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

Purpose - 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.Design/methodology/approach - 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.Findings - 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.Practical implications - 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-promotionOriginality/value - The focus on high performance in modem 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.