Bottom-line mentality (BLM) describes a one-dimensional frame of mind revolving around bottom-line pursuits, which pervades most organizations today. But how does working with high BLM supervisors affect employees’ functioning both at work and at home? Guided by this question, we draw on social information processing theory and insights from the person-environment fit literature for a nuanced understanding of the effects of supervisor BLM. Using data from two field studies conducted in China (340 employees) and the United States (174 employees), we find that supervisor BLM increases employee perceptions of a competitive climate that ultimately increases employee thriving at work and insomnia outside work. We further find that employee trait competitiveness moderated the indirect relationship (via perceived competitive climate) between supervisor BLM and thriving at work but not for insomnia; employees high (versus low) in trait competitiveness were found to thrive at work under the competitive climate stimulated by high BLM supervisors. Taken together, our findings highlight the need for organizational leaders to be cautious of being too narrowly focused on bottom-line outcomes and aware of the wider implications of BLM on different domains of their employees’ lives.

In the present study, we propose a negative association between spiritual leadership and work alienation and service employee social capital as a mediator of the spiritual leadership-work alienation link. We also hypothesize political skill as a boundary condition of the direct association between spiritual leadership and social capital and the indirect association between spiritual leadership and work alienation. Time-lagged (three rounds, three weeks apart) survey data collected from 283 service sector employees supported our proposed hypotheses. Despite the prevalence of work alienation in service organizations and the recognition that it can lead to several negative outcomes, little is known about how managers can address service employees' feelings of work alienation. We address this crucial theoretical gap and offer several practical implications that can help managers in service organizations enhance employees' social capital and undermine their feelings of alienation at work.

Extending existing bottom-line mentality (BLM) perspectives, we provide a new theoretical account of how supervisors’ perceptions of top management BLM influence supervisors’ servant leadership (SL) behavior. Using role theory, we propose that these perceptions inhibit supervisors’ SL behavior by reducing their SL role conceptualization or the extent to which supervisors consider SL part of their work responsibility. Further, given that the process underlying the relationship between perceived top management BLM and supervisor SL behavior may be explained by social learning theory and human adaptive capacity perspectives, we examine the incremental validity of supervisor SL role conceptualization versus supervisor BLM and empathy as mediating mechanisms. We also propose low perspective-taking among supervisors as a boundary condition that exacerbates the negative effect of perceived top management BLM on SL role conceptualization, which then results in less servant leader behavior. Data from two multiwave field studies in China and the United Kingdom provided some support for our hypotheses. Across unique cultural contexts, our findings highlight the value of a role theory perspective in understanding perceptions of top management BLM. We discuss critical theoretical and practical implications of these findings and avenues for subsequent research.

Previous studies have overlooked critical differences between different aspects of employees’ knowledge-hiding behaviors. Using social information processing theory as an anchor, we fill this void by investigating the impact of servant leadership on three distinct aspects of employees’ knowledge-hiding behaviors: evasive hiding, playing dumb, and rationalized hiding. Specifically, we propose that servant leadership is negatively related to evasive hiding and playing dumb, and yet, paradoxically positively related to rationalized hiding. We further propose employee perspective taking as a crucial underlying mechanism and employee justice orientation as a relevant boundary condition of the hypothesized relationships between servant leadership and employees’ knowledge-hiding behaviors. Our time-lagged and two-source data provide support for our hypotheses. The theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.