Should I Show My Competence? The Influence of Newcomers’ Self-promotion on Coworkers after Entering

Abstract

When entering a new organization, newcomers need to make good impressions to gain coworkers’ support and acceptance. Whether self-promotion, as a widely used impression management strategy, is effective for newcomers when they interacting with coworkers is still unknown. Drawing on social interdependence theory and social influence theory, in this study we examine how newcomers’ self-promotion behavior can lead to different reactions (positive or negative) from coworkers when considering the complex interdependent relationships (cooperative and competition) with coworkers. Furthermore, we propose task interdependence to moderate the relationships between newcomers’ self-promotion and coworkers’ reactions by determining the salience of different types of interdependence between newcomers and coworkers. Results from data of 414 newcomers show that newcomers’ self-promotion is positively related to coworkers’ admiration and then lead to coworkers’ social support. Besides, newcomers’ self-promotion is also positively related to coworkers’ envy and then lead to social undermining. The positive relationship between self-promotion and coworkers’ admiration is stronger when task interdependence is high and the positive relationship between self-promotion and coworkers’ envy is stronger when task interdependence is low. These findings illustrate that in different conditions, the effectiveness of newcomer’s self-promotion is different, which extends the literature on both organizational socialization and impression management.