Impression Management and Employee Contextual Performance in Service Organizations (Enterprises)

This study aims to investigate the effect of impression management on employee contextual performance in service organizations using quantitative methods. The social influence theory, which explains the role of superior influence over the subordinate, served as the theoretical underpinning for the study. A cross-sectional survey design was adopted in line with positivism research philosophy. The accessible population of this study consists of one hundred selected service-oriented firms (four-star hotels, fast food restaurants, and travel agencies) operating in the southern part of Nigeria. The sample consists of middle managers, human resource managers, front desk officers, housekeepers, and customer relationship managers. Frequency distribution was used to analyze participants’ profiles, while linear regression was employed to analyze the formulated hypotheses. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 20.0 served as statistical software. Linear regression results suggest that self-promotion exerted a significant positive effect on co-worker support. Ingratiation demonstrated a significant positive effect on customer satisfaction. It appears that exemplification exerted a significant positive effect on enterprise compliance. The outcome of this study has demonstrated that traditional managerial skills can no longer hold water in contemporary service-oriented organizations because of the workplace's dynamic and changing technological structure. This study concludes that impression management can assist managers in influencing their employees positively to achieve organizational objectives.

The sector was forecast to have generated over $3486.77 in 2020, $4132.5 by 2021, and $4548.42 in 2022 globally [5,6].In line with the above, Nigeria's service sector covers transport, resorts, lounges, restaurants, entertainment, and accommodations, to mention but a few.However, the utilization of impression management has enormous benefits for organizational growth and sustainability [7].
In addition, Eketu [7] argued that managers' self-presentation predicts workers' affective commitment and repurchase intention.Managers', supervisors', and employees' appearance has brought about customer attraction, leading to a geometrical increase in profitability for many organizations today.Besides, self-appearance (impression) is correlated with emotional intelligence [8].Impression management has also improved workers' discretionary behaviour [9].Thus, employee performance has been one of the indices through which enterprises determine high profitability, growth, expansion, survival, and sustainability [10][11][12][13].Thus, various scholars have different ways of ascertaining the instrument for measuring organizational performance [14][15][16][17][18]. Scholars of accounting, economics, and finance focus on existing financial records of formal organizations or institutional statistics such as sales volume, return on equity, return on assets, and profit margin [19][20][21][22][23]. On the other hand, those in human resource management, business management, psychology, sociology, and anthropology pay attention to the human aspects of performance, such as customer satisfaction, customer retention, discretionary behaviour, service delivery, repurchase intention, effectiveness, and efficiency [24][25][26].In line with the above, this study drew its performance indicators on behavioural indices such as co-worker support, customer satisfaction, and enterprise compliance, as validated in Koopmans et al. [24].Nevertheless, previous empirical studies such as Eketu [7] and Jaafar et al. [27] investigated impression management with other organizational variables.The above trends of thought differ from this study because Eketu [7] investigated only managers' ingratiation aspect of impression management while Jaafar et al. [27] looked at the financial reporting aspect of impression management.Other empirical investigations concentrated on the effect, impact, and influence of impression management on other criterion variables other than employee contextual performance [28,29].Again, just recently, McGowan & Sekaja [30] and Delport et al. [31] examined the effect of impression management tactics on other variables that are different from employee contextual performance.This has created a lacuna in impression management research.This is what motivated the researchers to investigate the effect of impression management on employee contextual performance in selected service organizations in Nigeria.

2-1-Impression Management (IM)
Impression management (IM) is used interchangeably with self-presentation.Impression management refers to tactics that managers use to improve, or modify their image positively in the presence of others.These modifications or behaviour can be noticed in the individual's mode of dressing, body movement, or way of speaking.However, impression management has been perceived as managers attempt to control the impressions of their subordinates [32].Others viewed impression management as the study of how people attempt to control how other individuals perceive them [33,34].IM is concerned with how organizational leaders or managers manipulate information to portray a particular image to create a more favourable perception of their firm's performance than is warranted [35,36].On the other hand, organisational behaviourists argue that IM is an intentional effort by managers or supervisors to magnify their image in their employees or subordinates [37].In another development, impression management is the process of presenting oneself to others for acceptability [38].Examples of this presentation are appearance, and mannerisms, quite apart from body language [38].Nonetheless, in terms of dimensions, YuSheng & Ibrahim [26] identified five tactics of impression management (IM) most commonly used by managers: self-promotion, ingratiation, exemplification, intimidation, and supplication.Selfpromotion refers to when a manager takes credit for events, makes others aware of his/her accomplishments, or presents strengths to prove competency [38].Ingratiation is gaining acceptance and prompting others to like oneself, usually with an ulterior motive.It involves flattering others and choosing enticing words carefully [38].Exemplification is when a manager presents his/her moral worthiness, displays sincerity, and advocates being the right person for the job [38][39][40][41].Intimidation is managers creates fear with their subordinates and also, when they use their position power to intimidate their subordinates [38].Supplication is the manager's attempt to gain sympathy and attention from subordinates whenever they fail, but he prefers to reveal the faults of their subordinates in the workplace [38,41].Again, it also refers to when managers expose their weaknesses and vulnerabilities to attain others' sympathetic support and likeability [39].

2-2-Employee Contextual Performance
Employee contextual performance refers to extra-role behaviour that does not cover the job description assigned to the employee but is beneficial to the organization.Contextual performance is synonymously used with discretionary behaviour [42], extra-role performance [43,44], organizational citizenship behaviour [45,46]; non-job-specific task proficiency [47].Contextual performance is employee-discretionary behaviour that benefits the organization [24,48].This extra-role behaviour contributes significantly to firms' effectiveness [49,50].
In terms of validated dimensions of contextual performance, Campbell et al. [51] developed written and oral communication, demonstrating effort, maintaining personal discipline, facilitating peer and team performance, supervision and leadership, and management and administration.Others include helping, volunteering, cooperating, persisting, and following enterprise prescribed rules [52]; leadership and supervision, interpersonal dealings and communication, and valuable personal behaviour and skills [53]; general soldiering proficiency, effort, leadership, personal discipline, physical fitness, and military bearing [14,47]; communication competence, effort, leadership, administrative competence, interpersonal competence, compliance with enterprise policies, and acceptance of authority [45]; cooperating and taking on an extra load, showing responsibility and initiative, co-worker support, and dealing with the general public [54]; and responsibility, customer satisfaction, creativity, and taking on challenging work tasks [24].

2-3-Impression Management and Employee Contextual Performance
Presenting a positive self-image to colleagues, co-workers, customers, and society is one of the ways to bring change in the organization.This self-image, also known as impression management, can influence employees' contextual performance.Without the influence of managers or supervisors, it has been shown that it will always be challenging to direct subordinates' behaviour [55].Eketu [7] also affirmed that impression management enhances contextual performance, encouraging employees to carry out extra workload different from their job description.In addition, Baron and Branscombe [56] and Ralston [57] contended that many organizational leaders had employed self-promotion to gain individual acceptance, which led to recommendations for such leaders.In another dimension, Ralston [57] asserts that managers who use ingratiation behaviours in the workplace do so to gain favour from executives, board members, and society.A study has shown that before a manager can influence a subordinate, there must be an impression that has the capacity to influence the behaviour of the subordinate [58].Hence, service sector employees accomplish their task through tactical exemplification from their managers [59,60].In addition, managers who adopt the ingratiatory impression tactic target some employees who are doing very well in service delivery to motivate them to do more for the organization.Previously, most people viewed the use of the ingratiation tactic as a mockery for underperformance, but recent empirical evidence has refuted that assumption [56].
Promoting oneself has a significant effect on co-worker support because, when managers or supervisors promote their positive image to their subordinates, it will create a participative management platform between the subordinates and the management.Top-level managers influence their subordinates through self-promotion tactics, either by informing the workers how hardworking they are, their achievements from the inception of leadership, or showcasing competencies for success in the workplace [27,61,62].Based on these managerial behaviours or self-promotion tactics, employees can accept the managers' assertions and support each other in the workplace (co-worker support).
In line with the above argument, managers' ingratiation can influence customer satisfaction in the service sector, especially as customers prefer to be welcomed in the organization whenever they visit any service organizations to spend their money.Ingratiation is the management strategy used by managers to enhance self-enhancing communication [63,64].Thus, the ingratiation tactic is deployed by supervisors or managers to gain acceptance from both the employees and the customers who make purchases from their enterprise [65].Managers also use flattering tactics to win customers by informing them how excellent their firm's product or service is compared to that of their rivals.In terms of managers' exemplification, it assists all members of the organization to be compliant with the organization's philosophies.Exemplifiers (managers) try to showcase sincere behaviour to the spectators (subordinates) ignorance of impression management dimensions [66].Managers that are familiar with impression management tactics advocate leadership quality to workplace stakeholders by convincing them that they are qualified compared to other managers in the same workplace.
However, previous empirical studies on impression management revealed a significant positive relationship with other organizational variables, as shown in this section.Vijayabanu et al. [67] investigated impression and employee psychological facets and discovered that impression management measured with exemplification, defensive, selfpromotion, ingratiation, and deception predicted work-life balance, foreign assignment, and career advancement.In another study conducted by Metzler & Scheithauer [68], found that impression management predicted self-esteem.Yan et al. [69] examined ingratiation and counterproductive work behaviour in China.The results of their study indicated that ingratiation had a significant positive effect on counterproductive work behaviour in manufacturing companies in China.Zhu et al. [70] examined the relationship between self-presentation and adolescent altruistic behaviour.Their result revealed that self-presentation predicted altruistic behaviour of adolescents in China.Boz & Guan [71] carried out an investigation on self-presentation strategies among adolescents in Turkey and found exemplification and ingratiation as strong predictors of self-presentation among adults.Adawiyah [28] investigated the effects of impression management tactics on individual performance in Indonesia.Adawiyah's result revealed that impression management has significant positive effects on the performance of individuals [72].Zivnuska et al. [73] findings showed that organizational politics and impression management significantly affect employee performance.It has been revealed that managers use powerful tactics to create impression management [74].Mclane [75] found that self-promotion, ingratiation, and exemplification positively shape organizational identity.In another study, it was found that impression management does not impact employees' career success [76,77].
Adawiyah [28] analyzed the correlation between impression management and workplace citizenship behaviour in Indonesia and found that impression management tactics have a positive and significant correlation with organizational citizenship behaviour.Bolino et al. [32] investigated the impact of impression management on organizational citizenship behaviour in selected companies in Galicia, Spain.Their finding revealed that impression management predicted organizational discretionary work behaviour.Kandpal & Chaubey [29] investigated the impression management tactics used by staff in selected higher institutions located in Uttarakhand, India, and found that most senior staff employ selfpromotion and, ingratiation to impress their counterparts in the organizations.McGowan & Sekaja [30] identified the impression management strategies used by organizational psychology interns in South African firms and, found that they employ ingratiation, exemplification, self-promotion, rendering favours, professionalism, conformity, openness to learning, and strategic relationship building.Delport et al. [31] explored the impression management tactics of Afrikaans coloured managers in South Africa and discovered that coloured Afrikaans managers used different impression management tactics to influence their subordinates.Research has shown that managers who used exemplification, ingratiation, and supplication tactics exhibited significant transformational leadership behaviours whereas those who adopted self-promoting and intimidating behaviours had low transformational leadership behaviours [78].In addition, managers' ingratiation is a reference point for improving workers' affective commitment [7].

2-4-Social Influence Theory
The premise of the social influence theory, proposed by Kelman [79], is that an actor tries to influence another individual with their attitudes, actions, or beliefs so that the influenced person will start behaving precisely the way the influencer behaves.Goffman [80] asserts that impression management is a social influence tactic that involves interactions between an actor (influencer), a target (individual to be influenced), and the environment (place of influence).Social influence theory also suggests that every social interaction can only occur when one party tries to influence another [81,82].Kelman [79] developed three social influence processes: compliance, identification, and internalization, which occur when an individual accepts or adopts the influencer's beliefs, actions, or norms to be rewarded or avoid being punished in the workplace.
On the other hand, identification takes place when an employee attempts to imitate the manager's speech, dressing, including the way the manager walks, while internalization refers to when an employee's attitude, norm, and values have transformed into the manager's behaviour having realised that such behaviour would attract a reward from the manager.

2-5-Conceptual Framework
Drawing from the above theoretical underpinning, the researchers developed a conceptual framework explaining the relationship between impression management dimensions and measures of contextual performance, as shown in Figure 1.A research conceptual framework is an illustration that shows the relationships between independent and dependent variables in a study [83].Conceptual framework model can be drawn by researcher(s) after an intensive search of validated indicators of independent and dependent variables in peer reviewed journal articles, scholarly books, dissertations and conference papers [84].Validated measures of impression management in the conceptual framework are self-promotion, ingratiation, and exemplification, which the researchers adapted from Bolino & Turnley [85] and were also confirmed by DuBrin [86].Indicators of employee contextual performance in the conceptual framework are co-worker support, customer satisfaction, and enterprise compliance [87][88][89][90].In line with prior findings as regards validated indicators of impression management and contextual employee performance, below is the proposed conceptual framework for this study.Figure 1 above shows the conceptual framework of the study.Impression management is the independent variable (IV), while employee contextual performance is dependent variable (DV).Dimensions of impression management as shown in the above diagram are self-promotion, ingratiation and exemplification while measures of employee contextual performance include co-worker support, customer satisfaction and enterprise compliance.

3-Aim and Research Hypotheses
The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of impression management on employee contextual performance in service organizations operating in sub-Saharan Africa work environment with a specific focus on hospitality service providers in the south-eastern part of Nigeria.The research hypotheses are as follows: HA1: Self-promotion has a significant effect on co-worker support; HA2: Ingratiation has a significant effect on customer satisfaction; HA3: Exemplification has a significant effect on enterprise compliance.

4-Materials and Methods
Positivism was adopted as a philosophical research perspective.It is concerned with using a questionnaire (Appendix I) to elicit opinions on the effect of impression management on contextual employee performance from respondents [91][92][93][94].This study used a cross-sectional research survey as its research design.A cross-sectional survey encourages the use of a questionnaire to simultaneously collect data from multiple participants from the same exact geographic location [95].

4-1-Data Collection and Sampling
The researchers used a simple random sampling technique to obtain data from four-star hotels, fast food restaurants, and travel agencies in the South-Eastern part of Nigeria.The questionnaire was developed in English by one of the researchers and modified by two experts in organizational studies.The participants consist of middle managers, human resource managers, front desk officers, housekeepers, and customer relationship managers.A population of two thousand four hundred (2400) employees was surveyed from the service organisations.A sample size of three hundred and thirtyone (331) was determined from the population using Krejcie & Morgan [96].Therefore, three hundred and thirty-one (331) copies of instruments were sent to participants, but only two hundred and eighty-five (285) were collected and found valid for analysis.A validated 12-item Impression Management Questionnaire (IMQ) measuring self-promotion, ingratiation, and exemplification developed by Bolino & Turnley [85] and DuBrin [86] was adapted.On the one hand, a 12-item validated Employee Contextual Performance Questionnaire (ECPQ) measuring co-worker support, customer satisfaction, and enterprise compliance developed by Podsakoff et al. [87], Nguyen et al. [88], and Kumar & Govindarajo [89] was adapted.

4-2-Validity and Cronbach Alpha
Instrument validity was determined using face validity, while Cronbach α [90] was employed to determine instrument reliability.Indicators of impression management (self-promotion 0.76; ingratiation 0.82; exemplification 0.78) and employee contextual performance (co-worker support 0.81; customer satisfaction 0.75; enterprise compliance 0.74) fall within 0.7α -0.8α benchmarks.This supports the affirmation of instrument reliability between 0.7 and 0.8 α coefficients [91].IBM SPSS Statistics (20.0) was employed in the analyses.Descriptive st atistics were used to analyze the respondents' demographic characteristics.On the other hand, linear regression was used to analyze all the hypotheses.Table 2 shows a high correlation (R = 0.791 a ) between the predictor and criterion variables.R 2 of the model indicated that 63% of the total variation in self-promotion could be explained by co-worker support.In addition, the difference between R 2 and adjusted R 2 is less than 5%, which shows that there is no sampling error.The goodness of fit for the model was affirmed to be significant because the F (472.550) calculated is greater than the tabulated (3.885), which means that the null hypothesis is rejected and the alternate hypothesis accepted.Based on the above decision, the result shows that self-promotion has a significant positive effect on co-worker support.Figures 2 and 3 are the responses on self-promotion and co-worker support presented as pie charts.The result in Table 3 shows a high correlation (R = 0.834 a ) between the predictor and criterion variables.R 2 of the model indicated that 67% of the total variation in ingratiation could be explained by customer satisfaction.The difference between R 2 and adjusted R 2 is less than 5%, which confirms no sampling error.The goodness of fit for the model was confirmed to be significant because the F (648.752) calculated is greater than the tabulated (3.885), which implies that the null hypothesis is rejected and the alternate hypothesis is accepted.Based on this decision, the result revealed that ingratiation has a significant positive effect on customer satisfaction.Figures 4 and 5 are the pie charts showing the responses on ingratiation and customer satisfaction, respectively.Table 4 shows a high correlation (R = 0.860 a ) between the predictor and criterion variables.R 2 of the model revealed that 74% of the total variation in exemplification could be explained by enterprise compliance.Again, the difference between R 2 and adjusted R 2 is less than 5%, which shows no sampling error.In addition, the goodness of fit for the model was affirmed to be significant because F (806.944) calculated is greater than tabulated (3.885), which means that the null hypothesis is rejected and the alternate hypothesis accepted.In line with the above decision, the result indicated that exemplification has a significant positive effect on enterprise compliance.The pie charts below (Figures 6 and 7) represent the responses on exemplification and enterprise compliance.

6-Discussion
This study aimed to fill the gap in the extant literature by providing empirical evidence on the effect of impression management on employee contextual performance.The study found that service-oriented organizations such as four-star hotels, fast-food restaurants, and travel agencies require managers to use self-presentation tactics to persuade or influence their employees to improve their contextual performance.Therefore, encourage them to support their coworkers in discharging their assigned duties, providing service quality delivery to customers, and complying with organizational policies.In specific terms, self-promotion impression results revealed a significant positive effect on coworker support.This is in line with Vijayabanu et al. [67] and, Metzler & Scheithauer [68] impression management results.Vijayabanu et al. [67] results revealed that exemplification, self-promotion, and ingratiation have a significant effect on work-life balance and career advancement.Metzler & Scheithauer [68] findings showed that self-promotion has a strong and significant relationship with individual self-esteem.Through the self-promotion impression tactic, employees are able to assimilate, metamorphose into the image of the influencer (manager), thereby exhibiting extra-role work behaviour by supporting their coworkers in the discharge of their assigned task.Secondly, it was shown from the finding that manager ingratiatory behaviour is related to customer satisfaction.This result corresponds with Eketu's [7] finding, which revealed that managers' ingratiation had become a referent power factor that managers in the tourism sector have used to elicit and sustain workers' affective commitment.The ingratiation result is also in line with Yan et al. [69] finding, which revealed that ingratiation has a significant impact on counterproductive work behaviour.Based on this, employees respond to ingratiation impressions from their superiors, especially the flattery tactics for winning customers to be loyal to their services in four-star hotels, fast food restaurants, and travel agencies.Another study that corresponds with the second research hypothesis results is Adawiyah [28] finding, which indicates that impression management tactics have a positive and significant relationship with workplace discretionary behaviour.Apart from the customer point of view, some employees also use ingratiation to gain favour with management because they have on one or two occasions observed how it was applied by their managers to reach the top level of management [97,98].
Thirdly, the study also found that the exemplification of impression tactics is related to enterprise compliance.This is in line with the findings of Zia-ur-Rehman & Javed [78], which showed that managers who employ exemplification tactics have high transformational leadership behaviours, whereas those who do not have low transformational leadership behaviours.This is because managers usually showcase themselves to their employees as their colleagues instead of their bosses, influencing them to obey every policy, rule, and regulation governing the organization.In addition, Mclane [75] found that exemplification has a significant effect on organizational identity.The findings of this study are consistent with prior studies that argued that managers who employed exemplification, ingratiation, and supplication strategies had high transformational leadership dimensions compared with those who adopted intimidation [78].Overall results also correspond with McShane & Von Glinow's [55] contention that organizations that have a multicultural workforce may not hire organizational leaders who lack impression management tactics.However, social influence theory, which is the theoretical baseline of the study, also conforms with the findings of this research because the actors, such as managers, front desk officers, housekeepers, and customer relationship managers, influence their subordinates with their attitudes, actions, beliefs, and norms, thereby making them conform to organizational philosophies.In return, the subordinates have no choice but to comply with the rules and regulations governing the organization while hoping to receive a reward from their superiors in the end.As a result, employees are more likely to follow company policies and procedures because of the social influence theory at work [62,[99][100][101][102].
Drawing from the findings of this research, it was observed that prior studies did not investigate the effect of impression management on employee contextual performance.Secondly, none of the empirical studies surveyed multihospitality firms as a case study.Thirdly, previous empirical research studies did not carry out their investigation in Enugu State, Nigeria.Based on this evidence, this study has filled the research gaps created by previous research studies.The limitation of this study is the use of a cross-sectional survey, which is a snapshot of a study, compared to a longitudinal survey, where participants are given questionnaires repeatedly at multiple points, which allows researchers to observe changes that occur over time [94].Future research should employ other organizational predictors, such as organizational politics, organizational justice, resilience, and emotional intelligence, to determine the level of employee performance [8,68,103].Lastly, leadership consideration should be used to investigate the mediation between impression management and employee contextual performance in the subsequent study.

7-Conclusion
This study has investigated the effect of impression management on employee contextual performance in service organizations.The outcome of this study has demonstrated that traditional managerial skills can no longer hold water in contemporary service-oriented organizations because of the dynamic and changing technological structure of the workplace.This paper offers some interesting insights into making executive decisions regarding the best modern approach to subordinate influence using impression management tactics rather than initiating the structured approach that has been adopted by management professionals over the years.Another significance of this study is that it has opened more opportunities for managers who depend solely on one leadership approach to embrace impression management as a modern leadership skill that will boost their self-image and that of the organization.Similarly, the findings of this study have given credence to contingency leadership, which provides managers with opportunities to choose the best alternative that works in their business situations.This revealed that managers operating in the dynamic business world should arm themselves with modern leadership anchors such as impression management in the case of uncertainties.From the foregoing, this study recommends that managers and other top organizational leaders should display impression management by promoting themselves as well as ingratiatory and exemplifying their behaviour towards their subordinates.In doing this, the subordinates would accept such behaviours in good fate as they promote the organization's performance and motivate the employees to do their work effectively and efficiently.Meanwhile, for managers or organizational leaders to increase performance in the workplace, social influence is beneficial as a positive tool in their hands to influence their subordinates towards achieving organizational objectives.

8-2-Data Availability Statement
The data presented in this study are available in the article.

8-3-Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figure 2 .Figure 3 .
Figure 2. Pie chart showing the responses on self-promotion

Table 2 . Hypothesis one result N=285
Predictor variable: Self-promotion; Criterion variable: co-worker support

Review Board Statement
To what extent do you come to the office at night or on weekends to show that you are dedicated?

Employee Contextual Performance Research Questions Instruction:
Please tick either "Very great extent; Great extent; Moderate extent; Low extent; or Very low extent where applicable.