Despite their ubiquity in the workplace, identity-related compliments (compliments that employees receive at work about their intrinsic qualities, virtues, and strengths) have received scant attention in the management literature. We develop a conceptualization for identity-building compliments and their scales, and construct a theory of how identity-building compliments serve the social function of shaping recipients’ work-related self-identity, enabling them to construe best authentic-self through which potentials can be realized. Furthermore, given that there lacks an understanding of how identity-building compliments can be communicated in ways that shape identity and influence performance, we posit that they can be expressed via two compliment framings – ego-enhancing compliments (i.e., the extent to which a leader compliments an employee on their unique, internal, and natural strengths that set themselves apart from others) and impact-salient compliments (i.e., the extent to which a leader compliments an employee via highlighting the positive impact their qualities have on others (i.e., coworkers, teammates, organization, community, customers, or society at large)) – that interact to predict employee performance. Drawing on the dual-facet theory of pride, we propose a dual process model involving competing mechanisms via the two facets of pride that work oppositely in predicting the effect of a leader’s ego-enhancing compliments on the targeted subordinate’s performance. We theorize that while ego-enhancing compliments strengthen employee performance via promoting authentic pride, they undermine performance through inducing hubristic pride, and that there is an attenuation effect of the impact-salient compliments on the hubristic pride pathway and a strengthening effect of the impact-salient compliments on the authentic pride pathway. Preliminary findings from a pilot study with a sample of 248 working professionals from the US and UK support the proposed two-dimensional structure of compliment framings. Inductively generated compliments that employees received from their supervisors are rated along the ego-enhancing and impact-salient dimensions, along with employee pride and helping/cooperation intentions. Results support major parts of the proposed theoretical model.
