Winning at all costs: An exploration of bottom-line mentality, Machiavellianism, and organisational citizenship behaviour

This study seeks to advance the bottom-line mentality literature by exploring an antecedent and outcome of employee bottom-line mentality. We build and test a moderated-mediation model by arguing that the personality trait of Machiavellianism promotes an employee's adoption of a bottom-line mentality. Moreover, drawing on trait activation theory, we argue that this relationship is fully activated when the employee perceives that the organisation endorses a bottom-line mentality. To expand our theoretical model, we also suggest that employee bottom-line mentality inhibits organisational citizenship behaviour directed towards co-workers. Lastly, we investigate whether an employee's perception of an organisation's bottom-line mentality conditionally moderates the indirect effect of Machiavellianism on organisational citizenship behaviour directed towards co-workers through the mediated mechanism of employee bottom-line mentality. Our theoretical model is tested across two distinct studies. Study 1, a field study conducted within a variety of organisations, provides evidence for our initial predictions (Hypotheses 1 and 2). Study 2, a multisource field study conducted in multiple industries, replicates and extends the findings from Study 1 by providing evidence for the entire moderated-mediation model. We find support for our hypothesised model across both studies. Implications for theory and practice are discussed, and suggestions for future research are identified.