Exhausting Your High-Potentials: Managerial Promotion-Focus Behaviors and Employee Wellbeing

Abstract

Organizations seek out high-potential newcomers, as they hope that high-potentials will become top-performers within their companies, delivering higher rewards to the firm. Research that examines the behaviors of managers directed to high-potentials is needed to determine whether managers are helping high-potentials reach their promise or harming their future prospects. This study theorizes that managers are situationally induced to use promotion focus behaviors with their high-potentials, leading them to overuse their high-potentials to the point of physical exhaustion. We test our theory using archival data from the National Football League (NFL) of offensive skills players drafted between 1995 and 2005. We find that high-potentials are more likely to be injured than other players. Further, we find that managerial overuse mediates the relationship between designation as a high-potential and exhaustion and that managerial experience moderates the relationship between high-potential designation and overuse. This research provides preliminary evidence of managers engaging in promotion focus behaviors to the detriment of high-potentials.