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Goal Consensus, Subordinates’ Prior Performances, and Supervisors’ Resource Allocation Preferences

resources. Our study contributes to this line of research by showing that a supervisor’s
resource allocation decision may be based on both self-preferences and subordinates’ past
performances. Past studies (e.g., Pfeffer and Langton, 1988; Kabanoff, 1991; Törnblom
and Vermunt, 2007) show that decision makers may be motivated by what they perceive

to be important and may make decisions in ways consistent with their own preferences.
Our results are consistent with the above notion that decision makers may allow both their
self-preferences and performance-related information about their subordinates to influence

their resource allocation preferences.
The remainder of this article is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the literature
review and hypothesis development. Section 3 presents the research design and variable
measurements, and Section 4 discusses the empirical results. Section 5 provides the
conclusions and limitations along with the authors’ remarks.

2. Literature Review and Hypothesis Development

2.1 Goal Consensus and Resource Allocation Preferences
Supervisors are often charged with allocation and/or distribution decisions for
subordinates throughout organizations. To complicate such decisions further, potential
disparity among subordinates is often present in allocation decisions (Majerczyk and
Thomas, 2021). As resources are scarce within the organization, resource allocation

decision within the organization is a political matter (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1974).
The organization may be viewed as a group of coalitions (Pfeffer and Salancik,
1974; Mannix, 1993; Stevenson, Pearce, and Porter, 1985). Persistent differences in
specific issues, contexts, and outcomes create different coalitions within an organization.

Specifically, a coalition is defined as two or more members who cooperate to obtain a
mutually desired outcome that satisfies the interest of the coalition rather than those of
the entire group within which it is embedded (Polzer, Mannix, and Neale, 1998). Often,
coalition members focus on their own gain at the expense of the rest of the group. In
the organizational context, information on whether the coalition is achieving its goals is

ambiguous, because knowledge about whether payoffs clearly lead to winners and losers is
not always available in the organization. Imperfect knowledge and information; therefore,
may cause coalition members to continue pursuing unsuccessful courses of action

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