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‐promotion Originality/value – 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.