The effect of supervisor’s characteristics on impression management and the moderation effect of perception of organizational politics

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of supervisor’s characteristics on impression management and the moderation effect of perception of organizational politics. Using the survey research method, data were collected from 296 employees who were working in a variety of organizations in Korea. As results, supervisor’s power distance orientation, social face sensitivity, and agreeableness had positive relationships with supervisor’s impression management, and supervisor’s neuroticism had negative relationship with supervisor’s impression management. However, supervisor’s extraversion did not have significant relationship with supervisor’s impression management. The perception of organizational politics had moderation effect on the relationship between supervisor’s agreeableness and impression management. That is, the positive relationship between supervisor’s agreeableness and impression management was stronger when the perception of organizational politics was high rather than low. On the other hand, moderation effects of the perception of organizational politics on the relationship between supervisor’s power distance orientation, social face sensitivity, extraversion, neuroticism and impression management were not significant. Based on these results, we discussed the implications and limitations of the study, and the suggestions for the future research.