The influence of the subordinate's growth need strength on supervisor undermining: perspective of status competition.

JOB performance; SUPERVISORS

Employees with high growth need strength (GNS) significantly contribute to organizations' positive outcomes and success. Numerous studies have delved into the myriad advantages of GNS on employee performance. However, extant studies focus less on the underlying mechanism of how subordinates' GNS affects leaders' outcomes. The current paper, concentrating on this research issue and utilizing the status competition perspective, examines the effect of a subordinate's GNS upon a supervisor's psychological perception and behavior choice. The current research utilized a dataset comprising 210 supervisor-subordinate pairs from a longitudinal two-wave survey. The findings indicated that subordinate's GNS positively associated with supervisor undermining, the connection between which was mediated by supervisor status threat perception. The supervisor's GNS negatively moderated the association between the subordinate's GNS and the supervisor status threat perception. Furthermore, a moderated mediation model suggested that supervisors' GNS also tempers the indirect relationship between subordinate's GNS and supervisory undermining, mediated by the supervisor status threat perception. The paper concludes by discussing the theoretical and practical significance of these findings and suggesting content for future exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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