Is the bottom line reached? An exploration of supervisor bottom-line mentality, team performance avoidance goal orientation and team performance
研究主管将底线结果置于一切之上的心态如何通过团队绩效回避目标导向降低团队绩效，并发现绩效紧张会强化这一负面效应。基于258个中国团队数据，对管理实践有启示。
How do supervisors who treat the bottom line as more important than anything else influence team success? Drawing from social information processing theory, we explore how and when supervisor bottom-line mentality (i.e. an exclusive focus on bottom-line outcomes at the expense of other priorities) exerts influence on the bottom-line itself, in the form of team performance. We argue that a supervisor’s bottom-line mentality provides significant social cues for the team that securing bottom-line objectives is of sole importance, which stimulates team performance avoidance goal orientation, and thus decreases team performance. Further, we argue performing tension (i.e. tension between contradictory needs, demands, and goals), serving as team members’ mutual perception of the confusing environment, will strengthen the indirect negative relationship between supervisor bottom-line mentality and team performance through team performance avoidance goal orientation. We conduct a path analysis using data from 258 teams in a Chinese food-chain company, which provides support for our hypotheses. Overall, our findings suggest that supervisor’s exclusive focus on the bottom-line can serve to impede team performance. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed.