Imagine you are an employee at a large financial firm who has been employed at the company for a few years now. You have always enjoyed your job, the work culture is very positive, you enjoy a full hour long lunch time which allows you to go for a walk outside everyday, and you feel good about working hard and performing for your supervisors. One day you are told a new CEO will take over, a CEO with a reputation for strong leadership and high level performance.
A few months in, you soon realise the CEO prioritises profits above all else, leading to staff cuts and increased workloads. You have begun working overtime without pay, skipping breaks to ensure avoiding being labeled as lazy or underperforming. The pressure quickly feels immense and the positive work culture you once enjoyed has disappeared, leaving employee morale low.
Over time, you begin to notice that the performance quality and customer service has dropped significantly. Meanwhile, management remains focused on cost-cutting and pushing employees harder and harder. Eventually, customers express unhappiness for the lack of good service the company once had, performance has noticeably dropped, and the company's reputation suffers, ultimately revealing the unfortunate consequences in its relentless bottom-line mentality.
introduce BLM, define it and give it context
Figure 1. Employee focusing on laptopBottom-line mentality (BLM) is defined as "one dimensional thinking that revolves around securing bottom-line outcomes to the neglect of competing priorities" (Greenbaum et al., 2012)
the concept is often discussed in organisational contexts, and has been heavily researched in this area, identifying both favourable (e.g., increased performance outcomes (Babalola et al., 2020)) and unfavourable outcomes (e.g., unethical conduct (Ge, 2018)).
Focus questions:
Break the problem (i.e., the sub-title) down into three to five focus questions. Focus questions can also be used as top-level headings.
What is the relationship between bottom-line mentality and motivation?
What traits and external influences cause an individual to be more susceptible to exhibiting a bottom-line mentality?
What are the positive and negative implications of a bottom-line mentality?
How can a focus on the bottom-line enhance motivation in some contexts while undermining it in others?
Small intro paragraph explaining that many motivation theories and concepts are related to BLM. It is not realistic to pick two or three and claim they can explain the concept, but instead an amalgamation of different theories help an audience to understand BLM and individual's motives to engage in the mentality, or be pushed to do so.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs (see figure 1) is key to illustrating how individual's are motivated to fulfil their basic needs (such as physiological and safety) before focusing on higher order needs (belongingness, esteem, and self actualisation)
demonstrates how a BLM can come at the expense of fulfilling higher order needs
Figure 2. Maslow's hierarchy of needs
May be a good place for a case study here???
eg) a company prioritising profits over fostering a positive work culture (leads to a lack of belongingness and recognition among employees)
Motivation is based on the expectation that effort will lead to performance and performance will lead to desired outcomes
Essentially the theory is characterised by three main components: 1. expectancy (effort will lead to action and performance), 2. instrumentality (performance will result to desired outcomes), and 3. valence (value placed on given outcomes)
helps explain why individuals/organisations with a BLM are motivated to believe that achieving goals will result in tangible reward, hence the focus rests solely on the outcomes rather than the process, which is central to the BLM
suggests that specific and challenging goals will lead to higher performance in individuals by directing attention, mobilising effort, and encouraging persistence
highlights the importance of clear and measurable goals to motivate individuals
this theory helps characterise key features of BLM
Achievement motivation theory (ATM) is one of the three components that made up David McClelland's Human Motivation Theory
characterised by the motivation to succeed and achieve goals
people high in achievement motivation are driven to set challenging goals and take calculated risks in order to achieve them
BLM aligns closely with this theory, where the primary focus on achieving success is defined by specific metrics (eg in the workplace: profits, sales, or individual: academic grades)
The Enron Scandal is a well known act of company misconduct perfectly engaging in professionally unethical acts aligning with a BLM
An accounting scandal involving Enron Corporation, an energy company based in Houston, Texas, which saw key executives identifying accounting loopholes, misusing mark-to-market accounting, special purpose entities, and poor financial reporting, ultimately leading to the company hiding billions of dollars in debt from failed projects and deals
Enron Corporation set ambitious financial goals, which resulted in aggressive goal setting, intense pressure for employees, ethical compromises, culture fear and competition, and a lack of good leadership, which all contributed to the corporate culture that was strongly defined by a BLM
Enron's fraudulent engagement was eventually exposed which consequently saw one of the biggest corporate bankruptcies in history
Perfect example of how a BLM can have extreme consequences for a company and its stakeholders, highlighting the importance of balancing financial goals with ethical consideration, transparency, and long-term perspective.
Babalola, M. T., Mawritz, M. B., Greenbaum, R. L., Ren, S., & Garba, O. A. (2020). Whatever It Takes: How and When Supervisor Bottom-Line Mentality Motivates Employee Contributions in the Workplace. Journal of Management, 47(5), 1134-1154. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206320902521
Ge, Y. 2018. Supervisor bottom-line mentality, instrumentalism, ethical climate and employee’s unethical behaviour: The moderate effect of moral identity. In J. Liu & K. L. Teves (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2018 2nd International Conference on Education, Economics and Management Research, Singapore
Greenbaum, R., Mawritz, M. B., & Eissa, G. (2012). Bottom-Line Mentality as an Antecedent of Social Undermining and the Moderating Roles of Core Self-Evaluations and Conscientiousness. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97(2), 343-359. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025217
Locke, E., & Latham, G. (1990). A theory of goal setting and task performance. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
McClelland, D. C., Atkinson, J. W., Clark, R. A., & Lowell, E. L. (1953). Effects on fantasy of arousing achievement motivation. In D.C. McClelland, J.W. Atkinson, R. A. Clark, & E. L. Lowell, The achievement motive (pp. 139-160). Appleton-Century-Crofts. https"//doi.org/10.1037/11144-005
