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

outcome level (Sniezek, May, and Sawyer, 1990; Mitchell, 1982). The past performance
of branch managers constitutes information for regional managers by which to form
expectations about the future performance of the branch managers; the regional manager’s
decision may be contingent upon the past performance of branch managers and affect the

allocation preferences of the regional manager. As a supervisor’s decision is influenced not
only by personal preferences but also by the subordinate’s past performance (Sutcliffe and
McNamara, 2001; Kor and Mahoney, 2005), it can be concluded that a branch office with a

previous record of inferior performance affects the regional manager’s decision regarding
resource distribution.
Given that regional managers tend to be achievement-oriented and the perception
of the future performance of branch managers is prone to vary according to whether
their past performance meets the regional manager’s expectations, we predict that the

regional manager’s resource dispersion preferences mirror the contributions of the branch
managers. This leads to our second hypothesis:
H2: The better the prior sales performance of a branch manager’s office, the more likely

that the office receives resources, and vice versa.

2.3 Impact of Subordinates’ Prior Performance on Relationship between Goal
Consensus and Resource Allocation Preferences
Besides investigating the individual relationship between goal consensus and
supervisors’ resource allocation preferences and the individual relationship between

subordinates’ prior performance and supervisors’ resource allocation preferences, we
further explore the interaction between goal consensus and subordinates’ prior performance
on supervisors’ resource allocation preferences. Allocators may not use a single principle

to distribute resources, and the pursuit of one principle may coincide or conflict with the
pursuit of another (Konow, 2001; Cook and Hegtvedt, 1983). Because both goal consensus
and subordinates’ performance are antecedents that can affect allocators’ preferences for
distributing resources, it is, therefore, interesting to investigate whether situational factors
(achievement orientation) reinforce the influence of self-interest factors (i.e., preferred

goals) on supervisors’ allocation preferences.
Given that a regional manager seeks to ensure that a preferable goal can be achieved
while simultaneously maximizing the overall performance of the branch offices within his

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