Mass layoffs offer a unique and understudied context to understand how affected workers communicate the involuntary, collective nature of their organizational exit. In this study, we explored the communicative strategies that workers affected by mass layoffs in the technology industry used to engage in impression management by analyzing LinkedIn posts ( N = 362). Our findings showed that workers engaged in proactive impression management by drawing on targets of identification (such as positioning themselves within the collective group of affected workers and highlighting their former membership with prestigious companies) to minimize blame for their layoff and signal their employability. Our findings also suggest that, amid environmental shock and in digital environments, individuals enact remarkably similar communicative strategies to one another, suggesting that this type of organizational exit announcement is a distinct emergent genre for impression management. We discuss our findings’ implications for our understanding of organizational exit and work-related online impression management behavior.

中文翻译：

---

“我们谁都不想参加这个派对，但嘉宾名单真是太棒了”：裁员后，科技工作者如何在 LinkedIn 上定位自己


大规模裁员提供了一个独特但研究不足的背景，以了解受影响的员工如何传达其组织退出的非自愿、集体性质。在这项研究中，我们通过分析 LinkedIn 帖子 （N = 362） 探讨了受科技行业大规模裁员影响的员工用于进行印象管理的交际策略。我们的研究结果表明，员工通过利用身份识别目标（例如将自己定位在受影响员工的集体群体中并突出他们以前在知名公司的成员身份）来进行主动印象管理，以尽量减少对他们被裁员的指责并表明他们的就业能力。我们的研究结果还表明，在环境冲击和数字环境中，个体彼此之间制定的沟通策略非常相似，这表明这种类型的组织退出公告是印象管理的一种独特的新兴类型。我们讨论了我们的研究结果对我们理解组织退出和与工作相关的在线印象管理行为的影响。