When Rewards Create Obsessions with the Bottom-Line, Nobody Wins

Abstract

Drawing on the central tenets of social interdependence theory and recent work on bottom-line mentalities, we examine bottom-line mentality as a mediator of the negative relationships between negatively interdependent rewards and task performance and organizational citizenship behavior. We suggest that negatively interdependent rewards are related to a tunnel vision focus on bottom-line attainment, which in turn, influences employees to neglect aspects of their in-role and extra-role job performance. We also draw on social interdependence theory to examine the moderating role of proactive personality, suggesting that in comparison to employees who are low on proactive personality, those high on the trait are less likely to allow the tunnel vision effect of negatively interdependent rewards and subsequent BLM to influence decreases in their performance-related behaviors. We tested our hypotheses across three studies: an experimental study, a diverse, multisource, time-lagged field study, and a multisource, field study from a single organization. Our results suggest that bottom-line mentality mediates the negative relationships between negatively interdependent rewards and task performance and organizational citizenship behavior and that proactive personality mitigates the effect on citizenship behavior but not task performance.