Whatever It Takes: How and When Supervisor Bottom-Line Mentality Motivates Employee Contributions in the Workplace

Given that many organizations are competitive and finance centered, organizational leaders may lead with a primary focus on bottom-line attainment, such that they are perceived by their subordinates as having a bottom-line mentality (BLM) that entails pursuing bottom-line outcomes above all else. Ye...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of management Vol. 47; no. 5; pp. 1134 - 1154
Main Authors: Babalola, Mayowa T., Mawritz, Mary B., Greenbaum, Rebecca L., Ren, Shuang, Garba, Omale A.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.05.2021
Sage Publications Ltd
Subjects:
Ambition
Aspiration
Attainment
Behavior
Donations
Employees
Ethics
Finance
Financial services
Leadership
Multisource
Obligations
Organizational behavior
Organizational effectiveness
Social exchange theory
Subordinates
Superior subordinate relationship
Supervisors
Task performance
Workplaces
unethical pro-organizational behavior
performance
ambition
felt obligation toward the bottom line
bottom-line mentality
ISSN:0149-2063, 1557-1211
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Given that many organizations are competitive and finance centered, organizational leaders may lead with a primary focus on bottom-line attainment, such that they are perceived by their subordinates as having a bottom-line mentality (BLM) that entails pursuing bottom-line outcomes above all else. Yet, the field is limited in understanding why such a leadership approach affects employees’ positive and negative contributions in the workplace. Drawing on social exchange theory, we theorize that supervisors high in BLM can influence employees’ felt obligation toward the bottom line, which in turn can influence employees’ task performance and unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB). We also examine employee ambition as a moderator of this process. Using three-wave, multisource data collected from the financial services industry, our results revealed that high-BLM supervisors elevate employee task performance as well as UPB by motivating employees’ felt obligation toward the bottom line. Furthermore, we found that employee ambition served as a first-stage moderator, such that the mediated relationships were stronger when employee ambition was high as opposed to low. Our findings break away from the dominant dysfunctional view of BLM and provide a more balanced view of this mentality.
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ISSN:0149-2063
1557-1211
DOI:10.1177/0149206320902521