Impression Management

7 Key excerpts on "Impression Management"

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  Impression Management in the Workplace

  Research, Theory and Practice

  • Andrew J. DuBrin(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 10 Impression Management by Organizations

  Organizations, as well as individuals, often take deliberate steps to create a positive impression, such as a company that makes a sports drink emphasizing how much it cares about the health and competitiveness of its customers. In this chapter we focus on how organizations engage in Impression Management. The topic is quite important because if an organization does not create a positive impression, it could be at a competitive disadvantage. Also, understanding how organizations engage in self-presentation could help you manage your own image, such as working hard to develop a positive reputation.

  If an organization can truly manage its impression, the organization must have a nervous system along with cognitive skills and a personality. In reality, Impression Management by an organization is the collective work of people, including managers and professional-level workers, as well as outside public relations and communication specialists. Customers and clients also contribute to the impression an organization makes. For example, some malls have a difficult time attracting visitors because they have developed the reputation as a gathering place for many hostile and aggressive people with criminal tendencies.

  Our approach to understanding Impression Management at the organizational level centers on three related topics: corporate image and reputation; placing a positive spin on negatively toned events; and corporate social responsibility and Impression Management. Figure 10-1 provides an overview of these relationships. For example, if an organization is socially responsible it will tend to have a positive image and reputation.

  Corporate Image and Reputation

  Organizations are frequently judged by the image they project, or their reputation. Corporate image, or reputation, is now a business firm, its activities, and its products or services are perceived by outsiders.1

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  Political and Civic Leadership

  A Reference Handbook

  • Richard A. Couto(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  . . . Impression Management is con-cerned not only with what is said but also not said. In other words, Impression Management refers to what conclusions people draw from appearances and actions (partially nonver-bal) and also what controls are placed upon the inward and outward flow of information. (Hall, 2009, p. 366) Impression Management Tools Hall (2009) has argued that an impression manager has two tools with to influence “the definition of the situation” (p. 366) for others: information flow control and a variety of symbolic devices that ultimately serve to either success-fully impression manage the situation or will ultimately backfire, failing not only to present the desired public 94. Impression Management – • – 839 persona but also mismanaging the preferred definition of the situation. Information Control: Controlling the Executive Branch Clearly, a president has a fundamental interest in Impression Management, in advocating realities, in staging his or her own dramas, and in getting the preferred defini-tion of the political situation out to the people in the form that he or she desires. The last four presidents gave about 550 speeches each year they were in office, which serves as additional evidence of their intent on “controlling the definition of the situation,” as well as the flow of informa-tion out of the White House (Zernicke, 1994). Within the White House, several crucial positions or offices devote their time to controlling information and craft-ing political messages. Although not established until 1969, the office of White House communications takes on the long range planning for the president, the dissemination of the “line-of-the-day” to officials throughout the executive branch, and the circumvention of the White House press corps through the orchestration of direct appeals to the people (appeals that are often carefully targeted to particular con-stituencies in specific media markets).

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  Demystifying Chinese Management

  Issues and Challenges

  • Malcolm Warner, Chris Rowley(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  More recent research in this area has continued to have diverse focuses. For example, investigation into the presentation of financial figures has been a popular topic in this area. Beattie and Jones (1999) concentrated on the Australian business context when they measured the extent of graph distortion in the annual reports of the top 100 listed Australian companies by market capitalization. Later Beattie and Jones (2000) conducted a longitudinal study in which they examined changes in graphical presentation of British companies across 1988-1992. Studies into the use of photographs constitute another current focus for Impression Management research. Photos inserted in corporate annual reports portraying company characteristics do appear to influence investors in their perceptions towards the company concerned. For example, Bernardi, Bean, and Weippart (2002) found that the existence of female board members is related to whether there is a photograph in the chair's statement, and what the photograph depicts. Cho, Michelon, and Patten (2012) have investigated the use of graphs in a US firm's sustainability reports; considerable evidence of selectivity bias to present a more favourable view of their social and environmental performances was found, and therefore the authors concluded that corporate sustainability reporting appeared to be more of a public relation management tool than a meaningful accounting of the social and environmental impacts of the firm.

  According to Merkl-Davies and Brennan (2007), the study of Impression Management can be divided into two categories: the preparer's perspective and the consumer's perspective. Impression Management research that takes a preparer's perspective, suggesting analysis from the point of view of report preparers, uses a wide variety of content analysis strategies. These studies highlight whether the information disclosed by companies is consistent with their financial performance. If inconsistency is present, the information preparers are viewed as using the narrative statements to distort the decisions of report consumers, that is Impression Management.

  There are two types of behaviour that classify conscious Impression Management activities: concealment and attribution (Merkl-Davies and Brennan 2007). Concealment is achieved by either obfuscating bad news or emphasizing good news. It is noteworthy that this strategy can be applied not only to disclosure narratives but also to graphical presentations (Beattie and Jones 1992). Attribution can also take two forms: diverting the fault for negative outcomes from report preparers (usually managers) and claiming credit for positive accomplishments.

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  The Essentials of Job Negotiations

  Proven Strategies for Getting What You Want

  • Terri R. Kurtzberg, Charles E. Naquin(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  TWO Impression Management: Working the Interview What others think of you is important. The impression that you make during the interview phase can lay the groundwork for a smooth negotiation process to follow, since a positive impression can lead to an employer’s increased willingness to be flexible in the negotiation. In this chapter, we focus upon the ins and outs of successful Impression Management during the interview process (what works and what doesn’t). Interviews have been described as a crystal ball aiming to show who would be the winners or losers for a particular job opening. 1 But interviews are not just about finding the right person to do the tasks associated with a job; they are also about judging your personality, potential camaraderie, integrity, and compatibility. That’s the general list. More specifically, inter- viewers may also be judging—consciously or unconsciously—whether or not you are the type of person who is any of the following: dependable, fas- tidious, one with a high intellectual capacity, defensive, thin-skinned, sub- missive, considerate, one who needs constant reassurance, condescending, warm, willing to face adversity, irritable, etc. 2 In other words, a large part of the interviewer’s task is to decide what you are like as a person, not just whether or not you can do the job. This, as you can imagine, is a tough assignment, since getting to know what people are really like based on a first impression is nearly impossible to get right. How many of the people whom you later came to respect did you instantly value? A first impression is essentially what an interview creates, so to success- fully navigate the interview, you would be wise to manage the impression that you make. Impression Management may not sound like a noble strategy, but it is a tactic actively pursued by savvy job negotiators.

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  Impression Management and Information Technology

  • Jon W. Beard(Author)
  • 1996(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  5 USING Impression Management TO ESTABLISH SUCCESSFUL SERVICE-LEVEL AGREEMENTS Jane M. Carey Afsaneh Nahavandi The introduction of Impression Management and self-presentation into organizational research is a relatively new phenomenon. However, in spite of the recency of the application of the concepts, Impression Management has proved to be a highly powerful and useful tool to explain and predict a variety of events from gender and cultural differences (e.g., Bond, 1991; Larwood, 1991) to performance management (Eden, 1988, 1990). When defined as the "process by which individuals attempt to control the impression others form of them" (Leary & Kowalski, 1990, p. 34), Impression Management has application not only to interpersonal relations and interaction but also to interaction among teams and departments within organizations. This chapter discusses the use of Impression Management in the negotiation and implementation of successful service-level agreements between information systems departments and their "clients" within an organization. Service-level agreements are defined and their use in a quality-focused environment is emphasized. INFORMATION SYSTEMS DEPARTMENTS AND NEGATIVE IMAGE Information systems (IS) departments in a majority of organizations have relatively negative impressions (Singleton, McLean, & Altman, 1988). There are many reasons for this condition, including historical power struggles between users and IS departments, historical power abuse of IS departments when their expertise was unavailable from other sources, perceived lack of responsiveness, lack of attention to usability issues, lack of adequate outward positive communication, lack of understanding of service role that IS should play, and inability of IS departments to manage client expectations.

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  Impression Management in the Organization

  • Robert A. Giacalone, Paul Rosenfeld(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  Impression Management can also be a burdensome activity. The rewards accruing to impression managers are predicated on the acceptance of communicated identity by the audience. If the audience receives the impression as insincere or in a way that is contrary to an actor’s self-identity, it can be burdensome indeed. Yet, there again is a more subtle burden that impression managers may have to bear-isolation (Riesman, Glazer, & Denney, 1953). As Goffman (1959) notes, an act of Impression Management has a better chance of “coming off well” when the audience is not too large and when the interaction is of short duration and coupled with little self-disclosure. Accordingly, individuals who impression manage find themselves socially detached from their audience. Moreover, if their created impression differs from their self-concept, they will need to escape their audience to act out their selves. Perhaps this explains why some top business executives may experience profound social isolation and find the need to escape to executive retreats and members-only cloisters. A final burden of Impression Management to the actor is the possibility of losing one’s sense of self entirely. Goffman (1959) raises the possibility that self-presentations may create sufficient incongruities with the self-concept so that the self becomes the impression. This phenomenon has been demonstrated in a prison simulation by Zimbardo (1973) and in the experience of John Dean in the Nixon White House (1976).

  Potential Benefits and Burdens Imposed on those Effectedby the Managed Impression

  Impressions may reflect positively or negatively on third parties. For example, a student who declares that he studied very little for an examination on which he received a high grade demeans his colleagues who studied more and received a lower grade. In contrast, the successful young executive who identifies a person as having contributed to her success during an “entitling” (Tedeschi & Reiss, 1981) statement allows her mentor the benefits of “basking in reflected glory” (Richardson & Cialdini, 1981).

  But of all the Impression Management acts that affects third parties, the one that has the most profound impact on justice is “labeling” (Mead, 1934). Although positive labels (e.g., “John is intelligent”) can be beneficial to third parties, the evidence is clearer that those pinned with a deviant label carry a very heavy burden. In fact, there is some evidence that individuals so labeled actually lead to a label-fulfilling prophecy for that individual (Mead, 1934).

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  Impression Management Theory and Social Psychological Research

  • James T. Tedeschi(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  Clearly we need much more penetrating analysis and broader em-pirical research addressed to the goals of Impression Management as well as to how various classes of self-presentational tactics interact in produc-ing final impressions. In this chapter I have tried to argue that the issues of Impression Management ought to be approached from a person perception perspec-tive, that the problems are much more extensive than perceived credibil-ity, and that therefore actors do more than use a version of attribution analysis. Surely it is time to treat the ''impression of impression manage-ment seriously and consider a fuller range of person perception processes. References Anderson, N. H. Cognitive algebra: Integration theory applied to social attribution. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in expérimenta] social psychology (vol. 7). New York: Aca-demic Press, 1974. 40 David J. Schneider Baumeister, R. F., Cooper, J., & Skib, B. A. Inferior performance as a selective response to ex-pectancy: Taking a dive to make a point. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1979, 37, 424-432. Braver, S. L., Linder, D. E., Corwin, T., & Cialdini, R. B. Some conditions that affect admis-sions of attitude change. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1977, 13, 565-576. Cialdini, R. B., Borden, R. J., Thorne, A., Walker, M. R., Freeman, S., & Sloan, L. R. Basking in reflected glory: Three (football) field studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1976, 34, 366-374. Gaes, G. G., Kalle, R. J., & Tedeschi, J. T. Impression Management in the forced compliance situation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1978, 14, 493-510. Gaes, G. G., & Tedeschi, J. T. An evaluation of self-esteem and Impression Management theories of anticipatory belief change. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1978, 14, 579-587. Goffman, E. The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959. Goffman, E. Stigma.

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