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NTU Management Review Vol. 33 No. 3 Dec. 2023

The relationship between resource allocation preferences and the branch office’s
abnormal sales performance is presented in Table 8: both Ab_SENIOR and Ab_ADV
i,t-1
i,t-1
are positively associated with the branch office’s abnormal sales performance (t = 5.45
p < 0.01; t = 2.06, p < 0.05). These findings provide evidence of a direct and positive

relationship between resource allocation preferences and the branch office’s abnormal sales
performance. In addition, we find that the coefficients of Ab_SENIOR i,t-1 × CONSENSUS
i,t
and Ab_ADV i,t-1 × CONSENSUS are significant and positive (t = 4.59, p < 0.01; t = 1.67,
i,t
p < 0.10), showing that when the regional and branch manager have a higher level of goal
consensus, branch offices with an unexpected proportion of resources are more likely to
exhibit superior sales performance. These results echo studies finding that supervisors have
an incentive to give more resources to subordinates who show similar preferences, and
that bias reinforces the unequal ratio of high to low performance because of the disparity

in resource allocation (Turban and Jones, 1988; Broughton and Mills, 1980).

4.3.4 Lead-Lag Relationship between Goal Consensus and Resource Allocation

Preferences
In our main test, we investigate the association between goal consensus and the
branch office’s current unexpected proportion of resources. However, the effect of goal
consensus on the regional manager’s allocation decisions may be reflected in a future
period rather than the current period. As a result, we further investigate whether goal

consensus is associated with the branch office’s unexpected proportion of resources in the
future.
To explain the lagged effect of goal consensus on resource allocation preference, we

regress one-period lead abnormal resource indicators (Ab_SENIOR i,t+1 and Ab_ADV i,t+1 ) on
goal consensus and rerun equations (3) and (4). The regression results are shown in Table 9.
Similar to what we find in Table 5, Table 9 shows that goal consensus (CONSENSUS )
i,t
has a significant positive relationship with abnormal advertising funding (t = 2.60, p <
0.01), but not the ratio of senior salespersons (t = 0.85, p = 0.40).

4.3.5 Controlling for Changes in Branch Managers during the Sample Period
In our main test, we calculate the goal-consensus score between each regional

manager–branch manager pair in a region and argue that the level of goal consensus

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