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This study provides experimental evidence on whether and how management's use of self-promotion, as a type of proactive impression management strategies in its disclosures, influences nonprofessional investors’ judgments and decisions. The results show that management's use of self-promotion influences nonprofessional investors so that investors (1) expect management's future performance to be better and (2) are likely to invest more in the company. These positive effects are more prominent when management's credibility is perceived to be high than when it is low. The findings of this study provide implications for both practice and research.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between the performance orientation of employees and self‐promotion in the form of overstating one's performance. It is hypothesized that this relationship depends on task clarity and personalized responsibility.

Data were collected by means of a survey among 281 employees of two Dutch organizations, one active in water management, the other in the justice field.

As expected, a positive relationship was found between performance orientation and self‐promotion, but only when task clarity was low. Personalized responsibility appeared to reduce the strength of the relationship between performance orientation and self‐promotion, but only under conditions of low task clarity.

Inducing high levels of task clarity seems to be generally effective in reducing self‐promotion. If it is not possible to increase task clarity, personalized responsibility is a second best option to reduce self‐promotion

The focus on high performance in modern organizations tends to induce employees to promote themselves as excellent performers. Performance‐oriented employees are especially known to react in this way while they can simultaneously be assumed to refrain from any behavior that is likely to be noticed as self‐promoting. Therefore, it can be hypothesized that factors that can enhance the visibility or traceability of self‐promotion will lead to a reduction in self‐promoting impulses. In the current study, two such factors, task clarity and an employee's personalized responsibility, have been investigated.

Self-promotion on social networking sites (SNSs) is a controversial issue as it has been attributed to various positive and negative consequences. To better understand the reasons for the mixed consequences and the nature of self-promotion on SNSs, the purpose of this paper is to theorize and empirically investigate the duality of SNS self-promotion and its underlying socio-psychological mechanisms.

By drawing on the motivational affordance lens and self-determination theory, this study develops a theoretical account of the duality of self-promotion on SNSs. The author places subjective vitality and SNS addiction as the positive and negative consequences of self-promotion. The model was tested using partial least squares technique with data collected from 289 Finnish Facebook users using a survey.

The results show that self-promotion contributes to both subjective vitality and to SNS addiction. Importantly, exhibitionism attenuates the effect of self-promotion on subjective vitality and amplifies the effect of self-promotion on SNS addiction. The feature-level analysis shows that status updates, adding photos, commenting in others’ posts and profile completeness are the main determinants of self-promotion. Status updates, adding photos and check-ins, in turn, have high exhibitionistic appeal.

To date, the empirical attempts to investigate the duality of SNS use have been rare. In particular, prior research is largely silent in explaining what tilt the outcomes of self-promotion either toward positive or negative direction. The paper fills this theoretical and empirical gap and thus contributes to literature on dualities of SNS use.

Interest in the nature of influence attempts in the performance evaluation process has increased in recent years. Researchers have conducted a number of important and revealing cross‐sectional investigations, but there remains virtually no longitudinal work in this area. The present study attempted to address this need by conducting a multi‐period investigation of influence tactics use and affect that addressed three questions: (1) Are individuals consistent in their use of influence tactics across evaluation periods? (2) Are prior‐period performance ratings reflected in subsequent influence tactic use? (3) What role does affect, both supervisor and subordinate, play in this process? A latent variable structural model was tested using longitudinal data from managers and employees of food services units. Our results indicated that there is a cycle of continued influence tactic use across time periods, performance ratings help to determine subsequent tactic use, and both supervisor and subordinate affect play a role in the influence‐evaluation process. Implications of these results and directions for future research are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into how female entrepreneurs develop and communicate an authentic personal brand. The authors examine the entrepreneurial marketing (EM) activities undertaken by female entrepreneurs and identify the impression management (IM) behaviours and tactics used. The authors explore the risks associated with self-promotion to gain a better understanding of how female entrepreneurs market themselves and their businesses.

The study adopts an interpretative phenomenological approach (IPA). Using semi-structured interviews, the authors explore the experiences of female entrepreneurs as they engage in IM behaviours. The sample is drawn from female entrepreneurs who have small-scale businesses, which span a range of specialist service sectors. All participants are engaging in personal branding activities. Participants were recruited via a gatekeeper and invited to take part in the study. Data from 11 female business owners were collected and analysed using IPA. Interview transcripts and field notes were analysed for broad patterns, and then initial codes developed, which allowed for themes to emerge, with a number of core themes being identified. These core themes are presented, together with verbatim quotes from participants, to provide a rich insight into the marketing activities of these female entrepreneurs.

The findings reveal the complex challenges faced by female entrepreneurs as they engage in self-promotion and IM to market their business. Four key themes emerge from the data to explain how female entrepreneurs engage in managing their brand both online and offline: experimental, risk, authenticity and supplication. The study identifies, in particular, that female entrepreneurs use the tactic of supplication in combination with self-promotion to communicate their brand. Additionally, it was found that female entrepreneurs share their personal fears and weaknesses in an attempt to be seen as authentic and manage the risk associated with self-promotion.

The study contributes to the EM literature by extending the understanding of the risks associated with self-promotion for female entrepreneurs. The study also contributes to the IM literature by providing a better understanding of IM beyond organisations and applied to an entrepreneurial domain. The study highlights a number of important implications for entrepreneurial practice and policy.

This study investigates whether subordinates who rate their managers higher on narcissism are also more likely to view their managers as abusive. In particular, the study explores the extent to which managers whom subordinates rate higher on narcissism use certain behaviors (self-promotion and unpredictability) that mediate the relationship between narcissism and perceived abuse.

Survey participants (n = 949) rated their most-destructive manager in terms of self-promotion, unpredictability, narcissism and abusiveness. A bootstrap analysis assessed the positive, mediating effects of leader self-promotion and unpredictability on the narcissism–abuse relationship.

Degree of perceived supervisor narcissism predicted subordinates' perceptions of abusive supervision. However, the supervisor's self-promotion activities and unpredictability fully mediated this relationship.

This study identifies perceived narcissism as an antecedent of abusive supervision and identifies two mediators relevant to subordinates' perceptions of abuse. Using multiple methods and multiple sources, the authors recommend that scholars identify additional mediators. Further research should consider variables such as gender, organizational culture and occupational status.

Findings highlight how subordinates connect supervisor narcissism to abuse; this allows human resource practitioners to better predict and address subordinates' perceptions of their managers and to design interventions for improving supervisors' behaviors.

This study helps in explaining destructive leadership by empirically examining perceptions of narcissism as a driver of abusive supervision. Also, the study reveals the characteristics of narcissistic managers that impede productive relationships with subordinates.

The purpose of these studies was to investigate how the repeated use of impression management (IM) tactics is related to supervisor perceptions in newly formed supervisor-subordinate dyads.

Two studies were conducted – a lab study in which participants evaluated a confederate who performed an accounting task while using different types of IM across five trials, and a field study examining the IM tactics of new employees and their supervisors' ratings of likability and performance at two points in time.

In the lab study, the repeated use of ingratiation had an increasingly positive effect on performance ratings, whereas repeated apologies had an increasingly negative effect on evaluations of performance. The influence of IM tactics on ratings of subordinate likability did not change with repeated use. In the field study, subordinates' use of apologies and justifications was more strongly associated with supervisor evaluations of likability and performance in earlier stages of their relationship.

Employees need to be mindful that IM tactics may vary in their effectiveness depending on the timing and frequency of their use. Furthermore, supervisors should consider the initial influence that IM has on their ability to objectively evaluate new subordinates.

This research is unique in that it examined how the repeated use of both assertive (i.e. ingratiation and self-promotion) and defensive (i.e. apologies and justifications) IM tactics are related to both evaluations of likability and performance ratings at multiple points in time.

Applicants often use impression management (IM) in employment interviews, and such tactics can considerably influence interviewers' evaluations of their performance. Yet, little research has examined interviewers' perceptions of such behaviors. This paper aims to examine if interviewers' perceptions of various IM behaviors converge with applicants' self-reports and the impact of interviewers' IM perceptions on interview outcomes.

Findings are based on data from a field study of 164 real employment interviews, conducted in recruiting agencies in Switzerland.

Interviewers' perceptions do not converge with self-reported applicant IM. Interviewers' perceptions of self-promotion and perceived applicant transparency are positively related to interview evaluations, while perceptions of slight image creation tactics are negatively related to interview evaluations. Perceptions of deceptive ingratiation, image protection, and extensive image creation were not related to evaluations.

It may not be that easy for interviewers to identify when applicants use IM, partly because they may be prone to overconfidence in their judgments and may (wrongly) believe they can “see through the applicant”. Also, what may actually matter in interviews is not the impression applicants think they are making, but interviewers' perceptions of applicant IM.

This study investigates interviewers' perceptions in addition to applicants' self-reports of five types of IM in real employment interviews, and how such perceptions are related to interview outcome.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how Facebook usage is positively related to envy and narcissism, which in turn increase users’ desire for self-promotion and propensity to engage in conspicuous consumption.

Data were collected via an online survey, with 674 usable responses collected from Facebook users of all ages.

The results support the hypotheses that increased Facebook usage is positively related to envy and narcissism. These two psychological constructs lead to stronger desires for self-promotion, spurring the behavioral response of conspicuous online consumption.

The findings are limited to the self-reported behaviors of a limited sample. Despite the limitations, the findings identify a process by which increased Facebook usage results in an increased desire to promote oneself through conspicuous consumption.

An understanding of the psychology linking social media use to conspicuous consumption can aid managers in developing marketing strategies to encourage the purchase and usage of positional goods. Specifically, more frequent users may be targeted by advertisers wishing to encourage the purchase and display of their products.

Facebook usage appears to elicit emotions – such as narcissism and envy – that most researchers would consider socially undesirable.

An emerging stream of research suggests that social media usage elicits both positive self-comparisons with others (i.e. narcissism) and negative (i.e. envy). This study is among the first to empirically test this effect on the purchase and consumption of positional goods.

This study developed a predictive model that established the user motivational factors that predict COVID-19 fake news sharing on social media.

The partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was used for the analysis. Data were drawn from 152 Facebook and WhatsApp users in Nigeria to examine the research model formulated using the uses and gratification theory (UGT).

We found that altruism, instant news sharing, socialisation and self-promotion predicted fake news sharing related to COVID-19 pandemic among social media users in Nigeria. Specifically, altruism was the strongest predictor to fake news sharing behaviour related to COVID-19, followed by instant news sharing and socialisation. On the contrary, entertainment had no association with fake news sharing on COVID-19.

We suggest intervention strategies which nudge people to be sceptical of the information they come across on social media. We also recommend healthcare providers and the Nigerian government to provide relevant information on this current pandemic. That is, correct information should be shared widely to the public domain through various conventional and online media. This will lessen the spread of fake news on the concocted cure and prevention tips found online.

The salient contributions of this study are as follows: First, it brings to the fore that the desire for self-promotion is associated with fake news sharing on social media; second, it shifts the focus of studies on fake news from detection methods to sharing behaviour, which fuels the uncontrollable spread of falsehood; third, it expands the existing literature on misinformation sharing by demonstrating the user motivation that leads to fake news sharing using the UGT.