How to control self-promotion among performance-oriented employees: The roles of task clarity and personalized responsibility

摘要

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between the performano orientation of employees and self-promotion in the form of overstating one's performance. It i hypothesized that this relationship depends on task clarity and personalized responsibility. Design/methodology/approach - Data were collected by means of a survey among 281 employee of two Dutch organizations, one active in water management, the other in the justice field. Findings - As expected, a positive relationship was found between performance orientation anc self-promotion, but only when task clarity was low. Personalized responsibility appeared to reduce thi strength of the relationship between performance orientation and self-promotion, but only unde conditions of low task clarity. Practical implications - Inducing high levels of task clarity seems to be generally effective h reducing self-promotion. If it is not possible to increase task clarity, personalized responsibility is ; second best option to reduce self-promotion Originality/value - The focus on high performance in modern organizations tends to induo employees to promote themselves as excellent performers. Performance-oriented employees an especially known to react in this way while they can simultaneously be assumed to refrain from am behavior that is likely to be noticed as self-promoting. Therefore, it can be hypothesized that factor: that can enhance the visibility or traceability of self-promotion will lead to a reduction ii self-promoting impulses. In the current study, two such factors, task clarity and an employee': personalized responsibility, have been investigated.