Exploring factors influencing employees' impression management feedback‐seeking behavior: The role of managerial coaching skills and affective trust

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.21311
• Author: Jie‐Tsuen Huang,Hui‐Hsien Hsieh
• Published date: 01 June 2018
• Date: 01 June 2018

QUANTITATIVE STUDY

Exploring factors influencing employees'

impression management feedback-seeking

behavior: The role of managerial coaching skills

and affective trust

Hui-Hsien Hsieh

1

| Jie-Tsuen Huang

2

1

Department of Technology Application and

Human Resource Development, National

Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan

2

Department of Human Resource

Development, National Kaohsiung University

of Science and Technology, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Correspondence

Hui-Hsien Hsieh, Department of Technology

Application and Human Resource

Development, National Taiwan Normal

University, No. 162, Section 1, Heping East

Road, Taipei 106, Taiwan.

Email: hh.hsieh@ntnu.edu.tw

This study investigates how employees' perceptions of supervisors'

managerial coaching skills (MCSs) and affective trust in supervisors

are related to their impression management feedback-seeking

behavior (IMFSB). Specifically, we propose a conditional indirect

effect model that examines whether MCSs have an indirect effect

on IMFSB via affective trust in supervisors, while also investigating

how MCSs moderate this indirect effect. A convenience sample of

321 full-time frontline employees across five service firms in Tai-

wan participated in the study. Using structural equation modeling

analyses to test our hypotheses, we found that MCSs have a posi-

tive indirect effect on IMFSB via affective trust in supervisors. We

also found that MCSs moderate the direct effect of affective trust

in supervisors on IMFSB as well as the indirect effect of MCSs on

IMFSB via affective trust in supervisors, such that these effects

become stronger at the higher level of MCSs. Implications for man-

agerial practices and suggestions for future research are discussed.

KEYWORDS

affective trust, impression management feedback-seeking

behavior, managerial coaching skills, structural equation modeling

1|INTRODUCTION

Performance feedback has become an issue critical to employee performance management (Aguinis, 2013; Aguinis,

Gottfredson, & Joo, 2012) because it can serve as an important communication medium by providing employees with

information on how they are doing and on specific areas that need to be improved. Performance feedback is, how-

ever, no longer seen as only a resource that is given by the supervisor, but is now also seen as an individual resource

that can be solicited or managed by the employee him- or herself (Ashford & Cummings, 1983). In other words,

DOI: 10.1002/hrdq.21311

Human Resource Dev Quarterly. 2018;29:163–180. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrdq © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 163

employees also have the responsibility to take a proactive role in seeking performance feedback from their

supervisors.

Feedback-seeking behavior (FSB) refers to employees taking the initiative in seeking feedback through inquiring

and monitoring, in an effort to achieve their performance goals (Ashford & Cummings, 1983). However, feedback

researchers have realized that employees often seek feedback for a variety of reasons. Reviews of the literature on

FSB have consistently suggested that an individual's FSB will be driven by three primary motives: instrumental, ego-

based, and impression management motives (Anseel, Lievens, & Levy, 2007; Ashford, Blatt, & VandeWalle, 2003;

Morrison & Bies, 1991; Moss, Valenzi, & Taggart, 2003; Northcraft & Ashford, 1990). Instrumental FSB is more prev-

alent and may be especially important for employees, because it has informational value that helps them reduce

uncertainty and meet their goals (Ashford & Cummings, 1983). Unlike the instrumental FSB, the ego-based motive

encourages FSB intended to bolster the ego and avoid feedback that might threaten the ego (Northcraft & Ashford,

1990). The third motive for FSB—the impression management FSB (IMFSB)—is concerned with FSB motivated by a

desire to enhance or protect one's public image in organizations (Morrison & Bies, 1991; Moss et al., 2003).

In the feedback-seeking literature, an impression management perspective has been applied frequently and suc-

cessfully to understanding an individual's FSB in organizations (Ashford et al., 2003; Bolino, Kacmar, Turnley, & Gil-

strap, 2008; Morrison & Bies, 1991). Morrison and Bies (1991) argued that image concerns not only determine an

individual's willingness to seek feedback, but also influence when, from whom, and how an individual asks for feed-

back. In particular, employeeswill be more concerned about seeking feedback when they are dependenton the source

of the feedback (i.e., their supervisors) and when their performance will soon be evaluated. Therefore, IMFSB can be

conceived as one form of supervisor-focused impression management behavior, which is defined as “the extent to

which employees use strategiesdesigned to direct their supervisor's attention to their successfulperformance in order

to elicit acknowledgment of the successful performanceand positive verbal feedback”(Moss et al., 2003, p. 490). It is

not uncommon for employees to use IMFSB as a tactic to manage their supervisors' impressions and influence the

supervisors' evaluationsof their job performance (Ashford et al., 2003; Morrison& Bies, 1991), because they are often

dependent on their supervisors for desired outcomes such as high performance appraisal ratings and career success

(Bolino et al., 2008). Given that employeeIMFSB is pervasive in the dyadic interactions between employees and super-

visors and is an issue crucial to employee performance appraisal and management (Ashford et al., 2003; Morrison &

Bies, 1991; Moss et al., 2003),understanding the antecedents of employee IMFSB deserves moreattention.

Managerial coaching has been conceived as an effective leadership initiative that can improve the employee–

supervisor relationship and initiate strong reciprocal employee–supervisor interactions (Hagen, 2012; McLean, Yang,

Kuo, Tolbert, & Larkin, 2005). Researchers(e.g., Ellinger, Beattie, & Hamlin, 2010; Hagen, 2012; McLean et al., 2005)

have suggested that supervisorsshould play new roles as coaches, providing their employeeswith one-on-one perfor-

mance feedback on progressiontoward goals and on how to remedy observed problems. As coachingsupervisors need

to possess skills and attitudesas well as enact behaviors, managerial coaching is conceptualized from a behavioralper-

spective and also from a skills-basedperspective. Consequently, some scholars (Ellinger, Ellinger,& Keller, 2003; Gra-

ham, Wedman, & Garvin-Kester, 1993) focus on managerial coaching in terms of coaching behaviors, whereasothers

(McLean et al., 2005; Park, McLean, & Yang, 2008) conceive it according to the skills and attitudes supervisors may

possess. As Gilley, Gilley, and Kouider (2010)argued, effective and competent supervisors possess a multidimensional

set of skills that enable them to coach employees and boost performance. In line with this notion, the present study

conceptualizes managerialcoaching from a skills-based perspective and focusesattention on managerial coaching skills

(MCSs), referred to as a set of managerial skills that demonstrate effective coaching characteristicsfor the purpose of

developing employeesand improving performance (McLean et al., 2005; Park, McLean, & Yang, 2008).

In the current study, we are particularly interested in understanding whether an employee will engage in IMFSB

in the context of one-on-one coaching interactions between a supervisor and an employee. We argue that

employees' perceptions of supervisors' MCS are associated with their engagement in IMFSB for two reasons. First,

previous research (Dahling, O'Malley, & Chau, 2015) has shown that employees' perceptions of a supportive supervi-

sor feedback environment can not only encourage their instrumental motive for FSB, but can also encourage their

164 HSIEH AND HUANG