A Taxonomy of Organizational Impression Management Tactics

INTRODUCTION As the information highway makes ever increasing inroads through the internet into our homes and offices, thousands of commercial, academic, and government organizations have discovered a new medium for conveying information about their products, services, and achievements to interested parties world wide (Cronin, 1994). However, computer-mediated promotions are just the latest manifestation of organizational efforts to favorably shape their organizations' impressions. More conventional media and presentations include: 1) corporate advertising (Sethi, 1977), 2), glossy annual reports (Smilowitz and Pearson, 1989), 3) well orchestrated pseudo-events that promote organizational achievements and are covered by the mass media (Alvesson, 1990), and 4), and concerted efforts at following image-threatening predicaments (Dutton and Dukerich, 1991; Ginzel, Kramer, and Sutton, 1992). While the circumstances and purposes for which these presentations are used clearly vary, each represents a means whereby organizations attempt to manage the impressions they make on key audiences. Organizational leaders and representatives engage in because they believe such behavior will improve the organization's relations with key constituencies. Indeed, as Pfeffer (1981, p. 26) observed, Every organization has an interest in seeing its definition of reality accepted, ... for such acceptance is an integral part of the legitimation of the organization and the development of assured resources. Hence, in addition to striving to achieve organizational performance, top is expected to manage constituent perceptions of performance by making sense of the organization's actions and projecting a favorable image (Ginzel et al., 1992). PRIOR RESEARCH The last decade has witnessed growing academic interest in the behaviors exhibited both within, and by, organizations. The term impression management refers to the regulation of actions and/or information to shape others' perceptions of oneself (Schlenker and Weigold, 1992). Increasingly, scholars have adapted theory from social psychology and applied it to organizational settings. While most focus on individual behaviors (Bozman and Kacmar, 1997; Gardner and Martinko, 1988; Giacalone and Rosenfeld, 1989, 1991; Wayne and Liden, 1995), a few researchers have shown the applicability of this construct at the macro-organizational level. For example, Sutton and Kramer (1990) demonstrated how President Reagan's administration was able to manage the impressions of the world's press in the Iceland arms control talks with the Soviet Union. Elsbach and Sutton (1992) concluded that socially controversial organizations use image tactics to manipulate external constituencies' interpretations of members' illegitimate actions. Similarly, Elsbach (1994) showed how the California cattle industry uses to gain legitimacy following controversial events. The case of a Swedish consulting firm was described by Alvesson (1990) to illustrate how the value of events, actions and structures may be designed to positively impact the firm's image. Ginzel et al. (1992) have illustrated the process whereby organizations explain predicaments to diverse audiences in order to minimize damage to their images. The quality of the above research is impressive. It clearly illustrates that organizations attempt to regulate and control information and influence constituents' impressions to gain specific rewards. Nevertheless, a taxonomy of the basic types of organizational (OIM) tactics employed by organizations is lacking. In contrast, a number of taxonomies of behaviors have been advanced at the micro-level (Cialdini, 1989; Jones and Pittman, 1982; Tedeschi and Melburg, 1984; Tedeschi and Normam, 1985), which have contributed to both the theory and subsequent research in this area. …