The way you make me abuse: impression management matters
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EBHRM-04-2021-0059 |
| Published date | 02 November 2021 |
| Date | 02 November 2021 |
| Pages | 121-137 |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Global HRM |
| Author | Yuan-Ling Chen,Ting Yi Chu |
The way you make me abuse:
impression management matters
Yuan-Ling Chen
Master’s Program in International Business Communication,
National Ilan University, Yilan, Taiwan, and
Ting Yi Chu
International Business MBA, College of Management,
National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Abstract
Purpose –Drawing on the perspectives of emotional labor, self-concept and impression management, this
study presents two major findings: (1) employees’excessive reliance on impression management can bother
supervisors, and (2) the effectiveness of impression management depends on how the management affects
targets’attribution of characteristics to actors.
Design/methodology/approach–The study uses a cross-sectional design and a sample of 259 employees to
investigate the antecedents of abusive supervision and, in this regard, the potential mediating effects of
impression management. Through Mplus analysis, the authors specifically show that deep acting and surface
acting affect impression management and that impression management activates abusive supervision.
Findings –Emotional labor is critical in triggering abusive supervisionthrough impression management. The
study specifically shows that impression management mediates two types of relationships: (1) the relationship
between deep acting and abusive supervision, and (2) the relationship between surface acting and abusive
supervision. The findings contribute to the abusive supervision literature by clarifying how impression
management functions.
Originality/value –This study, by addressing how emotional labor is a potential antecedent of abusive
supervision, reveals that impression management can be a mixed blessing, insofar as emotional labor can
contribute to abusive supervision.
Keywords Emotional labor, Self-concept, Impression management, Abusive supervision
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Firms must embrace the uncertainties that accompany globalization and technological change,
which are two key facets of dynamic business contexts. Thus, a particular style of leadership plays
a critical role in steering firm operations and competition. One critical aspect of leadership is
abusive supervision, which refers to specific, constant verbal and nonverbal behaviors engaged in
by one’s supervisor (Tepper, 2000). Supervisors’abusivebehaviors include yelling at subordinates,
concealing needed information, threatening subordinates with the possibility of job loss and
humiliating subordinatesinfrontofothers(Zellars et al., 2002). The extant literature has pointed
out that, for certain subordinates, these behaviors result in negative psychological outcomes, such
as reduced job performance (Harris et al., 2007a), psychological distress (Richman et al., 1992)and
decreased self-efficacy (Duffy et al., 2002). Studies have acknowledged the effects of abusive
supervision on subordinates (e.g. Tepper et al., 2001,2004), demonstrating that abusive supervision
is a distinct leadership style in organizations. In this regard, an important and perhaps surprising
question then arises: Do abusive supervisors always engage in this behavior without provocation?
Or are supervisors sometimes triggered to ridicule, blame and otherwise abuse subordinates?
Impression
management
matters
121
Funding: No external funding was used to support this study.
The authors would like to thank Mr. Chun-Lung Chu, and Dr. Shyh-Jer Chen, whose research
assistance and suggestions made this study possible. Many thanks also go to those who completed
online surveys for this study.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/2049-3983.htm
Received 6 April 2021
Revised 25 July 2021
Accepted 13 October 2021
Evidence-based HRM: a Global
Forum for Empirical Scholarship
Vol. 10 No. 2, 2022
pp. 121-137
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2049-3983
DOI10.1108/EBHRM-04-2021-0059
Earlier, Zellars et al. (2002) called for more studies to delve into the antecedents of abusive
supervision, and later Martinko et al. (2011) highlighted such a research call.
As unlikely as it seems, there has been little attention paid to the drivers of abusive
supervision(Martinko et al.,2013). In deed, only recently did Zhang and Bednall (2016) placethe
antecedents of abusive supervision into three basic categories (supervisor, organization,
subordinate) and speculate on the potentially relevant demographic characteristics of
supervisors and subordinates. Specifically, the subordinate-related antecedents sorted out by
Zhang and Bednall(2016) include cynical attribution,conscientiousness,extraversion, political
skill, power distance, stability andsupervisor-directed attribution. While useful, however, this
categorizationfails to explain how employeeemotion affects abusivesupervision. The studyof
emotion in organizations has been a constant, yet implicit, research theme (Ashkanasy and
Dorris, 2017), covering, for example, emotional labor, which is particularly important for
employees who, in workplace settings, usually must invest themselves emotionally in their
daily interactions with others (Ashforth and Humphrey, 1995). In the service industry,
employees whointeract with customers, clientsor patients must make an effort to adjust their
emotions in accordance with the workplace circumstances. Indeed, employees of any
organization or industry who must engage in interpersonal workplace relationships will also
likely engage in two very prominent types of emotion-regulation displays, namely, surface
acting and deep acting (Grandey, 2000;Grandey and Melloy, 2017 ).Having been identified in
the emotionallabor literature, these two phenomenamanifest themselves in jobsranging from
temporary frontline service employees to general organizational employees (Ashforth and
Humphrey, 1993;Morris and Feldman, 1996).
Extant research has emphasized the negative outcomes of emotional labor on subordinates
(e.g. Brotheridge and Grandey, 2002); however, a glaring omission is the effect of employees’
emotional labor on supervisors. Is it possible that employees’emotional labor deteriorates the
relationships between employees and supervisors, and even evokes abusive supervision? In an
attempt to answer this compelling question and thereby fill some conspicuous gaps in the
literature, we treat employee emotional labor as an antecedent of abusive supervision and seek to
unfold the underlying mechanism between employee emotional labor and abusive supervision.
Emotional labor has its benefits and costs; in this regard, employees are trying to manage the
impression that another person has of them in an interpersonal encounter. Therefore, they strive
to create positive images of themselves for the other person’s consumption (Bolino et al.,2008).
Emotional labor drives employees to cultivate images, a process that Bolino et al. (2016) addressed
in their research question about why employees manage impressions. An equally important
question is whether or not impression management works. It is a pivotal phenomenon in
organizations because individuals’impression-management behavior may influence how they
are judged by others, how they seek feedback and how their performances are evaluated by
others (e.g. Grant et al.,2009
;Morrison and Bies, 1991).
To address these concerns, we have developed and tested a research model (Figure 1)in
which the effects of employee emotional labor transfer onto abusive supervision. Our model
builds on the concepts of self-enhancement and self-protection (Alicke and Sedikides, 2009),
which are eminently useful in exploring the reasons why employees adopt impression
management in response to emotional labor. In addition, current emotional labor research
focuses on employees in the service industry; by contrast, we specifically target employed
individuals across industries.
By empirically testing this model, our study contributes to the literature on emotional
labor, impression management and abusive supervision. First, this study sheds light on the
antecedent of abusive supervision by introducing employee emotional labor into Zhang and
Bednall’s (2016) categorical stream. Second, the current study examines how impression
management, when playing a mediating role, can result in displays of deep acting and surface
acting that trigger abusive supervision. Lastly, our study offers new insights into how
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