The Influence Of Employees’ Upward Ingratiation On Their Workplace Status

As a common impression management tactic,ingratiation has been widely concerned by the academic community.Ingratiation is a series of social influence behaviors,such as self-deprecation,opinion compliance,praise and flattery,that individuals implement to the ingratiated in order to increase their attractiveness in the hearts of the ingratiated.Research shows that ingratiating behavior can have a significant impact on employees’ job opportunities,career development and performance appraisal.For example,ingratiation can usually increase the interviewers’ like for job seekers,improve the leaders’ evaluation of employees’ promotability and performance,and enable employees themselves to generate higher job satisfaction.However,the existing studies generally focus on the positive results of upward ingratiation to employees,but ignore the negative effects that upward ingratiation may bring to employees themselves.Not only that,scholars also focused their research perspectives on the ingratiators and the ingratiated,and rarely examined the emotional and behavioral responses of other groups to the ingratiators in the process of organizational dynamics,such as the cognitive evaluation and behavioral responses of colleagues as bystanders to the ingratiators.Based on the moral virtue theory,this paper believes that upward ingratiation can have a negative impact on employees’ workplace status,and explores the indirect role of colleagues’ perception of employees’ integrity and the moderating role of the competence of ingratiators in this process.In this paper,the above theoretical models are cross-verified by the combination of questionnaire and experimental methods.In the first study,a questionnaire survey was used to collect data from employees(N = 318)to verify the external validity of the theoretical model.On the basis of study 1,in order to enhance the internal validity of the research conclusions,study 2 adopts a two inter subject experiment design of 2(employees’ upward ingratiation: high vs.low)× 2(employees’ competence: high vs.low),recruiting employees(N = 204)to verify the all research hypotheses again.The survey and experiment repeatedly verify the following findings:(1)employees’ upward ingratiation has a significant negative impact on workplace status;(2)colleagues’ perception of employees’ integrity acts as a mediate variable between upward ingratiation and workplace status.Specifically,colleagues will maintain a lower level of integrity perception of upward ingratiators,and then grant them a lower workplace status.(3)employees’ competence can weaken the negative relationship between employees’ upward ingratiation and colleagues’ perception of employees’ integrity,and weaken the indirect effect of colleagues’ perception of employees’ integrity between upward ingratiation and workplace status.Specifically,compared with the low competence employees who take part in upward ingratiation,colleagues will to a certain extent enhance the sense of integrity of high competence employees who take part in upward ingratiation,and then grant them relatively high workplace status.The research results of this paper have certain theoretical and practical significance.On the one hand,the research results reveal the dark side of upward ingratiation to employees from a third-party perspective,and improve the academic understanding of upward ingratiation;On the other hand,the research results not only provide enlightenment for employees to avoid the potential hazards of ingratiating themselves,but also provide reference for organizations to formulate relevant management policies.