The Impact Of Impression Management On Organizational Citizenship Behavior And Subjective Performance Rating

Impression management had received more and more attention since it was brought forward in 50s.This article briefly introduced the concept and theories of impression management as well as some related researches and examined the relationships between subordinates' impression management behaviors, subordinates' organizational citizenship behaviors and immediate supervisor's rating of their performance. A sample of 215 supervisor-subordinate dyads was tested bv questionnaires, and the findings indicated that impression management could significantly increase not only the frequencies of subordinates' organizational citizenship behaviors but also the supervisor's rating of performance via leader-member exchange. Further more, this study investigated the ways in which three types of impression management influence subordinates' impression management behaviors and supervisor ratings of performance, the results turned out to be that job-focused tactics and self-focused tactics both had positively relate to subordinates' impression management behaviors and supervisor ratings of performance, while supervisor-focused tactics did not. Additionally, this article analyzed the moderating effect of two different types of attributions on impression management and leader-member exchange. The conclusions were that the positive association between subordinates' job-focused tactics of impression management and the quality of leader-member exchange was stronger when supervisors interpret the behavior as being driven by weaker impression management motives than stronger impression management motives, while the positive association between subordinates' job-focused tactics of impression management and the quality of leader-member exchange was stronger when supervisors interpret the behavior as being driven by stronger performance-enhancement motives than weaker performance-enhancement motives. Neither impression management motives attribution nor performance-enhancement motives attribution effected the positive association between other two tactics of impression management and the quality of leader-member exchange.