Super Image Management: Growing Concern for Productivity Decline

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a pilot study done to establish the characteristics and organizational impact of an emerging breed of managers, who are referred to in this paper as “Super Image Managers” (SIMs). The study shows that there is a remarkable degree of agreement between the patterns of behavior of these managers and also in the responses they elicit from their superiors and their subordinates. While they do serve as clearinghouses for information that is often fragmentary and diffuse in mega‐organizations, their effects on the organizational environment are found to be, on the whole, dysfunctional. The paper goes on to provide clues for identifying SIMs and presents ways of dealing with them both from an organizational and a personal standpoint.