Abstract:

Bottom-line mentality is a one-dimensional mindset that focuses on obtaining bottom-line profit results to the exclusion of all other competing priorities (e.g., corporate social responsibility, employee welfare, stakeholder rights, etc.). While bottom-line mindset may lead managers to focus on performance at the expense of other important business benefits, or even to take unethical measures to achieve their goals, research has also shown that bottom-line mentality can improve employee focus and thus performance.
In contrast to revealing the positive or negative effects of bottom-line mentality in a single way, this study innovatively focuses on the double-edged sword role of bottom-line mentality and explores its mechanisms on exploratory innovation, exploitative innovation, idea generation and idea implementation, respectively, which strongly advances the progress of existing research. On the one hand, in the cross-sectional dimension for different components of innovation, the study takes a cognitive-motivational perspective and shows that the leader’s bottom-line mentality tends to make the team risk-averse and adopt exploitative innovation, which is less risky than exploratory innovation, by inducing a high priority on performance within the team. By clarifying the double-edged role of the leader’s bottom-line mentality on exploratory and exploitative innovations with the help of the team’s willingness to take risks, the boundary role of goal-oriented organization performance is clarified, thus enriching the theoretical research and application practice of bottom-line mentality, exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation. On the other hand, in the longitudinal dimension for different processes of innovation, the study takes an affective motivation perspective and points out that the leader’s bottom-line mentality puts employees in a state of compulsive passion and focuses on achieving performance goals by various means, which is more conducive to the implementation of ideas than idea generation. This study explores the mediating paths and boundaries of action with the help of team obsessive passion and leader-subordinate exchange relationship. It aims to comprehensively reveal the positive and negative influence paths of leader bottom-line mentality on team idea generation and idea implementation, which is conducive to deepening the theoretical research and application of the two stages of bottom-line mentality and innovation, and further expanding the research on the effect of bottom-line mentality on team-level innovation.
This study classifies innovation based on two dimensions of innovation content and process, constructs a theoretical model of the different mechanisms of the leader’s bottom-line mentality on four important sub-concepts of innovation (exploratory innovation, exploitative innovation, idea generation, and idea implementation). It will deeply analyze the consequences of the leader’s bottom-line mentality on the two types and two stages of team innovation, which deepens the theoretical research on the bottom-line mind and innovation. At the same time, it also helps teams to understand the two sides of bottom-line mentality from a practical perspective, and helps them to reasonably deploy resources to guide and control the formation and effect of bottom-line mentality, which is an important reference value for enterprises to formulate strategies and coordinate resources.

Key words: bottom-line mentality, double-edged sword effects, exploratory innovation, exploitative innovation, idea generation, idea implementation