The (in)congruence effects of supervisor bottom-line mentality identity and reputation on group performance: A moderated mediation model

Abstract

Does emphasizing an organization’s bottom line have to come at the expense of its employees? This question has intrigued scholars and business leaders alike, prompting a great deal of research into strategies for increasing the financial returns of organizations while balancing other competing interests. Though helpful in providing answers to part of the question, less is known about how employees respond to supervisors who prioritize the bottom line over other concerns. What research that does exist provides mixed perspectives, with some findings suggesting that prioritizing the bottom line helps focus employees on critical aspects of the workplace while other findings indicate that doing so harms employees as they mimic “succeed at all costs” mentalities. To expand knowledge in this area, we draw from socioanalytic and social exchange theories to develop a multi-stakeholder model between supervisors’ self-ratings of bottom-line mentality (i.e., identity) and employees’ judgments about their supervisors’ bottom-line mentality (SBLM; i.e., reputation) as it relates to two forms of collective performance. Polynomial regression and response surface analysis indicate that congruence between SBLM (i.e., SBLM identity) and employees’ aggregated ratings of their SBLM (i.e., SBLM reputation) relates to collective task and contextual performance via employees’ perceptions of their supervisors’ benevolence-based trustworthiness (BBT). Further, employees’ aggregate group bottom-line mentality moderates the congruence effect between SBLM identity and SBLM reputation on supervisors’ BBT.