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Performance and
Performance and political skill in political skill
personal reputation assessments
Mary Dana Laird, James J. Zboja and Arthur D. Martinez
Management and Marketing Department, The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, 661
Oklahoma, USA, and
Gerald R. Ferris Received 24 October 2011
Revised 31 December 2011
Management Department, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA 16 January 2012
Accepted 16 January 2012

Abstract
Purpose – Reputation has many positive outcomes, but little is known about how individuals
manage their personal reputation at work. This study aims to investigate the relationships between
job performance and political skill on personal reputation.
Design/methodology/approach – Ninety-eight triads from a Midwestern manufacturer provided
data. Employees rated their political skill, supervisors rated the employees’ job performance, and
coworkers rated the employees’ personal reputation. The white-collar respondents were mostly
Caucasian, female, middle aged, and moderately tenured in their position. The data were analyzed with
regression analysis.
Findings – The results illustrated positive political skill-personal reputation and job performance
-personal reputation relationships. Job performance was positively associated with personal reputation
for politically skilled employees, but not for individuals low in political skill.
Research limitations/implications – Job performance was evaluated by employees’ supervisors,
but less subjective, quantitative measures of job performance would be helpful.
Practical implications – Political skill training and/or mentoring relationships may help
individuals manage their personal reputation at work.
Social implications – This study focused on personal reputation in a work environment. However,
the results also may be useful to individuals in a variety of organizations (e.g. schools, clubs, churches).
Originality/value – This is one of the first studies to investigate how individuals manage their
personal reputation in a work setting. Unlike previous research that used self-evaluations of personal
reputation, this study uses peer evaluations, which is more appropriate for the construct.
Keywords Personal reputation, Political skill, Job performance, Workplace, Employees,
United States of America, Interpersonal relations
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
You can’t build a good reputation on what you are going to do (Henry Ford).
Just as reputation is a fundamental reality in everyday life, it has been argued to play
an important role in organizational life as well. For example, individuals with a
positive personal reputation are viewed as more suitable for employment (Rosen et al.,
1990) and once hired, given less monitoring and accountability (Hall et al., 2004), more
information and cooperation (Tsui and Ashford, 1994), and increased promotions and Journal of Managerial Psychology
Vol. 28 No. 6, 2013
rewards (Tsui, 1984; Johnson et al., 2002). Despite the importance of these outcomes, pp. 661-676
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
little is known about how individuals manage their personal reputation in a work 0268-3946
environment (Ferris et al., 2003; Zinko et al., 2007). DOI 10.1108/JPM-10-2011-0097
JMP At this early stage in the investigation, researchers have struggled to come to an
28,6 agreement on a basic definition of personal reputation (Mahon, 2002). Some have
addressed the problem by stating “readers will be familiar with the everyday
phenomena of [. . .] personal reputation” (Bromley, 2001, p. 316). However, there
appears to be widespread agreement that personal reputation refers to a collective or
shared perception concerning an individual’s attributes (Anderson and Shirako, 2008).
662 More specifically, we define personal reputation as “a perceptual identity formed from
the collective perceptions of others, which is reflective of the complex combination of
salient personal characteristics and accomplishments, demonstrated behavior, and
intended images presented over some period of time as observed directly and/or
reported from secondary sources” (Ferris et al., 2003, p. 215).
Individuals may have a number of, if not conflicting, personal reputations (Ferris
et al., 2003), but we primarily are concerned with employees’ personal reputation in a
work environment. It has been suggested that individuals’ personal reputations at
work are built on others’ perceptions of their character and more relevant to this study,
their performance (Zinko et al., 2007). For example, most would agree that Bill Gates, a
man who has donated billions of dollars to charity, but primarily is known for building
the world’s largest software business, has a positive personal reputation. In alignment
with this proposition, previous research has equated personal reputation with
competence, performance history, performance comparisons with referent others, and
achievement (Gioia and Sims, 1983; Gowler and Legge, 1989; Tsui, 1984). These related
operationalizations suggest that employees’ personal reputations at work are largely
based on their previous performance, thus supporting Henry Ford’s assertion.
Although most employees’ performance is evaluated by their immediate supervisor,
employees’ personal reputations are not based on their supervisors’ opinions alone.
Personal reputation is a collective perception by others (Ferris et al., 2003). Therefore,
in order to manage a positive personal reputation, employees must present their
performance to other organizational members in effective and impactful ways, making
salient its positive features, without generating the negative emotions (e.g. envy,
annoyance, etc.) that hinder their efforts.
This suggests that employees who are well versed in reading people and situations,
accurately interpreting others’ expectations and demands, and presenting information
about themselves in influential ways, should be better at highlighting their work
performance to other organizational members. For example, a recent study found that
past performance information needed to be effectively transmitted in order for it to be
translated into assessments of interpersonal power. Individuals high in political skill,
which is the focus of this study, were most successful at this feat (i.e. Treadway et al., n.d.).
Political skill, which is the “ability to understand others at work and to use such
knowledge to influence others to act in ways that enhance one’s personal and/or
organizational objectives” (Ferris et al., 2005b, p. 127), should help employees
demonstrate, transmit, and make salient their high performance to other organizational
members. Theoretically, politically-skilled individuals have a deep understanding of
and astuteness about social interactions and contexts, which allows them to adjust
their behavior in a genuine manner to fit the situation and different constituents with
whom they may interact. This complementary set of social competencies inspires the
support and trust of a broad network of contacts, thus influencing their attitudinal and
behavioral responses (Ferris et al., 2005b, 2007).
 Therefore, political skill should increase the positive relationship between job Performance and
performance and others’ perceptions of employees’ personal reputation at work. political skill
Although this construct is similar to other social effectiveness measures that cross life
domains (e.g. self-monitoring, social intelligence, social skill, etc.), political skill
specifically relates to interactions at work (Harris et al., 2007), thus making it more
appropriate for the current study. In particular, we seek to examine the moderating role
of political skill on the performance-personal reputation relationship, and as such, we 663
can characterize politically-skilled individuals’ presentation of their performance
similarly to the way they select and effectively execute other influence tactics. Previous
research has demonstrated that political skill interacts with influence tactics to make
the influence effort more effective on a variety of outcomes (e.g. Harris et al., 2007;
Kolodinsky et al., 2007; Treadway et al., 2007).
Although many factors may influence an individual’s personal reputation, the
purpose of this preliminary study is to investigate the relationships between job
performance and political skill on personal reputation assessments by others. A
Midwestern US promotional products manufacturer was used to collect data from triadic
respondents, whereby employees self-reported their political skill, supervisors reported
on the employees’ job performance, and peers assessed employees’ personal reputations.
Based on the adaptive self-regulation theory and the political skill literature, the positive
relationship between performance and personal reputation is hypothesized to be stronger
for employees high in political skill than their less skilled counterparts.

Theoretical foundations and hypothesis development

Theoretical foundations
The political skill construct (Ferris et al., 2007) and the theory of adaptive self-regulation
(Tsui and Ashford, 1994) converge to complementarily explain the processes by which
personal reputations at work are managed. Although it is possible for personal
reputations to be formed unintentionally, we characterize personal reputation
management as purposeful in nature. Specifically, we view the personal reputation
management process as reflecting intentional, goal-directed behavior, which involves
decided action whereby individuals seek to control impressions in order to achieve their
desired reputation in the eyes of others (Bozeman and Kacmar, 1997; Bromley, 1993).
That is, individuals consciously attempt to manage others’ perceptions, interpretations,
and impressions of them, thus contributing to their positive personal reputation.
Adaptive self-regulation. Self-regulation theory, which comes from the field of
psychological therapy, is concerned with how to help individuals help themselves.
These concepts have been applied in organizational settings under the label of
behavioral self-management (Andrasik and Heimberg, 1982; Luthans and Davis, 1979).
In short, behavioral self-management suggests that employees control their own
behavior by setting goals, observing their behavior in relation to these goals, and
giving themselves rewards or punishments.
The behavioral self-management process is intrapersonal (i.e. within individuals) in
nature. However, Tsui and Ashford (1994) argued that managers operate within a
social structure, so their constituents’ (e.g. supervisors, peers, subordinates, customers,
etc.) input must be incorporated into their self-management process. They call this
interpersonal (i.e. between individuals) process adaptive self-regulation. In addition,
the authors suggest that adaptive self-regulation should help managers achieve
JMP reputational effectiveness, which is the ability to meet their various constituents’
28,6 expectations (Tsui, 1984). Although Tsui and Ashford’s (1994) work focuses on
managers, their theory is applicable to any employee who works with and through
other individuals.
According to adaptive self-regulation theory, social structures influence the goals
that are important to employees. In addition, constituent expectations influence the
664 contextually-established performance criteria for employees. Constituent evaluations
of employees’ reputational effectiveness then inform employees of their progress. If
there are any perceived discrepancies between performance expectations and actual
performance, they are ultimately self-managed by the employee. This process suggests
that reputational effectiveness is socially determined as constituents largely perceive,
interpret, and evaluate whether individuals are demonstrating contextually effective
behavior.
Because the processes required to develop and maintain reputational effectiveness
occur between employees and their constituents, the employees’ astuteness, savvy, and
style of interaction, which is captured in the political skill construct, are fundamental to
managing reputational effectiveness. Tsui and Ashford (1994) argued that individuals
must possess certain personal and interpersonal competencies so they “can determine
and be responsive to the views of their constituents while conveying the impression
that they are self-confident and sure of their own agendas if they are to achieve
reputational effectiveness” (Tsui and Ashford, 1994, p. 117).
It has been argued that reputational effectiveness involves the ability to perceive the
goals and needs of different constituents and to adjust one’s behavior accordingly
(Kenny and Zaccaro, 1983). In seeking reputational effectiveness, individuals actively
attempt to read and understand the expectations that their constituents have for them.
Because the behavioral expectations that others have for us are not always clearly
communicated or consistent, we have to do our best to “read-between-the-lines” and
interpret these expectations before we can try to meet them. Conversely, we also can
attempt to alter the expectations others have for us by a “manipulation of audience
beliefs” (Tetlock and Manstead, 1985).
Detecting and understanding constituents’ expectations, and adapting one’s
behavior to conform (or manipulating what the audience expects) should lead to
greater reputational effectiveness. As Tsui and Ashford (1994, p. 98) noted, “in most
situations, the more individuals know regarding constituents’ expectations, the greater
their potential to produce behaviors congruent with those demands and/or take steps
to change constituent expectations.”
In short, the theory of adaptive self-regulation suggests that individuals are
motivated to manage their own behavior in order to maintain a positive personal
reputation and the benefits if affords. Feedback helps individuals adjust their job
performance to meet a variety of constituent expectations. Therefore, politically skilled
individuals, whose deep understanding of social interactions allows them to present
situationally-appropriate behavior at work, should meet their constituents’
performance expectations, thus maintaining a positive personal reputation. The
following section integrates the political skill literature with the theory of adaptive
self-regulation.
Political skill. Politically skilled individuals seek to attain their personal and
organizational goals through their capacity to read and understand people and
situations. They also comprehend the contextually-specific behaviors that will yield a Performance and
desired audience/constituent response and how to adjust and adapt across situations political skill
as different constituents produce different expectations and demands. Furthermore,
these politically-skilled individuals can properly calibrate and execute their
situationally-appropriate behavior in effective and influential ways, which appear to
be genuine and sincere (Ferris et al., 2007). Political skill provides individuals with the
set of competencies to read and understand situations, sense what is expected of them, 665
and to influence the standards and expectations to which they are held, as well as
others’ subsequent evaluations.
Political skill is expected to be associated with greater self-regulation, and hence,
increased reputational effectiveness (Ferris et al., 2007). In alignment with this theory,
political skill is positively related to the personal and interpersonal constructs of
self-monitoring and self-efficacy, which is proposed to play a role in the reputational
effectiveness process (Tsui and Ashord, 1994). Previous research has found a positive
relationship between political skill and personal reputation (Liu et al., 2007).
Political skill is comprised of the four interrelated dimensions of social astuteness,
networking ability, interpersonal influence, and apparent sincerity. Networking ability
helps politically skilled individuals develop a broad range of contacts and networks
(Ferris et al., 2007). Therefore, it is likely that politically skilled employees will actively
seek feedback from individuals other than their immediate supervisor. Employees who
engage in a broad-based feedback search are more likely to detect discrepancies
between their behaviors and constituent expectations (Tsui and Ashford, 1994), which
helps them to bridge these gaps and achieve reputational effectiveness.
Individuals who are high in interpersonal influence and apparent sincerity are
effective at information and impression management, which helps them obtain the
favor of other organizational members. Similarly, employees who are high in social
astuteness are capable of detecting subtle social cues, which helps them manage their
constituents’ impressions and extract more information from their feedback seeking
activities.
In sum, we expect that political skill will be positively related to reputational
effectiveness, based on comparisons with constructs discussed by Tsui and Ashford
(1994) and previous empirical research (Liu et al., 2007). Therefore, much like we
hypothesize a positive relationship between political skill and personal reputation:
H1. Individuals’ political skill will be positively related to their personal
reputation.
Once again, the theory of adaptive self-regulations suggests that employees achieve
reputational effectiveness by meeting the performance expectations of a variety of
constituents. Personal reputation has been operationalized as competence, performance
history, performance comparisons with referent others, and achievement (Gioia and
Sims, 1983; Gowler and Legge, 1989; Tsui, 1984). Similarly, theoretical work has
proposed that job performance should be positively associated with assessments of
individuals’ reputation at work (Kilduff and Krackhardt, 1994; Tsui, 1994; Zinko et al.,
2007), and some research in recent years has provided empirical support for this
relationship (Liu et al., 2007; Mehra et al., 2006). Although some have framed
performance as an outcome of personal reputation (e.g. Hochwarter et al., 2007; Liu
et al., 2007), there may be situations where new employees’ performance precedes their
JMP personal reputation. Similarly, it is reasonable to believe there may be a feedback loop
for more tenured employees where personal reputation affects performance, which in
28,6 turn, affects personal reputation. Based on this reasoning and the theory of adaptive
self-regulation, we propose a positive relationship between performance and personal
reputation:
H2. Ratings of individuals’ job performance will be positively related to their
666 personal reputation.
Although previous research has suggested there is a positive relationship between
performance and personal reputation, and we hypothesize such a relationship above,
we also argue that this relationship may depend on other factors, such as how
effectively performance information is presented. Politically-skilled individuals are
effective at building positive personal reputations because their use of
situationally-appropriate behavior signals favorable images to others. Furthermore,
they are proficient at demonstrating behaviors that make salient and signal
information about their intentions and abilities to others (Spence, 1974). This
presentation of information is useful because it reduces ambiguity, and influences
observers’ beliefs. Therefore, employees who signal their performance to observers are
providing the material that is needed to evaluate their reputations.
In support of this conceptualization, it has been suggested that reputation
development often involves deliberate and purposeful action (Bromley, 1993),
including political maneuvering (Ferris and Judge, 1991). For example, high performers
who over-confidently self-promote, too often may annoy observers, thus hurting their
personal reputation. In addition, socially awkward employees may focus their
attention on their job performance, but not have the ability to signal and make salient
their accomplishments to others in effective ways in order to manage their positive
personal reputation. Therefore, it appears that politically-skilled individuals will be
able to read their constituents’ expectations well, and adjust and demonstrate
behaviors at work consistent with such expectations, so as to elicit favorable personal
reputation assessments from others.
Fundamental to the expectations most constituents hold for employees is job
performance. Performance for most jobs is not capable of being objectively assessed,
but instead relies on the subjective evaluation by others (e.g. typically superiors),
whose perceptions and interpretations of that performance can be influenced (e.g. Ferris
et al., 2008). Thus, adaptive self-regulation and political skill theories would argue that
the skillful execution and leveraging of performance information can contribute
considerably to whether such information influences assessments of reputational
effectiveness. Therefore, we hypothesize:
H3. Individuals’ political skill will moderate the relationship between their job
performance and personal reputation. The positive performance-reputation
relationship will be stronger for individuals high in political skill.

Method
Sample and procedure
The data were collected from a promotional products manufacturer in the Midwestern
US. The questionnaire was emailed to approximately 500 employees who were asked
to list their immediate supervisor, evaluate their own political skill, and provide
demographic information. The supervisors of the employees who responded were then Performance and
contacted via e-mail and asked to evaluate one of their randomly selected employee’s political skill
job performance, and to provide their own demographic information. Finally, a
randomly selected coworker/peer who had not been evaluated by his or her supervisor,
but who reported to the same supervisor as the evaluated employee, was contacted via
e-mail and asked to evaluate the personal reputation of the evaluated employee and to
provide demographic information. The employee, supervisor, and peer responses were 667
grouped by employee name to ensure accurate triads.
A total of 475 employees completed our first questionnaire, which provided a
response rate of 95 percent. Including these employees’ supervisors, 269 respondents
finished our second questionnaire for a response rate of 57 percent (i.e. 269/500
potential dyads). Finally, 98 coworkers responded to our e-mail request and completed
the third questionnaire for a final response rate of 20 percent (i.e. 98/500 potential
triads). Although each step in the data collection significantly decreased our number of
respondents, our final response rate is still higher than the average for the social
sciences (Alreck and Settle, 1995). Of these 98 triads, the respondents were mostly
female (employee: 77 percent, supervisor: 55 percent, and coworker: 81 percent), middle
aged (employee: 41.5 years, supervisor: 42.6 years, and coworker: 38.8 years),
moderately tenured in their position (employee: 10.6 years, supervisor: 12.2 years, and
coworker: 9.6 years), and Caucasian (employee: 89 percent, supervisor: 93 percent, and
coworker: 86 percent). The respondents held a variety of white-collar jobs in
departments such as accounting, customer service, human resources, information
technology, marketing, and production.

Measures
Job performance. Much like an actual performance appraisal, supervisors evaluated their
employees’ job performance with a 5-item scale that was developed by Tsui et al. (1997).
This scale asked supervisors to rate their subordinates’: “ability to perform core job
tasks,” “judgment when performing core job tasks,” “accuracy when performing core job
tasks,” “job knowledge with reference to core job tasks,” and “creativity when performing
core job tasks.” Supervisor responses ranged from 1 (unsatisfactory) to 7 (excellent).
Political skill. Employees completed the 18-item political skill inventory, which was
developed by Ferris et al. (2005b). This scale consists of items such as “I spend a lot of
time and effort at work networking with others,” “I am able to communicate easily and
effectively with others,” “I understand people very well,” and “I try to show a genuine
interest in other people,” which represent the construct’s four dimensions of networking
ability, interpersonal influence, social astuteness, and apparent sincerity, respectively.
Employee responses ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).
Personal reputation. Peers completed a 12-item scale that was developed by
Hochwarter et al. (2007) to evaluate employees’ personal reputation. This scale consists
of items such as “This person is regarded highly by others” and “If people want things
done right, they ask this person to do it.” Peer responses ranged from 1 (strongly
disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Hochwarter et al. (2007) established this scale as a
psychometrically sound, unidimensional measure of personal reputation, which
demonstrated respectable construct and criterion-related validity. Indeed, they
demonstrated that self-assessments of personal reputation correlated significantly
with peer assessments of reputation.
JMP Control variable
28,6 Previous research has suggested that personal reputation may possess a temporal
component (Zinko et al., 2007). In order to eliminate an alternative explanation for our
results, we controlled for job tenure, both in current position and under current
supervisor, in the data analysis.

668
Data analysis
We conducted regression analysis to examine the hypothesized direct relationships, as
well as the moderating role of political skill on the job performance-personal reputation
relationship. All predictors were mean-centered. An interaction term was created to
test for the moderation of political skill on the relationship of performance and
reputation.

Validity of measures
In order to confirm the construct validity of our measures, previous studies were
examined. Ferris et al. (2005) argued that political skill should only be modestly related
to other social effectiveness constructs, and not significantly related to general mental
ability. In support of this argument, they reported correlations of political skill with
self-monitoring (r ¼ 0.39, p , 0.001), political savvy (r ¼ 0.47, p , 0.001), and
emotional intelligence (r ¼ 0.53, p , 0.01). In addition, they found a correlation
between political skill and the Wonderlic personnel test (i.e. the most frequently used
measure of general mental ability) that was not significantly different from zero.
Similarly, Semadar et al. (2006) reported correlations of political skill with
self-monitoring (r ¼ 0.27, p , 0.01) and with leadership self-efficacy (r ¼ 0.37,
p , 0.01).
Using multiple assessments of political skill and job performance from different
assessors, Blickle et al. (2011) reported significant relationships between the two
constructs. They found that political skill explained a significant proportion of
variance in all job performance assessments, ranging between 6.8 and 25.9 percent.
However, the direction of prediction exhibited an influence on variance explained in the
performance assessment variables. From the prediction of job performance
assessments in supervisory group A by political skill assessments in group B, the
explained variances in job performance criterion measures ranged between 6.5 and 7.9
percent. Whereas, from the prediction of job performance assessments in supervisory
group B by political skill assessments in group A, the explained variances in
performance ranged between 13.8 and 25.9 percent. Also, Ferris et al. (2005) found that
after controlling for a number of other variables, political skill was found to
significantly predict leadership effectiveness ratings (R 2 ¼ 0.16, p , 0.05) and job
performance ratings (R 2 ¼ 0.18, p , 0.01).
Meanwhile, pursuant to Fornell and Larcker’s (1981) suggestions, calculations for
construct reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity were found to be
acceptable. Specifically, at 0.87, 0.87, and 0.94, all three constructs exhibited construct
reliability. Further, each construct was found to have an average variance extracted of
at least 0.50, displaying convergent validity, and this value proved greater than the
shared variances among the other study constructs, displaying discriminant validity.
Results Performance and
Table I reports the means, standard deviations, correlations, and reliabilities of the political skill
study variables.
The results of the regression analysis are presented in Table II. Despite previous
theory, neither positional tenure, nor time under the supervisor exhibited a significant
effect on coworker-rated personal reputation. H1 predicted a positive relationship
between political skill and reputation, and H2 predicted a positive relationship between 669
job performance and reputation. Both supervisor-rated job performance (b ¼ 0.21,
p , 0.05) and employee-rated political skill (b ¼ 0.20, p , 0.05) positively predicted
reputation, thus providing support for H1 and H2, respectively. In addition, the
interaction term explained incremental criterion variance (b ¼ 0.21, p , 0.05) in
coworker-rated personal reputation, thus supporting H3. The interaction between
performance and political skill was graphed (Figure 1), and the simple slopes were
tested (Aiken and West, 1991; Preacher et al., 2006). The analysis indicated that,
although high political skill (t ¼ 3.21, p , 0.05) was statistically significant, low
political skill was not (t ¼ 20.20, ns), supporting the form proposed in H3.

Discussion
Despite its generally recognized importance, there is little known about how
individuals manage personal reputation in the workplace. This investigation,
grounded in the adaptive self-regulation theory and political skill literature, attempted
to address this deficiency by examining the relationships between job performance and
political skill on personal reputation. Confirmation for H1 and H2 was gained because
both political skill and job performance were positively related to personal reputation.
Furthermore, political skill moderated the relationship between job performance and
personal reputation for those high in political skill, but not for those low in political

M SD 1 2 3 4 5

Employee time in position 5.27 4.66 –

Employee time under this supervisor 3.02 3.73 20.38 * –
Supervisor-assessed performance 5.57 0.84 20.13 * 2 0.06 * (0.87)
Employee-assessed political skill 5.61 0.51 20.01 * 2 0.09 * 2 0.29 * (0.87) Table I.
Peer-assessed employee reputation 5.72 0.77 20.03 * 2 0.13 * 2 0.30 * 2 0.31 * (0.94) Descriptive statistics,
correlations, and
Notes: n ¼ 98; *p , 0.05 (two-tailed); reliabilities in the diagonal reliabilities

Predictor variables b t

Employee time in this position 20.02 * 2 0.17

Employee time under this supervisor 20.10 * 2 1.00
Supervisor-assessed performance 20.21 * 2 2.13
Employee-assessed political skill 20.20 * 2 2.01
Political skill £ performance 20.21 * 2 2.16 Table II.
R2 20.20 * Results of regression
analysis for peer-assessed
Notes: R ¼ 0.45, F(5, 91) ¼ 4.51 *, n ¼ 98; *p , 0.05 (two-tailed) reputation
JMP
28,6

670

Figure 1.
The moderating role of
political skill

skill. This suggests that politically skilled employees were able to leverage their job
performance information in effective ways, which ultimately benefited their personal
reputation in the eyes of others. Not only does this research make contributions to
theory and research, but it has implications for future research and practice as well.

Contributions to theory and research

This investigation drew upon the theory of adaptive self-regulation and reputational
effectiveness (Tsui, 1984; Tsui, 1994; Tsui and Ashford, 1994) to explain the processes
by which personal reputations at work are managed. Thus, the results make important
contributions to theory by demonstrating that politically-skilled individuals, because
of their astuteness at reading people and situations, and effective transmission and
execution of performance information, earn higher personal reputation assessments
from their constituents. This was not the case for individuals low in political skill.Also,
this research makes contributions to the personal reputation and political skill
literatures. Some scholars have proposed that job performance should be positively
associated with assessments of individuals’ personal reputation at work (Tsui, 1984,
1994; Zinko et al., 2007) and others have found a positive relationship between political
skill and personal reputation (Liu et al., 2007). These results suggest that both job
performance and political skill are positively related to assessments of personal
reputation by peers, in support of H1 and H2, respectively. Additionally, results
demonstrated that the performance-personal reputation relationship was accentuated
for politically skilled employees, but not for those low in political skill, in support of
H3.These findings support the idea that politically skilled employees possess the
ability to highlight their performance in an engaging, favorable, and influential manner
to a broad network of contacts, thus building their personal reputation. As such,
political skill apparently provides employees with the ability to better present and
position their job performance in effective ways, leading others to form favorable
perceptions of their overall personal reputation, which is consistent with theoretical
arguments about how reputational effectiveness and political skill operate (Ferris et al.,
2003, 2007; Tsui, 1984, 1994; Tsui and Ashford, 1994; Zinko et al., 2007). Furthermore,
these results provide support for the findings reported by Treadway et al. (n.d.), who
found that the resource of past performance information needed to be effectively Performance and
leveraged and transmitted in order for it to be translated into assessments of political skill
interpersonal power. This translation was accomplished by individuals high in
political skill, but not those low in political skill.We suggested that politically skilled
employees signal, and manage the presentation and salience of, their job performance
much like individuals use influence tactics to manipulate others’ impressions (Turnley
and Bolino, 2001). In particular, the significant positive interaction between 671
performance and political skill on personal reputation for those high in political skill
suggests that signaling one’s performance may be an effective way to influence others’
perceptions of one’s personal reputation. These results are in alignment with previous
research which has reported that politically skilled employees’ influence tactics operate
more effectively than individuals low in political skill to favorably affect their
supervisors’ perceptions of their performance (e.g. Harris et al., 2007; Kolodinsky et al.,
2007; Treadway et al., 2007).

Strengths and limitations

This study has a number of methodological strengths that deserve to be mentioned.
First, a triadic data collection methodology eliminated the issues that are associated
with collecting data from one source. Employees evaluated their own political skill, a
supervisor evaluated the employees’ job performance, and a peer evaluated the
employees’ personal reputation. Second, the use of peer evaluations was an important
contribution because previous research has utilized employees’ perceptions of their
own personal reputation (e.g. Hochwarter et al., 2007; Liu et al., 2007), despite the fact
that personal reputation is based on others’ perceptions.
Although using peer assessments of personal reputation was a step in the right
direction, it should be noted that personal reputation is defined as a collective
perception. Therefore, future research which utilizes multiple constituents’ perceptions
of an individual’s personal reputation is warranted. Similarly, job performance was
evaluated by supervisor perceptions. Although most organizations require supervisors
to appraise employee performance, it would be interesting to see if the established
relationships hold for quantitative measures (e.g. sales dollars, widgets produced, etc.)
of job performance as well. Unfortunately, these measures of job performance were not
available for this research, and do not exist for many types of jobs.

Directions for future research

Our results illustrated how political skill enhances the positive relationship between
performance and personal reputation at work. However, previous research has
differentiated between employees’ internal and external reputations. For example, Kydd
et al. (1990) found that individuals with an external reputation (i.e. a reputation that is
known outside of their organization) are more likely to leave their employers. Building on
this idea of internal versus external reputation, it would be interesting to see if employees
require higher levels of political skill to signal, present, and make salient their
performance to constituents outside of their organization, thus facilitating an external
reputation. Social network analysis may help differentiate the networking abilities of
these politically skilled individuals (e.g. see Wong and Boh, 2010; Burt, 2005).
As suggested by Zinko et al. (2007), recent research has found the reputation
construct to be composed of the two dimensions of “character/integrity” and
JMP “performance/results” (Laird, 2009). Such dimensions might be construed as key
28,6 higher-order dimensions of personal reputation, and as such, should be more
extensively investigated in future research. Tsui (1984) found that individuals can
develop reputations for performance. Individuals might choose more appropriate
tactics like organizational citizenship behaviors or contextual performance behaviors
to signal their high levels of character/integrity to other organizational members, thus
672 positively affecting the character dimension of their personal reputation. In support of
this proposition, previous research has found helpfulness, which is at the heart of
citizenship behavior and prosocial contextual performance, to be positively associated
with personal reputation (Johnson et al., 2002).
In a similar vein, others have argued that reputations can form because of integrity
and/or fairness behaviors (e.g. Becker, 1998; Schlenker et al., 2008). Furthermore, both
performance/results and character/integrity assessments have been found to be related
to trust (e.g. Kim et al., 2004). Indeed, a reputation for being trustworthy is seen as
foundational to effective work relationships (e.g. Ferris et al., 2009; Wong and Boh,
2010), and trustworthy individuals tend to be judged as possessing greater
dependability and integrity (e.g. Mayer et al., 1995).
Future research should investigate the dimensions of reputation with respect to
dimension-specific antecedents, consequences, and moderators. Recent research has
demonstrated reputation or higher status is a consequence of helping or citizenship
types of behaviors (Flynn et al., 2006; Hall et al., 2009). However, closer inspection
might indicate that such helping behavior really influences reputation primarily
through the character/integrity dimension. Alternatively, consistently producing
high-level performance should build effective personal reputation mainly through the
performance/results dimension. Finally, it would be interesting to investigate which
dimensions of political skill are most influential in the positive relationship between job
performance and personal reputation. post hoc analysis suggests that, of the four
political skill sub-dimensions, networking ability was the only that significantly
moderated this relationship.

Practical implications
Although organizational politics have been framed both negatively and positively,
they are a reality of organizational life (Mintzberg, 1985). Further, some politically
skilled individuals harness this politicking to benefit themselves and their organization
(e.g. Hochwarter, 2012). Therefore, it may be beneficial for organizations to provide
their employees with training in political skill. Role-plays and dramaturgical
approaches have been suggested to help build political skill competencies (Ferris et al.,
2005a). This skill also can be enhanced through mentoring. A primary role of mentors
is to assist protégés’ understanding of the work environment, with particular reference
to the development of political understanding (Perrewé et al., 2002). One area where
mentors can be particularly helpful to protégés is providing them with information on
how to network, as well as put them in contact with influential organizational members
(e.g. Blass et al., 2007). Ultimately, it would be interesting to evaluate the personal
reputation of individuals before and after their participation in political skill training
and mentoring activities. While this study investigated the maintenance of personal
reputation, a longitudinal design might explain how political skill helps individuals
highlight previous performance to develop their personal reputations in the first place.
Social implications Performance and
Although this study focused on how individuals maintain their personal reputation in political skill
a work environment, the results are useful in any organizational setting (e.g. schools,
clubs, churches, etc.). Most individuals do not live in isolation. In order to maintain a
positive personal reputation and enjoy the benefits that it affords in a variety of life
domains, individuals must leverage their social skills and highlight their performance
behaviors to others. 673
Conclusion
As noted by the quote from Henry Ford in the opening of this paper, reputation is a
construct that is fundamental to everyday life in general, and organizational life, in
particular. Yet, the scientific understanding and knowledge base on reputation has
lagged considerably behind its practicality. The objective of this study was to gain a
better understanding of one way individuals maintain a positive personal reputation at
work. This investigation demonstrated that work performance can be leveraged in
ways that contribute significantly to personal reputation assessments, and it is
politically-skilled individuals who can manage the presentation of their performance in
influential and impactful ways. These results contribute to the adaptive self-regulation
theory and political skill literature, and as such, to our understanding of the processes
and dynamics underlying personal reputations at work. Hopefully, this investigation
will stimulate further research in this important area of inquiry.

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About the authors

Mary Dana Laird is an Assistant Professor of Management at The University of Tulsa. She
received her PhD in Management from Florida State University. Her research interests include
personal reputation, organizational politics and political skill, and stress. Mary Dana Laird is the
corresponding author and can be contacted at: mary-laird@utulsa.edu
James J. Zboja is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at The University of Tulsa. He received
his PhD in Marketing from Florida State University. His research interests include social
influence in selling, sales management and organizational contexts.
Arthur D. Martinez is Assistant Professor of Management and Quantitative Methods at
Illinois State University. He received his PhD in Management from Florida State University. His
research investigates social power in organizational contexts.
Gerald R. Ferris is the Francis Eppes Professor of Management and Professor of Psychology
at Florida State University. He received a PhD in Business Administration from the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ferris has research interests in the areas of social influence and
effectiveness processes in organizations, and the role of reputation in organizations.

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