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Supervisors driven by profits could actually be hurting their coveted bottom lines by losing the respect of their employees, who counter by withholding performance, according to a new study led by Baylor University.
The study, "The Influence of Supervisor Bottom-Line Mentality and Employee Bottom-Line Mentality on Leader-Member Exchange and Subsequent Employee Performance," is published in the journal Human Relations.
"Supervisors who focus only on profits to the exclusion of caring about other important outcomes, such as employee well-being or environmental or ethical concerns, turn out to be detrimental to employees," said lead researcher Matthew Quade, Ph.D., assistant professor of management in Baylor University's Hankamer School of Business. "This results in relationships that are marked by distrust, dissatisfaction and lack of affection for the supervisor. And ultimately, that leads to employees who are less likely to complete tasks at a high level and less likely to go above and beyond the call of duty."
While other studies have examined the impact of bottom-line mentality (BLM) on employee behavior, Quade said this is the first to identify why employees respond with negative behaviors to supervisors they perceive to have BLM.
Matthew J Quade, Benjamin D McLarty, Julena M Bonner. The influence of supervisor bottom-line mentality and employee bottom-line mentality on leader-member exchange and subsequent employee performance. Human Relations, 2019; 001872671985839 DOI: 10.1177/0018726719858394
(Score: 2, Interesting) by hwertz on Monday July 29 2019, @05:07PM (1 child)
Seen it.. and this was within the same company. One area, there was a sense of comraderie, positive atmosphere, we had a few people that'd crack jokes and such, which were generally funny. Very high morale. We hit a production record in there and got a nice meal for it. To encourage these things, if someone did something helpful (for yourself or others) you could slip a note into a box, and one person a week would get a nominal prize for it.
Moved to a different area -- the immediate boss was not a "bottom line" boss but the one above that was. They were operating machines that were meant to have two operators with one operator, and one person would be chosen as a "floater" to cover people when they went to lunch, help if something happened so someone got behind etc. This worked OK. Then when one person left for another area in the company, they decdied they did not have to replace them, no more floater. With no floater, when someone went to lunch, someone else was expected to run two machines (it was "supposed" to be shut down, but they would not schedule production based on that so shutting down for lunch meant DEFINITE mandatory overtime instead of like a 75% chance of having it.) These machines do not run themselves, they had supplies to refill, and the product did not box itself, and quality checks to be run, among other things. Then they decided since the almost new (5 year old maybe) machines in the next area are so much faster than the 25-year-old ones in our area, they should just schedule zero time to change orders (which takes about 20 minutes), schedule a faster production rate than the machines can physically do, and we'd "figure out" some way to speed up, despite people pointing out they'd been in the zone (in some cases) 20 years and already were teaching every possible trick to run at the rate we were running. So then CONSTANT mandatory overtime. This zone had ZERO morale, you'd think people in this area were stuck in M*A*S*H* during the depressing later seasons. A few people were near retirement and you may not have gotten top performance no matter what; but I know I was getting worn out, burning through my time off, and definitely not putting in top performance (due to fatigue if nothing else) toward the end. I quit eventually.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Tuesday July 30 2019, @01:09AM
I know exactly what you're saying. I've been in your shoes. The details in your story are just different enough that I can say it wasn't the same place that I worked, but the resemblance is uncanny.