The Art of Looking Good: Bridging Interpersonal Justice to Individual Performance of Indonesian Civil Servants

The current research examines the critical role of interpersonal justice in improving civil servants’ tasks, adaptive, and contextual performance, and tests the mediating role of impression management strategies on the relationship. Two hundred and eighteen civil servants in Bengkulu province, Indonesia, participated voluntarily in an online survey. Hierarchal regression and PROCESS macro techniques were employed to test the hypotheses. The findings indicate that interpersonal justice positively impacts task, adaptive, and contextual performance. Additionally, ingratiation positively mediates the effects of interpersonal justice on all dimensions of employee performance. However, self-promotion does not mediate the relationship between interpersonal justice and task, adaptive, and contextual performance. The study contributes to the literature on the sequential relationship between interpersonal justice, impression management, and individual performance. It can be observed that civil servants engaged in impression management behavior in the workplace, whether consciously or unconsciously. Impression management played a substantial role in bridging the relationship between interpersonal justice and civil servants’ performance.