Honestly, reading some details of this study gives me very little respect for social science research. From the article:
> Employees rated their supervisors’ BLM by scoring on a scale statements like: “My supervisor treats the bottom line as more important than anything else” and “My supervisor cares more about profits than his/her employees’ well-being.”
So it uses those questions to assess "bottom line mentality", and then, surprise surprise, people who say that their "supervisor cares more about profits than his/her employees’ well-being." also generally have poor opinions of their managers. IMO this study is bunk.
I can't access the underlying article, but generally researchers use some form of confirmatory factor analysis to evaluate whether the questions form a valid measure of the hypothetical construct (including whether there are any confounding variables). For instance, other questions could be included to distinguish unpopular supervisors from unpopular ones driven by the hypothesized bottom line mentality. Without looking at the actual study and complete questionnaire, it's hard to say whether the researcher did so correctly, but certainly the toolset exists to do so within the social sciences, making it a little unfair to blanket condemn the whole field.
I'm not sure about the research but only have personal context. In sales organizations for technical products you generally have a sales person and technical counterpart. Upstream you have the sales persons boss and the technical persons boss. Depending on how large of an organization this could be 1-4 layers deep. Those middle layers, generally, focus on one thing: revenue. I've been in enough of these organizations to understand that the minority of supervisors have well being of their direct reports above themselves or revenue. This includes customer satisfaction and success. While that may sound pointed in many ways I don't believe it's all their fault. This is simple because that's not what those people are told they are responsible for. Instead it's a number. A quota that is paramount to their success in the eyes of their superiors and the business. Nothing else really matters. So I'm really not surprised we end up with feedback like this. It's by design in many ways.
Sure, but "My supervisor treats the bottom line as more important than anything else" is universally understood to mean that the supervisor is an asshole. If a supervisor treated the bottom line as more important than anything else, and treated employees well in order to boost the bottom line, the employees wouldn't say that "my supervisor treats the bottom line as more important than anything else".
This is shown clearly in the employment dynamics of flagging retailers. As prospects become tighter and "making goal" becomes more and more overemphasized (preempting perks for labor, like abundant working hours and raises), employees with the most experience are overrepresented among the first to leave. Why stick around? They're skilled but obviously not valued.
It's not about being driven by the bottom line. It's about correctly understanding what leads to the best bottom line. And that's a very difficult problem.
Besides, whether you care about the bottom line or not, if you run out of money, you're out of business and your employees are on the street.
> Employees rated their supervisors’ BLM by scoring on a scale statements like: “My supervisor treats the bottom line as more important than anything else” and “My supervisor cares more about profits than his/her employees’ well-being.”
So it uses those questions to assess "bottom line mentality", and then, surprise surprise, people who say that their "supervisor cares more about profits than his/her employees’ well-being." also generally have poor opinions of their managers. IMO this study is bunk.