly defined occupational roles, whereas low self-monitors may seek occupations that allow them to “be themselves” on the job. For example, low self-monitors who consider themselves to be warm, compassionate, and sympathetic may choose social service or “helping” occupations, whereas more aggressive and assertive low self-monitors who place a comparatively greater value on material possessions may choose careers in business, law, real estate, or other entrepreneurial professions. High self-monitors, on the other hand, may choose occupations and professions with much more clearly defined roles, roles that may allow them to exercise their self-presentational and expressive skills. Occupations in the fields of theater, public relations, law, politics, and sales may be particularly appealing to such high self-monitoring types.

What implications do these findings hold for organizational recruiters? In terms of spreading the word about occupational openings, it might help organizations to recruit not only in the more formal settings such as college campus interviews and through classified advertisements, but also through the networks of their current employees. This advice is particularly relevant in the case of recruiting for positions calling for the attributes of the high self-monitor, as Latham’s research suggests, because these types tend to use their friends as sources of employment leads. Moreover, the more that recruitets can specify the ideal personality called for by the job, the better this information can be used both by the high and low self-monitors. High self-monitors can size up whether they are able to play the role called for by the job, and low self-monitors can assess whether the personality of the job is congruent with their own.

As important as information about potential employers and occupations may be, so too is the extent of job applicants’ self-knowledge, including knowledge of vocational abilities and interests. Such self-knowledge has been implicated in the clarification, specification, and implementation of career plans (Crites, 1981; Super, 1984). Super and his colleagues analyzed this aspect of career development with the construct of vocational maturity (Super, Thompson, Lindeman, Jordaan, & Myers, 1981; Thompson, Lindeman, Super, Jordaan, & Myers, 1981, 1984). Generally speaking, vocational maturity refers to the extent to which persons are ready and able to cope with the specific vocational tasks associated with their stage in life (Super, 1984; Thompson et al., 1981). During the job-seeking or exploratory stage, these tasks consist of career planning, career exploration, and the acquisition of specific cognitively based skills and information, including relevant self-knowledge of personal attributes, interests, and attitudes.

Vocational maturity, as it happens, is associated with self-monitoring style. In his research, Blustein (1987) assessed vocational maturity of college students with the Career Development Inventory (Super et al., 1981; Thompson et al., 1981, 1984). This inventory consists of five subscales that can be combined into two composite scores: career development attitudes, and career development knowledge and skills (for relevant psychometric information, see Super, 1984; Thompson et al., 1984). Blustein found that low self-monitors displayed significantly greater vocational maturity than high self-monitors. Specifically, he found that scores on both composites were higher for low self-monitors than for high self-monitors, indicating greater career knowledge and career decision-making skills in the low self-monitors. As Blustein (1987) noted, if it is important for people to have clear, stable, and specific perceptions of those personal attributes, traits, and characteristics relevant to particular vocational occupations, then low self-monitors should meet with success in this aspect of their career development.

INTERVIEWS

Following an applicant’s decision about where to apply, and an organization’s decision to consider the applicant, the personal interview often occurs as the next step in the employment process. As Rambo (1982) noted, interviews may be thought of as social situations in which “information is exchanged between applicant and employer” (p. 46). As social situations, interviews may engage self-monitoring strategies; the perceptions and behaviors of applicants and interviewers may reflect their respective self-monitoring propensities.

With respect to the job applicant, although some research has investigated the effects of various impression management concerns during an interview (Baron, 1986, von Baeyer, Sherk, & Zanna, 1981), we could find very little research focusing specifically on the effects of self-monitoring style on interview behavior. This comes as somewhat of a surprise because it is not difficult to generate hypotheses based on self-monitoring theory and research. High self-monitors, with their greater sensitivity and responsiveness to cues in the social environment, may go out of their way to present themselves to the interviewer as the type of person they think the interviewer is seeking. They may be overly acquiescent during the interview, not wanting to disagree with the interviewer for fear of not being offered the job. For example, in a managerial interview, the interviewer may probe an applicant as to what type of management style the applicant would advocate in a given occupational setting, listing possible choices, and requesting a response and an explanation from the applicant. Here, a high self-monitoring applicant may be paying particularly close attention to the interviewer for cues to the particular responses the interviewer expects to hear. High self-monitoring applicants may then manifest those responses to increase the probability of being offered the job, even if those responses and behaviors are not congruent with their own beliefs, feelings, and dispositions.

Low self-monitors, on the other hand, may strive to present images of themselves that are consistent with their own personalities, regardless of whether or not those self-presentations would be beneficial or detrimental to being offered the job. Low self-monitors may be particularly motivated to provide accurate presentations of themselves and engage in the kinds of self-disclosure that ensure they will not be offered positions that call on them to behave in ways that contradict their personalities and conceptions of themselves. For these reasons, we expect that low self-monitoring applicants would perform better in interviews for occupations more in line with their inner beliefs, attitudes, and dispositions than for jobs lacking such a congruence.

Although little, if any, research exists on the self-monitoring styles of applicants in interview settings, comparatively more attention has been paid to the role of self-monitoring in the behavior of interviewers in personnel selection tasks (Smith & Davidson, 1983; Snyder, Berscheid, & Matwychuk, 1988). To determine the criteria interviewers use to choose among job candidates, researchers have systematically varied information about applicants to see what kinds of information are most influential in hiring decisions. In one of these experiments, college students evaluated the personnel folders of two job candidates for the same job (Snyder, Berscheid, & Matwychuk, 1988). For some of the evaluators, the job under consideration was that of a sales-clerk; for others, it was a camp counselor. Each of the folders contained information regarding the personality and temperament of the applicants. This information was manipulated to make the applicant appear either relatively well-suited or less well-suited for the job under consideration, based on job descriptions the student-evaluators had read. Along with this information, each folder contained a photograph portraying the applicant with an appearance either relatively appropriate or relatively inappropriate for the particular job.

Having been given this information, the evaluators then decided which applicant should receive the job offer. The self-monitoring style of the evaluators was found to have a strong impact on the hiring decisions. High self-monitors chose applicants whose appearance seemed appropriate for the particular job, regardless of personality and temperamental characteristics; low self-monitors chose applicants whose personality and temperament seemed appropriate for the job, displaying relatively little concern for appearance. For example, high self-monitors wanted to offer salesclerk positions in a sophisticated women’s clothing store to the applicant who appeared to be attractive, well-dressed, and concerned with her own appearance, even though she was rather unsociable and lacked organizational ability. That is, they were particularly likely to select the applicant who looked the part for the job. Low self-monitors, instead, were more inclined to offer the job to the applicant who was the part for the job by virtue of job-linked inner dispositions. They preferred, for example, to give the camp counselor job to the ...