Negative impression management: the troublemaker as trouble seeker

Abstract

Extending the discourse on impression management, we explore a counter-intuitive workplace deviance phenomenon whereby employees aim to get themselves fired from their jobs. Employing exploratory qualitative methods, we collected evidence from employees who practice deliberate negative impression management (NIM), from parties who witnessed NIM, and from Human Resource (HR) managers who have dealt with NIM, in two distinct geographies: Israel and Taiwan. The paper outlines the diverse sources of NIM, its specified and unspecified aims, its actual consequences, and its prevalence. This unique dataset offers insights that extend our understanding of impression management theory and practice, serving as a mean to explicating a variant of deviant behavior at the workplace and providing information to HR personnel on ways to engage with the issue.

Keywords:

• negative impression management
• qualitative methodology
• proximal withdrawal states theory
• signaling theory
• Israel
• Taiwan

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data not available - participant consent: The participants of this study did not give written consent for their data to be shared publicly, so due to the sensitive nature of the research supporting data is not available.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.