Making a Good Impression at Work: National Differences in Employee Impression Management Behaviors in Japan,Korea, and the United States

Impression management has important implications for success at work. This study explores differences in impression management in the East and West by examining the use of self-promotion, ingratiation, and exemplification directed towards three targets: supervisors, peers, and subordinates among 945 company employees from Japan, Korea, and the United States. Our results show that Korean employees used all three strategies most frequently, followed by United States, and then Japanese employees. Japanese and Korean employees used impression management strategies differentially across the three targets, and U.S. employees used impression management equally across targets. This elucidates how cultural trends in hierarchical relationships impact social behavior within the workplace. A follow-up mediation analysis found that relational or labor mobility fully mediated country differences in impression management, suggesting that culture is also reflected in larger social ecological trends in employee's ability and likelihood to change jobs, which also account for impression management strategy usage. Theoretical and practical implications for international business are discussed. This research may be useful in aligning strategies foreign employees might employ for using impression management when in Japan, Korea, and the United States.