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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: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 29 2019, @05:49PM (5 children)
I've spent most of my working life in large established organizations, and from what I've seen managers mostly fall into their roles by accident. Once there, they remain stuck in place forever, while hiring, retaining and firing based on allocated budget. Performance does not seem to have any bearing on who gets to stay. If you shut up, you could serve out 30 years, put your kids through college and retire. If you get annoyed how the department is run and become a pain in the ass to your manager, or the division decides to discontinue manufacturing vanilla cherry tobacco free diet fizzbuzz, you could get laid off.
Many first line managers are supervising >30 employees. That's a zookeeping job. The employees get discouraged after a couple of years, because there is no way to advance and strong contributors get the same treatment as slackers. They give up, putting all their energy into their kids so that in 20 years they may get the same shitty kind of job.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Monday July 29 2019, @07:08PM (4 children)
That's the Peter Principle [wikipedia.org] in action: people are promoted to the level of their incompetence
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 29 2019, @08:28PM (3 children)
What about potentially competent people that are blocked from advancement by a manager in a Peter Principle position?
(Score: 3, Funny) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Monday July 29 2019, @10:37PM
"Welcome to the desert of the real."
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 29 2019, @10:47PM (1 child)
Ugh I had one manager who would constantly shoot down my ideas and ride my ass to perform on stupid piddly small scale shit.
After getting away from him it turns out all my ideas were normal in more advanced environments and now I personally manage an infrastructure as complex as their entire enterprise by myself and work with a team of 3 devs who do better than their entire 20 person dev team.
My workload is much lighter and the penalties for failure are much lighter.
Can't believe I gave that ungrateful prick so much blood, sweat, and tears.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @04:49AM
I was in a similar position, and made a fortunate transition to something better. This happened pretty soon after I had made my final determination that the effort I had expended in that position was sunk, I only had one life to live and I definitely didn't want to be doing that kind of job by my next birthday. The manager was incompetent, but he got a budget every year no-questions-asked, and was obviously going to sit there for the rest of his working life.
I didn't have a family, and I had some "fuck you" money saved up: five years of minimal living expenditures in case things fell through. I told my manager that I wasn't getting smarter by being there every day, I was getting dumber. Gave him my two weeks and left.