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Little research has focused on the impact of organizational crisis on their internal stakeholders – the employees. This paper aims to fill this void by examining the impression management strategies used by senior managers in managing their employees during organizational crisis and the impact of these strategies on employees.

The authors collected qualitative data from three organizations and used multiple analytical lenses (such as thematic, content and trope) to explore patterns in senior managers’ management of employees during crisis.

Emerging patterns in the data revealed that the emotional state and reactions of employees (individual and collective) during crisis include anger, fear, shame, depression and shock. Additionally, data revealed two major contradictions (tensions) in managing employees during crisis: maintaining and compromising standard and managers’ wants versus employees’ desire in the way organization crisis is managed. Based on these preliminary findings and using affective event theory and the theory of collective emotions as a frame, the authors built a conceptual model that depicts the relationship between organizational crisis, impression management and emotion-driven employee attitudes and behaviors.

A major limitation in the current research is that authors’ data are largely composed of text (e.g. from newspaper and websites). Nevertheless, the textual data were based on actual interviews with stakeholders and victims and have more than compensated for the limitation. Theoretically, by examining the emotional states and reactions of internal (rather than external) stakeholders to organizational crisis, the authors extend the literature in the area of organizational crisis and crisis management, while the testable propositions in this conceptual model have a potential to open up new pathways for studying organizational crisis. Practically, it is imperative for managers to have skills to identify and manage key employees’ emotional states and reactions to crisis. Managers should align their words and actions during crisis management to increase employees trust. Also pre-crisis planning should include specific guidelines on how to identify and manage employees’ individual and collective emotions during crisis.

The results show that inappropriate impression management strategies may worsen employees’ emotional states and reactions (individual and collective) during crisis; therefore, it is imperative for managers to have skills in identifying key employees’ emotional states and reactions to crisis and the impression management strategies appropriate in managing them. A training that sharpens managers’ emotional intelligence will be helpful in managing the emotions of employees (individual and collective) during crisis. Also, pre-crisis planning should include specific guidelines on how to identify and manage employees’ individual and collective emotions during crisis, while senior managers’ words and actions during crisis need to be synchronized to engender employees’ trust.

This study demonstrates that beyond emotions of employees during crisis, there are contradictions and tensions in the senior manager’s management of their employees during crisis. Also, outcomes of a quantitative test of the conceptual model developed from the current study should improve the generalizability of the results and open up new pathways for future research in this area.

The privacy calculus based on a single stakeholder failed to explain users' co-owned information disclosure owing to the uniqueness of co-owned information. Drawing on collective privacy calculus theory and impression management theory, this study attempts to explore the co-owned information disclosure of social network platform users from a collective perspective rather than an individual perspective.

Drawing on collective privacy calculus theory and impression management theory, this study explores the co-owned information disclosure of social network platform users from a collective perspective rather than an individual perspective based on a survey of 740 respondents.

This study finds that self-presentation and others presentation directly positively affect users' co-owned information disclosure. Also, self-presentation, others presentation and relationship presentation indirectly positively affect users' co-owned information disclosure via relationship support. Furthermore, personal privacy concern, others' privacy concern and relationship privacy concern indirectly negatively affect users' co-owned information disclosure via relationship risk.

The findings develop the theory of collective privacy calculus and impression management, which offer insights into the design of the collective privacy protection function of social network platform service providers.

Problems arose in the “market for information” (MFI) during the “dot.com” boom, the Enron case, Northern Rock failure and during the great financial crisis (GFC) of 2007-2009. This paper aims to extend the understanding of the MFI through field research and theoretical sources. It also aims to understand the MFI during relatively stable periods and during periods of rapid change, crisis and failure. It seeks to use these insights to propose changes to reduce the possibilities for negative change and problems in the MFI.

Field studies are used to develop an “empirical narrative” for ongoing MFI structures, processes and outcomes during relatively stable periods. The paper develops a “theoretical narrative” to extend the understanding of the MFI empirical insights.

The paper reveals that the MFI structure that includes knowledge and social context is central to ongoing MFI economic processes for MFI agents. Outcomes include changes in markets, firms and others. Changes and problems are means to understand interactions between the MFI social structure, knowledge, actions and outcomes as they rendered visible the previously invisible issues.

The paper shows that a coherent combination of new empirical narrative and theoretical narrative is essential to develop a critical stance, new policy prescriptions and new regulations to deal with problems and changes in the MFI. This provides the frame to propose changes in the “world of knowledge” and in (concentrated and elite) social and economic structures in the MFI. It proposes: making explicit shared knowledge in the MFI, monitoring change processes and promoting active formal learning.

Expenditures on beauty, fitness and body shaping by females have increased significantly in recent years. Most previous studies examined this from the psychological perspective of self-acceptance and self-liking. However, this phenomenon may also have social implications. This study aims to provide a profound understanding of the social environment for female professionals as well as actionable insights for the government and social institutions.

A research model was developed based on impression management and social identity theories incorporating impression management motives, impression construction consumption and social identity. A survey study of 419 Chinese female professionals was conducted to test the research model.

This study surveyed 419 Chinese female professionals and found that impression management motives significantly drove female professionals to spend on their faces and bodies for impression construction, which in turn contributed to the enhancement of their social identities in three dimensions: relational identity, public identity and collective identity.

In a male-dominated society, it has become a norm that females should be cautious about their facial appearance and body shape. Females are often forced to consume to attain physical attractiveness and to construct a favorable social image. This study shows that consumption for impression construction has become a frequently used strategy for impression management and identifies key areas of societal concern.

This chapter introduces the concept of “competency labor” and illustrates its important role in organizational life for both researchers and practitioners. In the contemporary workplace environment individuals face increasing expectations of competence. However, demonstrating competence is no simple task – rather, to demonstrate competence requires a concerted effort in terms of individuals’ affect, cognition, and behavior. Accordingly, new models are needed that can explain these emergent processes. The present work integrates the literatures related to emotional labor and impression management, and builds a theory-based framework for investigating the processes (affective, cognitive, and behavioral) of making desired impressions of competency at work and how these processes impact critical individual and organizational outcomes. Our conceptual model proposes how growing demands in the workplace for individuals to display competence affect how they think, feel, as well as act. In sum, our work advocates that a new research stream is needed to better understand the “competency labor” phenomenon and its theoretical as well as practical implications.

A distinction must be drawn between a dismissal on the one hand, and on the other a repudiation of a contract of employment as a result of a breach of a fundamental term of that contract. When such a repudiation has been accepted by the innocent party then a termination of employment takes place. Such termination does not constitute dismissal (see London v. James Laidlaw & Sons Ltd (1974) IRLR 136 and Gannon v. J. C. Firth (1976) IRLR 415 EAT).

To demonstrate transparency and accountability, the three boards in this study are required to meet in public in front of an audience, although the boards reserve confidential issues for discussion in private sessions. This study examines boardroom public accountability, contrasting it with accountability in board meetings held in private. The study adopts Erving Goffman's impression management theory to interpret divergences between boardroom behaviour in public and private, or “frontstage” and “backstage” in Goffman's terminology.

The research observes and video-records three board meetings for each of the three boards (nine board meetings), in public and private. The research operationalises accountability in terms of director-manager question-and-answer interactions.

In the presence of an audience of local stakeholders, the boards employ impression management techniques to demonstrate accountability, by creating the impression that non-executive directors are performing challenge and managers are providing satisfactory answers. Thus, they “save the show” in Goffman terms. These techniques enable board members and managers to navigate the interface between demonstrating the required good governance and the competence of the organisations and their managers, while not revealing issues that could tarnish their image and concern the stakeholders. The boards need to demonstrate to the audience that “matters are what they appear to be”, even if they are not. The research identifies behaviour consistent with impression management to manage this complexity. The authors conclude that regulatory objectives have not met their transparency aspirations.

For the first time, the research studies the effect of transparency regulations (“sunshine” laws) on the behaviour of boards of directors meeting in public. The study contributes to the embryonic literature based on video-taped board meetings to access the “black box” of the boardroom, which permits a study of impression management at board meetings not previously possible. This study extends prior impression management theory by identifying eleven impression management techniques that non-executive directors and managers use and which are unique to a boardroom context.

Scholarship on reputation in and of organizations has been going on for decades, and it always has separated along level of analysis issues, whereby the separate literatures on individual, group/team/unit, and organization reputation fail to acknowledge each other. This sends the implicit message that reputation is a fundamentally different phenomenon at the three different levels of analysis. We tested the validity of this implicit assumption by conducting a multilevel review of the reputation literature, and drawing conclusions about the “level-specific” or “level-generic” nature of the reputation construct. The review results permitted the conclusion that reputation phenomena are essentially the same at all levels of analysis. Based on this, we frame a future agenda for theory and research on reputation.

When a firm implements certain HR practices, different employees attribute different motives and intentions to the firm with regard to those HR practices. Research on HR attributions has made progress toward understanding the relationship between HR practices and employee outcomes from a process perspective. However, this research is still fragmented and lacks a systematic typology of the different types of HR attributions and a compelling organizing research framework. Furthermore, a number of research gaps and opportunities have emerged regarding the nomological net of employee HR attributions. To address the gaps and capitalize on the opportunities, the authors propose an overarching theory-driven multi-level framework that guides the choice of the antecedents and outcomes of employee HR attributions and explains their relationships along with both mediating and moderating mechanisms. Drawing on signaling theory embedded in the proposed framework, the authors identify and categorize various antecedents of employee HR attributions to explain their relationships. The authors also use several additional theories such as social exchange and the job demands–resources model included in their review to identify and categorize various outcomes of employee HR attributions across levels of analysis (i.e., individual, collective [team/group/unit], organization) and explain their relationships. In addition, the proposed framework explains how individual-level employee HR attributions emerge at the collective level and influence collective processes and outcomes. The authors end their review by pinpointing future research needs and discussing related future research directions.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.