Description
In this present study, we propose a multilevel research framework within which we identify personality
traits as the primary source of the positive influence on leaderemember exchange (LMX) through the
mechanism of impression management behavior. Data are obtained from 23 branches of a large commercial
bank in central Taiwan, with the samples collected from both managers and employees forming
228 managereemployee dyads, and thereby avoiding common method variance. Our results reveal that
personality traits have significantly positive effects on LMX, with impression management behavior also
playing a mediating role between them. Interestingly, we also find that group cohesiveness moderates
the relationship between impression management behavior and LMX. Our study includes a discussion of
the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.
Does impression management really help? A multilevel testing of the mediation
role of impression management between personality traits and leaderemember
exchange
Liang-Chieh Weng
a, *
, Wen-Ching Chang
b
a
Department of International Business, Providence University, No. 200, Sec. 7, Taiwan Boulevard, Taichung, Taiwan, ROC
b
Department of Business Administration, Providence University, Taichung, Taiwan, ROC
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 16 December 2012
Accepted 7 March 2013
Available online 9 March 2015
Keywords:
Group cohesiveness
Hierarchical linear modeling
Impression management
Leaderemember exchange
Personality traits
a b s t r a c t
In this present study, we propose a multilevel research framework within which we identify personality
traits as the primary source of the positive in?uence on leaderemember exchange (LMX) through the
mechanism of impression management behavior. Data are obtained from 23 branches of a large com-
mercial bank in central Taiwan, with the samples collected from both managers and employees forming
228 managereemployee dyads, and thereby avoiding common method variance. Our results reveal that
personality traits have signi?cantly positive effects on LMX, with impression management behavior also
playing a mediating role between them. Interestingly, we also ?nd that group cohesiveness moderates
the relationship between impression management behavior and LMX. Our study includes a discussion of
the theoretical and practical implications of our ?ndings.
© 2015 College of Management, National Cheng Kung University. Production and hosting by Elsevier
Taiwan LLC. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Leaderemember exchange (LMX) is widely conceptualized as a
series of dyadic interactions between managers and employees
(Dienesch & Liden, 1986). Prior studies identi?ed that employees
with high LMX relationship with their supervisors receive a num-
ber of advantages and bene?ts, such as future opportunities for
promotion and career development (Dienesch &Liden, 1986; Liden,
Wayne, & Sparrowe, 2000), compared to their counterparts with
lowLMX relationship. Given the importance of LMX relationship on
employee's future career development, an interesting issue with
regard to LMX is the way in which managers might succeed in
choosing the right people to enter the “in” group (Yang, 2000).
Because superior LMX relationships in?uence manager's succes-
sion management and employees' future career development, we
provide a theoretical framework to discuss the individual and
organizational factors that might affect LMX relationship.
In this present study, we identify personality traits as crucial
factors to in?uence the quality of LMX. Although LMX has drawn
considerable attention in recent years, there is little evidence of
personal attributes associated with these relationships (Bernerth,
Armenakis, Feild, Giles, & Walker, 2007; Phillips & Bedeian, 1994),
because prior studies mainly focused on the in?uences of de-
mographic variables on LMX relationship (Deluga, 1998; Gerstner &
Day, 1997; Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). Therefore, if our knowledge of
theLMXrelationshipandits formationis toadvance, further research
is needed on the antecedents associated with the LMX quality.
Despite the growing number of studies in recent years on
impression management, two questions still remain. First, in
particular, how employees' personality traits in?uence impression
management behavior and the mediating processes through which
impression management behavior affects organizational outcomes
is still not clear (Gilmore, Stevens, Harrell-Cook, & Ferris, 1999;
Kristof-Brown, Barrick, & Franke, 2002). Second, although interests
in the in?uence of personality traits on employee behavior are
escalating, research relating to individual personality traits on
impression management behavior has been scarce. An important
contribution of the current study is that it is among the ?rst to
attempt to examine how particular personalities in?uence
impression management behavior, and how this behavior affects
subsequent LMX relationship.
* Corresponding author. Department of International Business, Providence Uni-
versity, Taiwan.
E-mail address: [email protected] (L.-C. Weng).
Peer review under responsibility of College of Management, National Cheng
Kung University.
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Asia Paci?c Management Review 20 (2015) 2e10
Organizational scholars have long advocated a multilevel
approach to unveil the richness and dynamics of various types of
social behavior across different organizational levels; that is, they
argue that the in?uences of both group and individual factors
should be taken into consideration (Hitt, Beamish, Jackson, &
Mathieu, 2007). However, there appears to be only a handful of
studies that integrated both dispositional and contextual variables
with the relationship between personality traits and LMX quality.
In the present study, we examined the moderating role of group
cohesiveness, a group-level phenomenon within which members
are instilled with a desire to remain within the group and actively
participate in group activities (Shaw, 1981). We also suggest that
group cohesiveness is a discriminative mechanism, which neu-
tralizes the effect of impression management behavior on LMX
quality.
We set out in this study to respond to this gap in the literature by
examining the extent to which the LMX relationship is in?uenced
by individual personality traits through impression management
behavior. We also examine the relationship between impression
management behavior and LMX, alongside the moderating role of
group cohesiveness. We begin by developing our theoretical model
in the next section, establishing personality traits as a primary
determinant of LMX relationship at the individual level. We then go
on to discuss the role of impression management behavior in
linking the two variables, and further discuss the moderating role
of group cohesiveness. An overview of our research framework is
provided in Fig. 1.
2. Theoretical overview and hypothesis
2.1. LMX relationship
The theoretical foundation for LMX is grounded in social ex-
change theory, which postulates that relationship ties can in?uence
the interactions between individuals and other members within an
organization (Blau, 1964). Blau suggested that the purpose of
interpersonal relationship ties is to achieve greater reciprocity in
the future. LMX refers to the interpersonal exchange relationship
between an employee and his or her manager (Graen & Uhl-Bien,
1995). The quality of the relationships between leader and mem-
bers determines the amount of mental effort, information, and
social support that are exchanged between leader and follower
(Liden et al., 2000). Thus, subordinates interact frequently with
their leaders and obtain their leaders' trust, support, and encour-
agement, and they receive added duties and expend extra effort to
achieve organizational goals beyond contractual expectations
(Sparrowe & Liden, 1997).
Studies indicated that LMX has three distinct characteristics.
First of all, such relationships are based on trust, loyalty, and mutual
commitment, all of which are based on af?nity to, and faith in,
persons with whom exchanges are made (Cropanzano & Mitchell,
2005). Second, relationship building among group members is a
time-consuming process, and one which is heavily reliant on
mutual learning and accommodation; however, the cultivation of
faith in their managers is a similarly time-consuming process, and
one which also requires mutual accommodation to establish
interpersonal relationships.
Third, there will invariably be signi?cant changes in relation-
ships over time; that is to say, although the development of an
exchange relationship usually begins with strangers, such re-
lationships can then progress to acquaintances, and then further
still to partnerships (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). In other words, there
is a natural tendency for LMX to be unequally distributed among
group members. There may therefore be considerable differences
between attitudes, loyalty, and commitment to work for those who
are regarded as being part of the “in” group, as compared with
those in the “out” group, as well as differences in the level of trust
that exists between certain group members and their managers
(Cheng, 1995). Members of the “in” group will often tend to have
higher-level exchange relationships, whereas the exchange re-
lationships of those in the “out” group are invariably found to be at
a much lower level.
2.2. Personality traits and LMX
Although this theoretical accumulation is important to our
overall understanding of LMX, there is little evidence of personal
attributes associated with these relationships (Phillips & Bedeian,
1994). Investigation of personality traits and LMX are important
for two theoretical reasons. First, although the personal charac-
teristics of subordinates have been cited as important antecedents
on LMX (Dienesch & Liden, 1986), scholars devote rare attention
beyond demographic characteristics. Thus, we try to answer this
call of a number of researchers (e.g. Barry & Stewart, 1997; Bauer &
Green, 1996; Deluga, 1998; Smith & Canger, 2004) to move beyond
the exploration of demographic variables in the formation of LMX.
Second, dispositional antecedents can help explain whether in-
dividuals develop exchange relationships (i.e., the super-
visoresubordinate relationship) in a consistent and steady manner
because personality traits are stable and LMX is the essence be-
tween two individuals (Bernerth et al., 2007).
Researchers postulate that personalities determine the ways in
which people behave (Lievens, Chasteen, Day, &Christiansen, 2006).
It is also suggested that personality traits are crucial elements of the
formation of LMX relationship. In this study, three of the big ?ve
personality variables are examined: agreeableness, conscientious-
ness, and extraversion. These three constructs were chosen based on
the distinctiveness of the variables, the fact that each has been
shown to be a powerful and important predictor (e.g., Hogan &
Holland, 2003; Judge & Ilies, 2002), and the overall breadth of as-
sociation with the formation of LMX relationship (Deluga, 1998) and
impression management behavior (Kristof-Brown et al., 2002).
We argue that personalities such as agreeableness, conscien-
tiousness, and extraversion are important elements in the devel-
opment of LMX relationship. Employees with extraversion
personality are highly energetic and aggressive, with a strong
desire for material things, reputation, social recognition, and power
(Costa & McCrae, 1992; Digman, 1990). Extraverted employees also
have a desire to interact with other people, pursue newand exciting
things, and obtain rewards (Lucas, Diener, Grob, Suh, &Shao, 2000).
Phillips and Bedeian (1994) suggested that extraverted employees
are more likely to seek new experiences, which may lead them to
seek more dif?cult or challenging task assignments resulting in
more trust and admiration by supervisors. In other words, extra-
verted employees have a strong need to build up positive exchange
relationship with their managers by pursuing novel and chal-
lenging tasks, thereby enabling them to achieve reputation and
recognition by their leaders.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Individual level
Group level
Personality traits
-Agreeableness
-Conscientiousness
-Extraversion
Impression management behavior LMX
Group cohesiveness
Fig. 1. Research framework. LMX ¼leaderemember exchange.
L.-C. Weng, W.-C. Chang / Asia Paci?c Management Review 20 (2015) 2e10 3
The personality trait of agreeableness refers to the tendency for
individuals to get along with other people (McCrae & Costa, 1991)
and achieve interpersonal intimacy (Judge, Heller, & Mount, 2002).
Likewise, Buss (1991) suggests agreeableness is an important factor
in the ability to form reciprocal social alliances. Agreeable people
will tend to be warm, polite, altruistic, and sympathetic, with a
strong desire to engage in harmonious associations with other
people while at all times avoiding con?ict with them (Barrick &
Mount, 1991; Kristof-Brown et al., 2002). The pleasant and posi-
tive nature of agreeable employees seems likely to positively in-
?uence their supervisors' opinion. Furthermore, agreeable
employees should be more likely to accept task assignments
without questioning and be more ?exible when assigned dif?cult
and unclear tasks. Thus, supervisors should feel more comfortable
asking agreeable employees to engage in activities. They are warm
and responsive to supervisors' requests, which help them to build
positive exchange relationships with managers.
Employees with the personality trait of conscientiousness are
invariably cautious, responsible, persistent, well-organized, and
self-disciplined workers (Goldberg, 1990). Researchers have also
suggested that conscientious individuals tend to avoid digressions
and other impulses to stray off task (Barry & Stewart, 1997). Given
that the tendency of conscientious employees with the tenets of
social exchange, there appears to be good reason to believe that
there exists a relationship between conscientiousness and LMX.
Because LMX relationship is dependent on subordinate compe-
tence, dependability, and achievement (Graen & Scandura, 1987),
employees who are more involved in their work, accomplish work
assignments, and ultimately perform at higher levels, are likely to
be given more resources and support from their supervisors. Social
exchange suggests that employees' receiving resources from su-
pervisor will create a sense of reciprocation obligation (Blau, 1964).
Reciprocation obligation may result in increased loyalty, effort, or
other positive actions and, in turn, is likely to increase the super-
visor's perception of that employee. As the positive cycle continues
to bene?t both the employee and the supervisor, the LMX rela-
tionship is likely to increase. We therefore hypothesize that
Hypothesis 1a: The extraversion of an employee has a positive
association with LMX.
Hypothesis 1b: The agreeableness of an employee has a positive
association with LMX.
Hypothesis 1c: The conscientiousness of an employee has a positive
association with LMX.
2.3. The mediating role of impression management behavior
The various types of impression management behavior are
important tactics for employees seekingto pursue their self-interests,
with the approaches being categorized into either self-focused or
other-focused tactics (Kacmar, Delery, &Ferris, 1992; Rioux &Penner,
2001). Self-focused tactics (i.e., self-promoting utterances, entitle-
ments, enhancements, and overcoming obstacles) are attempts to
showthat one possesses desirable qualities for the job (Kacmar et al.,
1992), which strengthen personal promotion prospects, with such
employees often eulogizing their own accomplishments and capa-
bilities (Stevens & Kristof, 1995); for example, people with these
tactics will often express behaviors such as arriving for work early,
and leaving the of?ce late, while positively describing their experi-
ences andachievements. Bycontrast, the term“other-focusedtactics”
(i.e., other enhancements and opinion conformities) refers to the use
of sycophantic and ingratiating strategies by employees with the aim
of attracting the attention of superiors, such as obvious conformity
with their expressed opinions (Schlenker, 1980).
Scholars of organizational development argue that personality
traits, such as agreeableness and extraversion, are important pre-
dictors of impression management behavior (Delery & Kacmar,
1998; Kristof-Brown et al., 2002). Extraverted employees tend to
have good social skills, higher interpersonal involvement, ambition,
a strong desire for power and a driving need to obtain rewards
(Lorr, 1986; Peabody & Goldberg, 1989); they are, therefore, highly
likely to use a strategy of ingratiating themselves toward their su-
pervisors. Examples include the tactics of opinion conformity
(indirectly ?attering the supervisor by agreeing with him or her)
and other enhancement (directly ?attering the supervisor or or-
ganization with compliments; Kacmar et al., 1992). Thus, in addi-
tion to using other-focused tactics, individuals with such
personality traits are also likely to be well versed in the use of self-
focused tactics because they have a need to talk about their own
attributes and accomplishments during their everyday interper-
sonal interactions (Kristof-Brown et al., 2002; Stevens & Kristof,
1995).
Individuals with an agreeable personality often display higher
levels of socialization and sociability (Digman, 1990; Lorr, 1986),
essentially because they are quite adept at placing other people “at
center stage” or “in the limelight” during everyday interactions;
thus, such employees are very likely to express other-focused
impression management behaviors, such as agreeing with the
opinions of other people and giving favors quite freely. However,
given their concern for the protection and maintenance of their
own image, they may not only tend to agree with the opinions of
others, but may also actively seek to carefully manage themselves
to ensure that they appropriately ?t in with the needs of socio-
cultural situations, often using a rather mediocre way of portraying
any differences they may have. We therefore posit that individuals
characterized as having the trait of “agreeableness” are also likely to
use self-focused impression management strategies.
Individuals who are classi?ed as having the “conscientious” trait
are disciplined, responsible, achievement-oriented, and extremely
dependable and display a desire to be a role model for other em-
ployees (Goldberg, 1990; Hogan & Holland, 2003). They can also
reasonably be expected to be associated with the use of self-
focused impression management behaviors. Individuals with such
a personality trait are very concerned about impressing people
with their strong motivation and devotion to the accomplishment
of their particular role within an organization, involving talking
favorably about one's own accomplishments and painting one's
experiences in a positive light (Van Iddekinge, McFarland, &
Raymark, 2007). The conscientiousness of an employee is often
associated with the use of other-focused impression management
behaviors (Hurtz & Donnovan, 2000). Those conscientious em-
ployees, who are regarded as aggressive, hard working, and self-
demanding, are seen not only as carrying out their roles well, and
thereby meeting the expectations of their managers, but are also
associated with actively helping managers and co-workers to gain a
positive impression; Examples include the tactics of opinion con-
formity (indirectly ?attering the interviewer by agreeing with him
or her) and other enhancement (directly ?attering the interviewer
or organization with compliments; Kacmar et al., 1992).
Employees use various types of impression management
behavior to in?uence their managers with the aim of obtaining
rewards and opportunities for future promotion. By contrast,
managers will invariably attempt to classify the different types of
behavior of employees within a cognitive framework; thus, during
their interactions with employees, managers are continually look-
ing for the appropriate salient factors to map out their cognition
framework, while employees will try to adapt their behavior to ?t
into this framework (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). Even when their real
intentions are for their own interests, the impression management
L.-C. Weng, W.-C. Chang / Asia Paci?c Management Review 20 (2015) 2e10 4
behavior adopted by employees can also succeed in in?uencing the
LMX relationship, and as such, these interactions may reveal
several attributes of relationship building.
First, managers may well interpret impression management
behavior as a social lubricant in the machinery of the organization
(Nguyen, Seers, & Hartman, 2008); however, impression manage-
ment behavior may also lead to the construction of positive, but
spurious, LMX relationship, leading to the erroneous selection of
members of the “in” group (Bolino, 1999).
Second, the formation of LMX relationship through the use of
impression management behavior is an extremely time-consuming
process, with such a process of relationship building essentially
hinging upon long-term interpersonal interactions, mutual
learning, and accommodation. Therefore, despite the fact that such
relationship building is the result of impression management
behavior by employees, positive relationships of emotional
bonding will nevertheless still be produced during this interaction
process.
Third, when positive LMX relationship is established, relational
contracts may be formed between supervisors and subordinates
(Rousseau, 1995), with the escalation of such contracts being ach-
ieved through reciprocal process. It will invariably result in differ-
entiated relationship between members of the “in” and “out”
groups; and indeed, once established, membership of the “in”
group will remain stable and develop smoothly (Dienesch & Liden,
1986). We therefore hypothesize that
Hypothesis 2a: Impression management behavior mediates the
positive relationship between the extraversion of an employee and
LMX.
Hypothesis 2b: Impression management behavior mediates the
positive relationship between the agreeableness of an employee
and LMX.
Hypothesis 2c: Impression management behavior mediates the
positive relationship between the conscientiousness of an employee
and LMX.
2.4. Cross-level interaction effects of group cohesiveness
Many management scholars argued that group cohesiveness is a
meaningful group-level construct for scholars' examining organi-
zational behavior and practitioners' employee management (Van
Dyne, Cummings, & Parks, 1995). Group cohesiveness stimulates
group members to place effort in the pursuit of collective organi-
zational goals (Widmeyer, Brawley, & Carron, 1992). If the atmo-
sphere within a particular group is characterized as warm, caring,
friendly, supportive, cooperative, and reciprocal, then the members
of that group are likely to demonstrate strong commitment to the
goals of the organization. Because group cohesiveness stimulates
group members to create strong social exchange relationships,
facilitate information exchange between themselves and their
leaders, and help produce citizenship behavior, in the current
study, we argued that group cohesiveness functions like a
discriminative mechanism, which could lessen the effects of
impression management behavior.
Group cohesiveness exercises moderating effects on impression
management behavioreLMX relationship in major three ways.
First, Shin and Park (2009) argued that restraining or controlling
factors could be broken inside personalities. They demonstrated
that individual's behavior can be restrained and focused to a certain
degree if they belong to groups with strong ties. In business situ-
ations, personal characteristics could be restrained and concen-
trated when members belong to cohesive groups. Employees'
behavior in a cohesive group would be con?ned by other members
due to strong social ties. Consequently, group cohesiveness would
curtail the effects of impression management behavior on the LMX
relationship.
Second, social capital formed in a cohesive group would facilitate
cooperation and increase mutual dependence in groups (Putnam,
1993). The term “social capital” is described as an investment in
social relations with expected returns in the marketplace (Lin, 2001).
It was assumed that members in highly cohesive groups are willing
to share their resources and information with others due to mutual
trust, respect, and obligations (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). Thus, group
cohesiveness helps information sharing and develops mutual
understating among group members, and in turn weakens the ef-
fects of impression management behavior on LMX.
Third, group members are also likely to demonstrate a willing-
ness to accept the in?uences of group cohesiveness, essentially as a
result of their desire to maintain a homeostatic balance between
the organizational atmosphere and their own psychological envi-
ronment (Brief & Motowidlo, 1986), because it is important for
individuals to maintain their psychological well-being by control-
ling their own resources, such as dignity (Gorgievski-Duijvesteijn,
Bakker, Schaufeli, & Van der Heijden, 2005). Group members
with higher levels of cohesion will tend to actively communicate
and provide support for each other; in other words, it will be easier
for group members to recognize those with a tendency to use
impression management behavior within such groups. Group
cohesiveness can help to build shared norms of an institutional
nature (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) to weaken the effects of
impression management behavior among group members, because
the characteristics of all group members are more easily observed
from the daily social interactions between them. Hence, group
cohesiveness would be a moderator in the impression management
behavioreLMX relationship. We therefore hypothesize
Hypothesis 3. The positive relationship between impression man-
agement behavior and LMX is moderated by group cohesiveness
such that the relationship will be stronger (weaker) when group
cohesiveness is low (high).
3. Method
3.1. Participants and procedures
The research setting in this study was 23 branches of Taiwan
Cooperative Bank in the central Taiwan area. The bank, a former
Taiwan Industrial Bank in Japanese colonial period, was established
in 1945 by Taiwan provincial government. By the end of 2011, the
capitalization stood at US$2 billion. In recent years, however, with
the increasing competition from diverse ?nancial institutions, the
bank has undergone signi?cant changes and has shifted their
?nancial services from corporate banking to personal banking and
wealth management services. As a result, employees are urged to
exhibit superior customer service for performance evaluation and
are also predisposed to manage relationship with their supervisors
for future career consideration. The research setting matches strong
sample relevance (Sackett & Larson, 1990).
To avoid the common method bias (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee,
& Podsakoff, 2003), we followed the procedure suggested by
Scott and Bruce (1994) and divided the questionnaire into two
parts: a manager questionnaire in which impression management
behavior was evaluated, and an employee questionnaire, in which
their personality traits, group cohesiveness, and LMX were
measured. The data-collection procedure was as follows.
First, we contacted branch managers through telephone calls
and e-mails, and invited them to distribute questionnaires. We
dispatched questionnaires on a one-branch-one-package basis.
L.-C. Weng, W.-C. Chang / Asia Paci?c Management Review 20 (2015) 2e10 5
Each package contained one copy of the manager questionnaire and
12 copies of the employee questionnaire. The manager was asked to
evaluate up to 12 subordinates in the branch. One-manager-each-
branch basis was used; 23 managers responded, and none of
them was from the same branch. The criteria for selecting re-
spondents were bank clerks who have direct contacts with cus-
tomers. Judging from the scale of each bank, most ?rst-line
employees were chosen. A number code was used for each subor-
dinate so that we could match the manager's evaluation data with
those of the subordinate. The employees were not made aware that
their managers were evaluating them. To ensure anonymity, no
names were required in any part of the questionnaire and they
were informed that all responses would be kept con?dential.
Finally, two phone reminders were sent: one after 3 weeks and the
other after 4 weeks. To encourage participation, every participant
was sent a little souvenir as a gesture of appreciation.
Our ?nal sample of respondents comprised a total of 228 bank
clerks from 23 branches of the Taiwanese commercial bank; the
demographic characteristics of our study sample are as follows: The
average group size in this study was 10 [standard deviation (SD) ¼
2.20], which was well above the minimum criterion of three
(Carron & Spink, 1995). Most of the study participants were female
(65.4%), with a mean age of 40.64 (SD¼8.12) and mean working
experience of 75.75 months (SD¼52.35).
3.2. Measures
Personality traits. The “mini-marker” of Saucier (1994) was
applied in this study to measure the “big ?ve” personality types.
This is a brief version of Goldberg's Unipolar Personality Inventory
containing 40 adjectives (such as “bashful”) with the Cronbach a for
each adjective exceeding 0.35, and the overall reliability reaching
0.78; we adopted the Chinese version from Lin and Chiou (1999).
The measure used was a 6-point Likert scale with response options
ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). Among the
items, numbers 5, 6, 7, 8, 13, 14, 15, 16, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 39, and
40 were reversed wording (such as ‘fretful’). The Cronbach a (reli-
ability) was 0.86 for extraversion, 0.91 for agreeableness, and 0.86
for conscientiousness.
Impression management behavior. The presence and level of
impression management behavior are assessed in the present study
using the Wayne and Liden (1995) Subordinate Reports of
Impression Management scale; this scale measures the two types of
assertive impression management tactics, consisting of self-
focused and other-focused behavior. This is a 10-item scale,
which includes statements such as “You let your supervisor know
that you try to do a good job in your work,” with the response
options ranging from1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). The
Cronbach a for the impression management scale was 0.91.
LMX. We assessed LMX using the Graen and Uhl-Bien (1995)
LMX Scale (LMX-7). This is a seven-item scale, which includes
questions such as “How well does your leader know your prob-
lems?” and “How well does your leader recognize your potential?”
The response options ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6
(strongly agree), and the Cronbach a for this scale was 0.93.
Group cohesiveness. Group cohesiveness represents a referent-
shift consensus construct (Chan, 1998; Kozlowski & Klein, 2000).
This was measured in this study using the Dobbins and Zaccaro
(1986) eight-item scale, which includes statements such as “The
members of my group get along well together” and “There is little
dissention in the group,” with the response options ranging from 1
(strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). The Cronbach a for this
scale was 0.92.
The lower-level (individual) evaluations obtained in this study
were based on prior consensus to either form, or shift to, a new
construct, which was distinct from a construct originally derived at
individual level (Chan, 1998). However, before such cross-level
analysis, there is a need to check the presence of group-level ef-
fects (Bliese, 2000). The r
wg
score for group cohesiveness in the
present study was 0.71, whereas the ICC(1) score was 0.21 and the
ICC(2) score was 0.71. Because all of these values are found to be
consistent with the acceptable range of values suggested within the
extant literature, these are applied as the measures of group
cohesiveness in the present study.
3.3. Control variables
Controls are provided in the present study for age, gender
(0 ¼female; 1 ¼male), organization tenure (months), and tenure
with the current supervisor (months). The last two controls, orga-
nizational tenure and tenure with current supervisor, were calcu-
lated to avoid any potential confounding effects on the dependent
variables (Kamdar & Van Dyne, 2007).
4. Results
The means, standard deviations, and variable correlations for
the study variables are presented in Table 1, fromwhich we can see
that most of the correlations are within 0.00e0.55. Therefore, the
correlations between the variables are acceptable.
4.1. Con?rmatory factor analyses
Various con?rmatory factor analyses are carried out in this
study to determine whether our multi-item variables of extraver-
sion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, impression management
behavior, and group cohesiveness are suf?ciently distinct fromeach
other. These analyses reveal that the ?t displayed by the proposed
?ve-factor model is perfectly acceptable [c
2
¼620.34, df ¼367,
p
In this present study, we propose a multilevel research framework within which we identify personality
traits as the primary source of the positive influence on leaderemember exchange (LMX) through the
mechanism of impression management behavior. Data are obtained from 23 branches of a large commercial
bank in central Taiwan, with the samples collected from both managers and employees forming
228 managereemployee dyads, and thereby avoiding common method variance. Our results reveal that
personality traits have significantly positive effects on LMX, with impression management behavior also
playing a mediating role between them. Interestingly, we also find that group cohesiveness moderates
the relationship between impression management behavior and LMX. Our study includes a discussion of
the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.
Does impression management really help? A multilevel testing of the mediation
role of impression management between personality traits and leaderemember
exchange
Liang-Chieh Weng
a, *
, Wen-Ching Chang
b
a
Department of International Business, Providence University, No. 200, Sec. 7, Taiwan Boulevard, Taichung, Taiwan, ROC
b
Department of Business Administration, Providence University, Taichung, Taiwan, ROC
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 16 December 2012
Accepted 7 March 2013
Available online 9 March 2015
Keywords:
Group cohesiveness
Hierarchical linear modeling
Impression management
Leaderemember exchange
Personality traits
a b s t r a c t
In this present study, we propose a multilevel research framework within which we identify personality
traits as the primary source of the positive in?uence on leaderemember exchange (LMX) through the
mechanism of impression management behavior. Data are obtained from 23 branches of a large com-
mercial bank in central Taiwan, with the samples collected from both managers and employees forming
228 managereemployee dyads, and thereby avoiding common method variance. Our results reveal that
personality traits have signi?cantly positive effects on LMX, with impression management behavior also
playing a mediating role between them. Interestingly, we also ?nd that group cohesiveness moderates
the relationship between impression management behavior and LMX. Our study includes a discussion of
the theoretical and practical implications of our ?ndings.
© 2015 College of Management, National Cheng Kung University. Production and hosting by Elsevier
Taiwan LLC. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Leaderemember exchange (LMX) is widely conceptualized as a
series of dyadic interactions between managers and employees
(Dienesch & Liden, 1986). Prior studies identi?ed that employees
with high LMX relationship with their supervisors receive a num-
ber of advantages and bene?ts, such as future opportunities for
promotion and career development (Dienesch &Liden, 1986; Liden,
Wayne, & Sparrowe, 2000), compared to their counterparts with
lowLMX relationship. Given the importance of LMX relationship on
employee's future career development, an interesting issue with
regard to LMX is the way in which managers might succeed in
choosing the right people to enter the “in” group (Yang, 2000).
Because superior LMX relationships in?uence manager's succes-
sion management and employees' future career development, we
provide a theoretical framework to discuss the individual and
organizational factors that might affect LMX relationship.
In this present study, we identify personality traits as crucial
factors to in?uence the quality of LMX. Although LMX has drawn
considerable attention in recent years, there is little evidence of
personal attributes associated with these relationships (Bernerth,
Armenakis, Feild, Giles, & Walker, 2007; Phillips & Bedeian, 1994),
because prior studies mainly focused on the in?uences of de-
mographic variables on LMX relationship (Deluga, 1998; Gerstner &
Day, 1997; Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). Therefore, if our knowledge of
theLMXrelationshipandits formationis toadvance, further research
is needed on the antecedents associated with the LMX quality.
Despite the growing number of studies in recent years on
impression management, two questions still remain. First, in
particular, how employees' personality traits in?uence impression
management behavior and the mediating processes through which
impression management behavior affects organizational outcomes
is still not clear (Gilmore, Stevens, Harrell-Cook, & Ferris, 1999;
Kristof-Brown, Barrick, & Franke, 2002). Second, although interests
in the in?uence of personality traits on employee behavior are
escalating, research relating to individual personality traits on
impression management behavior has been scarce. An important
contribution of the current study is that it is among the ?rst to
attempt to examine how particular personalities in?uence
impression management behavior, and how this behavior affects
subsequent LMX relationship.
* Corresponding author. Department of International Business, Providence Uni-
versity, Taiwan.
E-mail address: [email protected] (L.-C. Weng).
Peer review under responsibility of College of Management, National Cheng
Kung University.
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Asia Paci?c Management Review 20 (2015) 2e10
Organizational scholars have long advocated a multilevel
approach to unveil the richness and dynamics of various types of
social behavior across different organizational levels; that is, they
argue that the in?uences of both group and individual factors
should be taken into consideration (Hitt, Beamish, Jackson, &
Mathieu, 2007). However, there appears to be only a handful of
studies that integrated both dispositional and contextual variables
with the relationship between personality traits and LMX quality.
In the present study, we examined the moderating role of group
cohesiveness, a group-level phenomenon within which members
are instilled with a desire to remain within the group and actively
participate in group activities (Shaw, 1981). We also suggest that
group cohesiveness is a discriminative mechanism, which neu-
tralizes the effect of impression management behavior on LMX
quality.
We set out in this study to respond to this gap in the literature by
examining the extent to which the LMX relationship is in?uenced
by individual personality traits through impression management
behavior. We also examine the relationship between impression
management behavior and LMX, alongside the moderating role of
group cohesiveness. We begin by developing our theoretical model
in the next section, establishing personality traits as a primary
determinant of LMX relationship at the individual level. We then go
on to discuss the role of impression management behavior in
linking the two variables, and further discuss the moderating role
of group cohesiveness. An overview of our research framework is
provided in Fig. 1.
2. Theoretical overview and hypothesis
2.1. LMX relationship
The theoretical foundation for LMX is grounded in social ex-
change theory, which postulates that relationship ties can in?uence
the interactions between individuals and other members within an
organization (Blau, 1964). Blau suggested that the purpose of
interpersonal relationship ties is to achieve greater reciprocity in
the future. LMX refers to the interpersonal exchange relationship
between an employee and his or her manager (Graen & Uhl-Bien,
1995). The quality of the relationships between leader and mem-
bers determines the amount of mental effort, information, and
social support that are exchanged between leader and follower
(Liden et al., 2000). Thus, subordinates interact frequently with
their leaders and obtain their leaders' trust, support, and encour-
agement, and they receive added duties and expend extra effort to
achieve organizational goals beyond contractual expectations
(Sparrowe & Liden, 1997).
Studies indicated that LMX has three distinct characteristics.
First of all, such relationships are based on trust, loyalty, and mutual
commitment, all of which are based on af?nity to, and faith in,
persons with whom exchanges are made (Cropanzano & Mitchell,
2005). Second, relationship building among group members is a
time-consuming process, and one which is heavily reliant on
mutual learning and accommodation; however, the cultivation of
faith in their managers is a similarly time-consuming process, and
one which also requires mutual accommodation to establish
interpersonal relationships.
Third, there will invariably be signi?cant changes in relation-
ships over time; that is to say, although the development of an
exchange relationship usually begins with strangers, such re-
lationships can then progress to acquaintances, and then further
still to partnerships (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). In other words, there
is a natural tendency for LMX to be unequally distributed among
group members. There may therefore be considerable differences
between attitudes, loyalty, and commitment to work for those who
are regarded as being part of the “in” group, as compared with
those in the “out” group, as well as differences in the level of trust
that exists between certain group members and their managers
(Cheng, 1995). Members of the “in” group will often tend to have
higher-level exchange relationships, whereas the exchange re-
lationships of those in the “out” group are invariably found to be at
a much lower level.
2.2. Personality traits and LMX
Although this theoretical accumulation is important to our
overall understanding of LMX, there is little evidence of personal
attributes associated with these relationships (Phillips & Bedeian,
1994). Investigation of personality traits and LMX are important
for two theoretical reasons. First, although the personal charac-
teristics of subordinates have been cited as important antecedents
on LMX (Dienesch & Liden, 1986), scholars devote rare attention
beyond demographic characteristics. Thus, we try to answer this
call of a number of researchers (e.g. Barry & Stewart, 1997; Bauer &
Green, 1996; Deluga, 1998; Smith & Canger, 2004) to move beyond
the exploration of demographic variables in the formation of LMX.
Second, dispositional antecedents can help explain whether in-
dividuals develop exchange relationships (i.e., the super-
visoresubordinate relationship) in a consistent and steady manner
because personality traits are stable and LMX is the essence be-
tween two individuals (Bernerth et al., 2007).
Researchers postulate that personalities determine the ways in
which people behave (Lievens, Chasteen, Day, &Christiansen, 2006).
It is also suggested that personality traits are crucial elements of the
formation of LMX relationship. In this study, three of the big ?ve
personality variables are examined: agreeableness, conscientious-
ness, and extraversion. These three constructs were chosen based on
the distinctiveness of the variables, the fact that each has been
shown to be a powerful and important predictor (e.g., Hogan &
Holland, 2003; Judge & Ilies, 2002), and the overall breadth of as-
sociation with the formation of LMX relationship (Deluga, 1998) and
impression management behavior (Kristof-Brown et al., 2002).
We argue that personalities such as agreeableness, conscien-
tiousness, and extraversion are important elements in the devel-
opment of LMX relationship. Employees with extraversion
personality are highly energetic and aggressive, with a strong
desire for material things, reputation, social recognition, and power
(Costa & McCrae, 1992; Digman, 1990). Extraverted employees also
have a desire to interact with other people, pursue newand exciting
things, and obtain rewards (Lucas, Diener, Grob, Suh, &Shao, 2000).
Phillips and Bedeian (1994) suggested that extraverted employees
are more likely to seek new experiences, which may lead them to
seek more dif?cult or challenging task assignments resulting in
more trust and admiration by supervisors. In other words, extra-
verted employees have a strong need to build up positive exchange
relationship with their managers by pursuing novel and chal-
lenging tasks, thereby enabling them to achieve reputation and
recognition by their leaders.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Individual level
Group level
Personality traits
-Agreeableness
-Conscientiousness
-Extraversion
Impression management behavior LMX
Group cohesiveness
Fig. 1. Research framework. LMX ¼leaderemember exchange.
L.-C. Weng, W.-C. Chang / Asia Paci?c Management Review 20 (2015) 2e10 3
The personality trait of agreeableness refers to the tendency for
individuals to get along with other people (McCrae & Costa, 1991)
and achieve interpersonal intimacy (Judge, Heller, & Mount, 2002).
Likewise, Buss (1991) suggests agreeableness is an important factor
in the ability to form reciprocal social alliances. Agreeable people
will tend to be warm, polite, altruistic, and sympathetic, with a
strong desire to engage in harmonious associations with other
people while at all times avoiding con?ict with them (Barrick &
Mount, 1991; Kristof-Brown et al., 2002). The pleasant and posi-
tive nature of agreeable employees seems likely to positively in-
?uence their supervisors' opinion. Furthermore, agreeable
employees should be more likely to accept task assignments
without questioning and be more ?exible when assigned dif?cult
and unclear tasks. Thus, supervisors should feel more comfortable
asking agreeable employees to engage in activities. They are warm
and responsive to supervisors' requests, which help them to build
positive exchange relationships with managers.
Employees with the personality trait of conscientiousness are
invariably cautious, responsible, persistent, well-organized, and
self-disciplined workers (Goldberg, 1990). Researchers have also
suggested that conscientious individuals tend to avoid digressions
and other impulses to stray off task (Barry & Stewart, 1997). Given
that the tendency of conscientious employees with the tenets of
social exchange, there appears to be good reason to believe that
there exists a relationship between conscientiousness and LMX.
Because LMX relationship is dependent on subordinate compe-
tence, dependability, and achievement (Graen & Scandura, 1987),
employees who are more involved in their work, accomplish work
assignments, and ultimately perform at higher levels, are likely to
be given more resources and support from their supervisors. Social
exchange suggests that employees' receiving resources from su-
pervisor will create a sense of reciprocation obligation (Blau, 1964).
Reciprocation obligation may result in increased loyalty, effort, or
other positive actions and, in turn, is likely to increase the super-
visor's perception of that employee. As the positive cycle continues
to bene?t both the employee and the supervisor, the LMX rela-
tionship is likely to increase. We therefore hypothesize that
Hypothesis 1a: The extraversion of an employee has a positive
association with LMX.
Hypothesis 1b: The agreeableness of an employee has a positive
association with LMX.
Hypothesis 1c: The conscientiousness of an employee has a positive
association with LMX.
2.3. The mediating role of impression management behavior
The various types of impression management behavior are
important tactics for employees seekingto pursue their self-interests,
with the approaches being categorized into either self-focused or
other-focused tactics (Kacmar, Delery, &Ferris, 1992; Rioux &Penner,
2001). Self-focused tactics (i.e., self-promoting utterances, entitle-
ments, enhancements, and overcoming obstacles) are attempts to
showthat one possesses desirable qualities for the job (Kacmar et al.,
1992), which strengthen personal promotion prospects, with such
employees often eulogizing their own accomplishments and capa-
bilities (Stevens & Kristof, 1995); for example, people with these
tactics will often express behaviors such as arriving for work early,
and leaving the of?ce late, while positively describing their experi-
ences andachievements. Bycontrast, the term“other-focusedtactics”
(i.e., other enhancements and opinion conformities) refers to the use
of sycophantic and ingratiating strategies by employees with the aim
of attracting the attention of superiors, such as obvious conformity
with their expressed opinions (Schlenker, 1980).
Scholars of organizational development argue that personality
traits, such as agreeableness and extraversion, are important pre-
dictors of impression management behavior (Delery & Kacmar,
1998; Kristof-Brown et al., 2002). Extraverted employees tend to
have good social skills, higher interpersonal involvement, ambition,
a strong desire for power and a driving need to obtain rewards
(Lorr, 1986; Peabody & Goldberg, 1989); they are, therefore, highly
likely to use a strategy of ingratiating themselves toward their su-
pervisors. Examples include the tactics of opinion conformity
(indirectly ?attering the supervisor by agreeing with him or her)
and other enhancement (directly ?attering the supervisor or or-
ganization with compliments; Kacmar et al., 1992). Thus, in addi-
tion to using other-focused tactics, individuals with such
personality traits are also likely to be well versed in the use of self-
focused tactics because they have a need to talk about their own
attributes and accomplishments during their everyday interper-
sonal interactions (Kristof-Brown et al., 2002; Stevens & Kristof,
1995).
Individuals with an agreeable personality often display higher
levels of socialization and sociability (Digman, 1990; Lorr, 1986),
essentially because they are quite adept at placing other people “at
center stage” or “in the limelight” during everyday interactions;
thus, such employees are very likely to express other-focused
impression management behaviors, such as agreeing with the
opinions of other people and giving favors quite freely. However,
given their concern for the protection and maintenance of their
own image, they may not only tend to agree with the opinions of
others, but may also actively seek to carefully manage themselves
to ensure that they appropriately ?t in with the needs of socio-
cultural situations, often using a rather mediocre way of portraying
any differences they may have. We therefore posit that individuals
characterized as having the trait of “agreeableness” are also likely to
use self-focused impression management strategies.
Individuals who are classi?ed as having the “conscientious” trait
are disciplined, responsible, achievement-oriented, and extremely
dependable and display a desire to be a role model for other em-
ployees (Goldberg, 1990; Hogan & Holland, 2003). They can also
reasonably be expected to be associated with the use of self-
focused impression management behaviors. Individuals with such
a personality trait are very concerned about impressing people
with their strong motivation and devotion to the accomplishment
of their particular role within an organization, involving talking
favorably about one's own accomplishments and painting one's
experiences in a positive light (Van Iddekinge, McFarland, &
Raymark, 2007). The conscientiousness of an employee is often
associated with the use of other-focused impression management
behaviors (Hurtz & Donnovan, 2000). Those conscientious em-
ployees, who are regarded as aggressive, hard working, and self-
demanding, are seen not only as carrying out their roles well, and
thereby meeting the expectations of their managers, but are also
associated with actively helping managers and co-workers to gain a
positive impression; Examples include the tactics of opinion con-
formity (indirectly ?attering the interviewer by agreeing with him
or her) and other enhancement (directly ?attering the interviewer
or organization with compliments; Kacmar et al., 1992).
Employees use various types of impression management
behavior to in?uence their managers with the aim of obtaining
rewards and opportunities for future promotion. By contrast,
managers will invariably attempt to classify the different types of
behavior of employees within a cognitive framework; thus, during
their interactions with employees, managers are continually look-
ing for the appropriate salient factors to map out their cognition
framework, while employees will try to adapt their behavior to ?t
into this framework (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). Even when their real
intentions are for their own interests, the impression management
L.-C. Weng, W.-C. Chang / Asia Paci?c Management Review 20 (2015) 2e10 4
behavior adopted by employees can also succeed in in?uencing the
LMX relationship, and as such, these interactions may reveal
several attributes of relationship building.
First, managers may well interpret impression management
behavior as a social lubricant in the machinery of the organization
(Nguyen, Seers, & Hartman, 2008); however, impression manage-
ment behavior may also lead to the construction of positive, but
spurious, LMX relationship, leading to the erroneous selection of
members of the “in” group (Bolino, 1999).
Second, the formation of LMX relationship through the use of
impression management behavior is an extremely time-consuming
process, with such a process of relationship building essentially
hinging upon long-term interpersonal interactions, mutual
learning, and accommodation. Therefore, despite the fact that such
relationship building is the result of impression management
behavior by employees, positive relationships of emotional
bonding will nevertheless still be produced during this interaction
process.
Third, when positive LMX relationship is established, relational
contracts may be formed between supervisors and subordinates
(Rousseau, 1995), with the escalation of such contracts being ach-
ieved through reciprocal process. It will invariably result in differ-
entiated relationship between members of the “in” and “out”
groups; and indeed, once established, membership of the “in”
group will remain stable and develop smoothly (Dienesch & Liden,
1986). We therefore hypothesize that
Hypothesis 2a: Impression management behavior mediates the
positive relationship between the extraversion of an employee and
LMX.
Hypothesis 2b: Impression management behavior mediates the
positive relationship between the agreeableness of an employee
and LMX.
Hypothesis 2c: Impression management behavior mediates the
positive relationship between the conscientiousness of an employee
and LMX.
2.4. Cross-level interaction effects of group cohesiveness
Many management scholars argued that group cohesiveness is a
meaningful group-level construct for scholars' examining organi-
zational behavior and practitioners' employee management (Van
Dyne, Cummings, & Parks, 1995). Group cohesiveness stimulates
group members to place effort in the pursuit of collective organi-
zational goals (Widmeyer, Brawley, & Carron, 1992). If the atmo-
sphere within a particular group is characterized as warm, caring,
friendly, supportive, cooperative, and reciprocal, then the members
of that group are likely to demonstrate strong commitment to the
goals of the organization. Because group cohesiveness stimulates
group members to create strong social exchange relationships,
facilitate information exchange between themselves and their
leaders, and help produce citizenship behavior, in the current
study, we argued that group cohesiveness functions like a
discriminative mechanism, which could lessen the effects of
impression management behavior.
Group cohesiveness exercises moderating effects on impression
management behavioreLMX relationship in major three ways.
First, Shin and Park (2009) argued that restraining or controlling
factors could be broken inside personalities. They demonstrated
that individual's behavior can be restrained and focused to a certain
degree if they belong to groups with strong ties. In business situ-
ations, personal characteristics could be restrained and concen-
trated when members belong to cohesive groups. Employees'
behavior in a cohesive group would be con?ned by other members
due to strong social ties. Consequently, group cohesiveness would
curtail the effects of impression management behavior on the LMX
relationship.
Second, social capital formed in a cohesive group would facilitate
cooperation and increase mutual dependence in groups (Putnam,
1993). The term “social capital” is described as an investment in
social relations with expected returns in the marketplace (Lin, 2001).
It was assumed that members in highly cohesive groups are willing
to share their resources and information with others due to mutual
trust, respect, and obligations (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). Thus, group
cohesiveness helps information sharing and develops mutual
understating among group members, and in turn weakens the ef-
fects of impression management behavior on LMX.
Third, group members are also likely to demonstrate a willing-
ness to accept the in?uences of group cohesiveness, essentially as a
result of their desire to maintain a homeostatic balance between
the organizational atmosphere and their own psychological envi-
ronment (Brief & Motowidlo, 1986), because it is important for
individuals to maintain their psychological well-being by control-
ling their own resources, such as dignity (Gorgievski-Duijvesteijn,
Bakker, Schaufeli, & Van der Heijden, 2005). Group members
with higher levels of cohesion will tend to actively communicate
and provide support for each other; in other words, it will be easier
for group members to recognize those with a tendency to use
impression management behavior within such groups. Group
cohesiveness can help to build shared norms of an institutional
nature (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) to weaken the effects of
impression management behavior among group members, because
the characteristics of all group members are more easily observed
from the daily social interactions between them. Hence, group
cohesiveness would be a moderator in the impression management
behavioreLMX relationship. We therefore hypothesize
Hypothesis 3. The positive relationship between impression man-
agement behavior and LMX is moderated by group cohesiveness
such that the relationship will be stronger (weaker) when group
cohesiveness is low (high).
3. Method
3.1. Participants and procedures
The research setting in this study was 23 branches of Taiwan
Cooperative Bank in the central Taiwan area. The bank, a former
Taiwan Industrial Bank in Japanese colonial period, was established
in 1945 by Taiwan provincial government. By the end of 2011, the
capitalization stood at US$2 billion. In recent years, however, with
the increasing competition from diverse ?nancial institutions, the
bank has undergone signi?cant changes and has shifted their
?nancial services from corporate banking to personal banking and
wealth management services. As a result, employees are urged to
exhibit superior customer service for performance evaluation and
are also predisposed to manage relationship with their supervisors
for future career consideration. The research setting matches strong
sample relevance (Sackett & Larson, 1990).
To avoid the common method bias (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee,
& Podsakoff, 2003), we followed the procedure suggested by
Scott and Bruce (1994) and divided the questionnaire into two
parts: a manager questionnaire in which impression management
behavior was evaluated, and an employee questionnaire, in which
their personality traits, group cohesiveness, and LMX were
measured. The data-collection procedure was as follows.
First, we contacted branch managers through telephone calls
and e-mails, and invited them to distribute questionnaires. We
dispatched questionnaires on a one-branch-one-package basis.
L.-C. Weng, W.-C. Chang / Asia Paci?c Management Review 20 (2015) 2e10 5
Each package contained one copy of the manager questionnaire and
12 copies of the employee questionnaire. The manager was asked to
evaluate up to 12 subordinates in the branch. One-manager-each-
branch basis was used; 23 managers responded, and none of
them was from the same branch. The criteria for selecting re-
spondents were bank clerks who have direct contacts with cus-
tomers. Judging from the scale of each bank, most ?rst-line
employees were chosen. A number code was used for each subor-
dinate so that we could match the manager's evaluation data with
those of the subordinate. The employees were not made aware that
their managers were evaluating them. To ensure anonymity, no
names were required in any part of the questionnaire and they
were informed that all responses would be kept con?dential.
Finally, two phone reminders were sent: one after 3 weeks and the
other after 4 weeks. To encourage participation, every participant
was sent a little souvenir as a gesture of appreciation.
Our ?nal sample of respondents comprised a total of 228 bank
clerks from 23 branches of the Taiwanese commercial bank; the
demographic characteristics of our study sample are as follows: The
average group size in this study was 10 [standard deviation (SD) ¼
2.20], which was well above the minimum criterion of three
(Carron & Spink, 1995). Most of the study participants were female
(65.4%), with a mean age of 40.64 (SD¼8.12) and mean working
experience of 75.75 months (SD¼52.35).
3.2. Measures
Personality traits. The “mini-marker” of Saucier (1994) was
applied in this study to measure the “big ?ve” personality types.
This is a brief version of Goldberg's Unipolar Personality Inventory
containing 40 adjectives (such as “bashful”) with the Cronbach a for
each adjective exceeding 0.35, and the overall reliability reaching
0.78; we adopted the Chinese version from Lin and Chiou (1999).
The measure used was a 6-point Likert scale with response options
ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). Among the
items, numbers 5, 6, 7, 8, 13, 14, 15, 16, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 39, and
40 were reversed wording (such as ‘fretful’). The Cronbach a (reli-
ability) was 0.86 for extraversion, 0.91 for agreeableness, and 0.86
for conscientiousness.
Impression management behavior. The presence and level of
impression management behavior are assessed in the present study
using the Wayne and Liden (1995) Subordinate Reports of
Impression Management scale; this scale measures the two types of
assertive impression management tactics, consisting of self-
focused and other-focused behavior. This is a 10-item scale,
which includes statements such as “You let your supervisor know
that you try to do a good job in your work,” with the response
options ranging from1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). The
Cronbach a for the impression management scale was 0.91.
LMX. We assessed LMX using the Graen and Uhl-Bien (1995)
LMX Scale (LMX-7). This is a seven-item scale, which includes
questions such as “How well does your leader know your prob-
lems?” and “How well does your leader recognize your potential?”
The response options ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6
(strongly agree), and the Cronbach a for this scale was 0.93.
Group cohesiveness. Group cohesiveness represents a referent-
shift consensus construct (Chan, 1998; Kozlowski & Klein, 2000).
This was measured in this study using the Dobbins and Zaccaro
(1986) eight-item scale, which includes statements such as “The
members of my group get along well together” and “There is little
dissention in the group,” with the response options ranging from 1
(strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). The Cronbach a for this
scale was 0.92.
The lower-level (individual) evaluations obtained in this study
were based on prior consensus to either form, or shift to, a new
construct, which was distinct from a construct originally derived at
individual level (Chan, 1998). However, before such cross-level
analysis, there is a need to check the presence of group-level ef-
fects (Bliese, 2000). The r
wg
score for group cohesiveness in the
present study was 0.71, whereas the ICC(1) score was 0.21 and the
ICC(2) score was 0.71. Because all of these values are found to be
consistent with the acceptable range of values suggested within the
extant literature, these are applied as the measures of group
cohesiveness in the present study.
3.3. Control variables
Controls are provided in the present study for age, gender
(0 ¼female; 1 ¼male), organization tenure (months), and tenure
with the current supervisor (months). The last two controls, orga-
nizational tenure and tenure with current supervisor, were calcu-
lated to avoid any potential confounding effects on the dependent
variables (Kamdar & Van Dyne, 2007).
4. Results
The means, standard deviations, and variable correlations for
the study variables are presented in Table 1, fromwhich we can see
that most of the correlations are within 0.00e0.55. Therefore, the
correlations between the variables are acceptable.
4.1. Con?rmatory factor analyses
Various con?rmatory factor analyses are carried out in this
study to determine whether our multi-item variables of extraver-
sion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, impression management
behavior, and group cohesiveness are suf?ciently distinct fromeach
other. These analyses reveal that the ?t displayed by the proposed
?ve-factor model is perfectly acceptable [c
2
¼620.34, df ¼367,
p