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

between each regional manager–branch manager pair in the group. Consistent with our
estimated projection, we find that a higher goal consensus between branch and regional
manager priorities makes the regional manager more likely to allocate advertising funding
to the branch manager’s office. Additionally, we find that a regional manager is more

likely to deploy senior salespersons to branch managers who have superior prior sales
performance. However, we do not find a statistically significant association between the
interactions of goal consensus and branch offices’ prior sale performance on resource

allocation preferences. This finding may suggest that although the two factors—goal
consensus and subordinates’ prior performance may exist simultaneously, they may play
different and independent roles in affecting a regional manager’s allocation preferences.
This study contributes to the existing managerial accounting literature in two
ways. First, prior studies address how a consensus on company goals affects subordinate

organizational commitment, job satisfaction, turnover, performance and the company’s
ability to realize its goals (Jensen and Meckling, 1976; Lambert, 2001; Ouchi, 1980; Ho,
Wu, and Wu, 2014; Witt, 1998). Past studies also provide evidence that managers can

take different actions to increase the goal consensus among the members within their
organizations or how leaders view and define their followers (Abernethy and Brownell,
1997; Merchant, 1985; Abernethy, Dekker, and Schulz, 2015; Floyd and Wooldridge,
1992; Knight, Pearce, Smith, Olian, Sims, Smith, and Flood, 1999; Hsiung and Lee, 2021).
These studies significantly clarify the impact of goal consensus on individuals and how to

increase the goal consensus among the members within an organization. However, prior
literature fails to address how supervisors react to supervisor–subordinate goal consensus.
This study contributes to the literature by taking a broader perspective on supervisors’

behavior toward supervisor–subordinate goal consensus and by showing that supervisor–
subordinate goal consensus can affect the former’s resource allocation preferences.
Second, we shed light on factors that can affect supervisors’ resource allocation
preferences. This issue is important because the allocation of limited resources within
organizations or group members plays a key role in many aspects of managerial

accounting. Despite the importance of resource allocation, previous studies mainly focus
on the determinants of supervisors’ reward-allocation preferences or behavior (He et
al., 2004; Leventhal, 1980; Pfeffer and Langton, 1988). These studies do not consider

what factors influence supervisors’ preferences in distributing subordinates’ job-related

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