Cerrone, ClaudiaDe Chiara, AlessandroManna, EsterSaroglou, Theo2025-04-222025-04-222025https://hdl.handle.net/2445/220517Employees' desire to impress their employer may lead to suboptimal choices, such as performing tasks that are out of their depth. In this paper, we formalise this intuition in a principal-agent setting and we experimentally analyse its practical relevance. Through a theoretical model, we show that an agent's desire to appear competent to their employer (social image concerns), can result in inefficient project selection. We test this prediction using a laboratory experiment and find that social image concerns increase the likelihood of suboptimal project choices when agents are male and the principal-agent interaction is not anonymous. Our findings have implications for organisational design.57 p.application/pdfengcc-by-nc-nd, (c) Cerrone et al., 2025http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/Imatge corporativaGestió de projectesEstudis de gènereCorporate imageProject managementGender studiesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/workingPaperinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess