Mitchell Et Al 2023 Oh The Anxiety The Anxiety of Supervisor Bottom Line Mentality and Mitigating Effects of Ethical

Journal of Management
1–39
DOI: 10.1177/01492063231196553
© The Author(s) 2023
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Oh the Anxiety! The Anxiety of Supervisor

Bottom-Line Mentality and Mitigating Effects of
Ethical Leadership
Marie S. Mitchell
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Andrea L. Hetrick
University of New Mexico
Mary B. Mawritz
Drexel University
Bryan D. Edwards
Oklahoma State University
Rebecca L. Greenbaum
Rutgers University
Prior work on supervisor bottom-line mentality (SBLM) has suggested it represents a static,
unbending focus, with supervisors so focused on the bottom line that they discount ethical con-
siderations. We propose that SBLM varies, within-person, given various factors in a supervisor’s
work life that pull and push their attention to and away from the bottom line across their work-
weeks. We theorize that the varying nature of SBLM elicits anxiety in employees that is exhaust-
ing because, on the days supervisors give greater emphasis to the bottom line, employees must
abandon the comfort of their routines to produce bottom-line results. Ultimately, this experience
motivates employee unethical behavior (i.e., coworker undermining). We also predict that, by
providing employees support and guidance, supervisors’ steadfast commitment to ethics (i.e.,
between-person ethical leadership perceptions) influences the degree to which exhausted
employees undermine their coworkers. Results from three experience-sampling methodology
studies using diverse samples of working adults support our predictions. In Study 3, we also
test assumptions in our theorizing with research questions about potential antecedents of
Supplemental material for this article is available at http://jom.sagepub.com/supplemental

Corresponding author: Marie S. Mitchell, Organizational Behavior Area, Kenan-Flagler Business School,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 4726 McColl Building, Campus Box 3490, Chapel Hill, NC 27599,
USA.
E-mail: marie_mitchell@kenan-flagler.unc.edu
1
2 Journal of Management
SBLM variability and the moderating effects of ethical leadership. These results revealed that
supervisor daily ratings of their leader’s BLM and the supervisor’s own job demands prompted
SBLM variation. In addition, supervisor daily ratings of their own BLM were related to
employee-rated daily SBLM. Second, while ethical leadership varies within-person, within-
person perceptions did not moderate effects; only between-person perceptions (or employee per-
ceptions of their supervisor’s general commitment to ethics) did. Implications for theory and
research are provided.
Keywords: supervisor bottom-line mentality; anxiety; exhaustion; undermining; ethical

leadership
A number of business scandals provide evidence of supervisors prioritizing profitability

over ethical considerations. For instance, Boeing executives rushed the production of the
737 Max jet, allegedly ignoring their engineers’ concerns about the plane’s safety systems.
Within 2 years, two of these jets crashed, killing hundreds of people, with Boeing engineers
contending that the catastrophes were a direct result of their leaders’ prioritizing profits over
safety (Kitroeff, Gelles, & Nicas, 2019). As another example, a New Jersey hospital recently
placed an administrator on leave after discovering that he kept vegetative transplant patients
alive to secure higher survival rates, which were tied to his rewards (Chen, 2019).
Unfortunately, these are not isolated incidents. These and other scandals highlighted in the
popular press have pointed to the role of a manager’s sole focus on the bottom line in moti-
vating employee unethical acts (e.g., Volkswagen emissions scandal, Wells Fargo fraudulent
accounts).
This sole focus on bottom-line outcomes is captured by the construct of supervisor bottom-
line mentality (SBLM), a supervisor’s “one-dimensional frame of mind that revolves around
bottom-line outcomes” (Greenbaum, Mawritz, & Eissa, 2012: 343). Scholars have argued that
SBLM is an unrelentingly, exclusive focus on the bottom line that disregards ethics and thus
motivates employees to engage in unethical acts, presumably to meet their supervisors’
bottom-line demands (for reviews, see Mitchell, Rivera, & Treviño, 2023; Treviño, den
Nieuwenboer, & Kish-Gephart, 2014). We question the validity of these arguments. First,
supervisors do not have to be continuously laser-focused on the bottom line, day in and
day out, to motivate employee unethical conduct. Instead, it is likely that their SBLM
varies over a workweek, and this varying bottom-line attention may still motivate employee
unethical behavior. Second, supervisors may raise their focus on the bottom line but also
display an unwavering commitment to ethics that can aid employees in dealing with raised
bottom-line needs. Although profit is a paramount priority for managers, their priorities
can fluctuate based on daily challenges and demands that can be matched with supervisors
consistently emphasizing ethics as a mandate in how employees approach job efforts
(Smith & Kouchaki, 2021). Given varying supervisor goals and the continual importance
of ethics (Carroll, 1991), we propose that supervisors’ attention to the bottom line is not cons-
tant, and they can also embrace a general management style that emphasizes ethics and should
reduce unethical employee behavior.
Mitchell et al. / The Anxiety of Supervisor Bottom-line Mentality 3
Our work addresses this research agenda in multiple ways. First, we propose SBLM varies
day-to-day, consistent with Beal (2012: 615), who argued that “even the most static of con-
structs are . . . quite variable over time.” Work conditions fluctuate, focusing supervisors’
attention on certain outcomes one day and other outcomes other days (McCormick,
Reeves, Downes, Li, & Ilies, 2020). Similarly, leadership scholars (e.g., McClean, Barnes,
Courtright, & Johnson, 2019) have argued that while leadership styles have largely been
assumed to be static, evidence suggests they vary within-person, which has substantial impli-
cations for leaders and employees. Second, from principles of anxiety (Cheng & McCarthy,
2018) and conservation of resources (COR; Hobfoll, 1988, 2001), we theorize SBLM vari-
ability reflects an episodic performance demand that has detrimental consequences.
Anxiety theory (Cheng & McCarthy, 2018) proposes that episodic performance demands
require raised performance efforts on certain days, which elicits anxiety and subsequent
exhaustion. COR articulates that exhaustion from performance demands motivates defensive,
aggressive, and strategic behavior intended to create needed outcomes without expending
much energy. Thus, we argue SBLM variability will prompt an anxiety-exhaustion experi-
ence that will motivate employees to undermine their coworkers (i.e., “behavior intended
to hinder, over time, the ability to establish and maintain positive interpersonal relationships,
work-related success, and favorable reputation”; Duffy, Ganster, & Pagon, 2002: 332)—a
specific form of unethical behavior that can allow exhausted employees to easily advance
themselves by marginalizing others (Duffy, Scott, Shaw, Tepper, & Aquino, 2012). Third,
and in line with COR theorizing, we consider how supervisors can address the
anxiety-exhaustion experience of SBLM variability with their general leadership style—
their patterned, between-person typicality—that can serve as a resource that reduces the like-
lihood that employees undermine coworkers. Specifically, ethical leadership (i.e., supervi-
sors’ patterned commitment to ethics; Brown, Treviño, & Harrison, 2005) should serve as
a guidepost for employees on how to maintain a focus on ethics while meeting job demands.
By addressing these critical issues, our work makes several contributions to theory and
practice. First, we advance the SBLM literature by expanding its conceptualization from a
static phenomenon to a varying construct. In their recent review of the BLM literature,
Greenbaum, Mawritz, and Zaman (2023) argued that while SBLM has been considered a gen-
eralized orientation, workplace dynamics make it likely that SBLM can be a state, and they
tasked scholars to explore its state-like nature. Experience-sampling-method (ESM) scholars
have made similar claims, suggesting there is value in examining within-person dynamics of
leader behavior because such experiences have implications for employees that are likely lost
when studied between-person (see Beal, 2015; Gabriel et al., 2019; McCormick et al., 2020;
N. P. Podsakoff, Spoelma, Chawla, & Gabriel, 2019). In this vein, leadership scholars have
concluded that there is “little theoretical guidance” on how leader behavior variability impacts
employees and the “literature would benefit from a more granular view of dynamism”
(McClean et al., 2019: 493). Thus, we contribute to the literature by utilizing anxiety
theory and COR principles to explore the effects of SBLM variability. Second, our integration
of anxiety and COR theories contributes to SBLM research but also aids future scholarship on
reactions to stressful events. Although both theories explain downstream effects of perfor-
mance demands on employee self-regulatory resources, they are often applied separately to
explain stress experiences (see Sonnentag, Tay, & Shoshan, 2023). Yet, both have limitations
that can be offset by each other, and together they provide insights regarding the effects of
SBLM variability. Anxiety theory suggests the consideration of anxiety as a mechanism,

which has not received theoretical attention within COR (see Hobfoll, Halbesleben,
Neveu, & Westman, 2018), and COR extends anxiety theory by highlighting differing behav-
ioral reactions and how a supervisor’s general leadership style can serve as a resource in an
anxiety-exhaustion experience. Third, our research adds to the SBLM, ethics, and leadership
literatures by explaining how supervisors’ general ethical leadership style is beneficial in
guiding employee reactions to supervisors’ varying demands across their workweek. Ethics
scholars have tasked researchers to enlighten theory and practice on how supervisors can
address bottom-line needs in an ethical fashion (see Mitchell et al., 2023, Treviño, Brown,
& Hartman, 2003). In short, we suggest a supervisors’ overall commitment to ethics serves
as a resource that offsets employees’ daily, negative reactions to SBLM variability.
SBLM Variability
Supervisors are often given performance objectives that are tied to the “bottom line”
(Cappelli, 1999; T. Lee & Duckworth, 2018)—contributions toward organizational profits
(Pringle & Longenecker, 1982). Accordingly, supervisors face pressures to meet bottom-line
needs and manage their employees in ways that accommodate the bottom line. From time to
time, supervisors may solely focus on efforts to raise financial outcomes (Greenbaum et al.,
2012) and orient employees toward bottom-line results (Greenbaum et al., 2023). Although
scholars have treated SBLM as a general orientation of how supervisors approach their
work (e.g., Eissa, Wyland, Lester, & Gupta, 2019), Greenbaum et al. (2023) articulated
that SBLM can also be a state, induced by context. Similarly, seminal work by Wolfe
(1988) explained that because organizations are multivalent systems responsible for uphold-
ing multiple values beyond financial viability, individuals can hold a varying bottom-line
focus across their workweek. Our work extends these ideas by suggesting SBLM does not
always represent a static orientation; it can vary across a workweek based on a supervisor’s
differing demands and changing work context.
We consider two theoretical perspectives that support the notion that SBLM can vary
within-person. First, anxiety theory suggests performance demands occur in ebbs and
flows across employees’ workweeks (Cheng & McCarthy, 2018). These episodic perfor-
mance demands occur at the within-person level and stem from supervisors articulating per-
formance needs to employees in a sporadic fashion. Employees are then tasked with raising
their performance over a short period of time to address emergent performance needs. As
Cheng and McCarthy (2018: 544) explained, “Performance episodes within a given
workday are often segmented.” At times, the demands of the day require employees to
devote attention to raising performance, but at other times, they are not. Accordingly, we
suggest SBLM variability represents a form of episodic performance demand, where super-
visors gear employees’ attention toward facilitating bottom-line outcomes at higher or lower
levels across their workweek.
Second, recent advances in the leadership literature (see McClean et al., 2019) make
similar arguments about the varying nature of leader behavior. Supervisors face changing
demands that push and pull their attention to differing objectives over time (e.g., Beal,
2012; Shah, Friedman, & Kruglanski, 2002; Shah & Kruglanski, 2002). Thus, SBLM
should fluctuate, varying with demands from top management, customers, or coworkers
that emphasize the need to secure bottom-line outcomes at differing levels across a workweek
(Becker, Belkin, Conroy, & Tuskey, 2021; Rosen, Simon, Gajendran, Johnson, Lee, & Lin,
2019). As supervisors face varying bottom-line directives, they “reconfigure and protect
knowledge assets, competencies, and complementary assets with the aim of achieving a sus-
tained competitive advantage” (Augier & Teece, 2009: 412). For example, supervisors may
be solely focused on the bottom line in the face of performance deadlines, to look good for an
upcoming performance review, to secure a client, or when pressured by higher-ups to meet
bottom-line metrics. Supervisors’ raised focus on the bottom line has them reorient their
actions to attain bottom-line outcomes without being distracted by factors that could
impede their goals (Shah et al., 2022; Shah & Kruglanski, 2002).
Hypothesis 1: SBLM will vary within supervisors over time.
Accounting for the Consequences of SBLM Variability for Employees

Responding to supervisors’ varying bottom-line directives can be challenging for employ-
ees. Cheng and McCarthy’s (2018) theory of workplace anxiety explains the connection
between varying performance demands and anxiety. They argued that episodic performance
demands, such as SBLM variability, create a varying focus on raising performance efforts
across a workweek. Thus, on days that performance demands are higher, employees experi-
ence anxiety because they are required to move away from the comfort of their task routines
toward efforts to address demands. In turn, this anxiety expends self-regulatory resources and
exhausts employees.
Like anxiety theory, COR suggests performance demands (i.e., SBLM variability) dimin-
ish self-regulatory resources (i.e., exhaustion; Hobfoll, 1988, 2001), but it extends anxiety
theory by specifying the type of behavior likely to emerge. COR articulates that employees
seek to protect their self-regulatory resources, and in the face of drain, they engage in defen-
sive (even unethical) acts to conserve their remaining resources (see Halbesleben, Neveu,
Paustian-Underdahl, & Westman, 2014). COR also suggests that a supervisor’s general lead-
ership style can serve as a resource that can guide exhausted employees (Halbesleben et al.,
2014). Thus, integrating anxiety theory with COR offers a strong foundation for our proposal
that SBLM variability (as an episodic performance demand) will instigate anxiety that will be
exhausting and motivate unethicality (i.e., coworker undermining), which can be offset by
supervisors’ general ethical leadership style (i.e., ethical leadership). Our model is presented
in Figure 1.
SBLM Variability and Employee Anxiety and Exhaustion

Employees prefer “flow” at work, where they become immersed in their tasks across their
workweek and they create generalized work patterns that aid in accomplishing performance
goals (e.g., Demerouti, 2006). These normalized routines allow employees to utilize socially
structured procedures and set time frames to accomplish job duties, setting them on a trajec-
tory for success. This planned approach to work allows employees to efficiently meet dead-
lines, complete tasks, and perform well (e.g., Barling, Cheung, & Kelloway, 1996; Evans &
Davis, 2005). For these reasons, research has demonstrated that set routines reduce
Figure 1
Theoretical Model
Note: Ethical leadership is examined only in Studies 2 and 3.
employees’ work strain associated with job demands, allowing them comfort in smoothly
accomplishing performance objectives (Claessens, van Eerde, Rutte, & Roe, 2004).
Yet, anxiety theory (Cheng & McCarthy, 2018) suggests that performance requirements
often fluctuate, which can interrupt the comfort of employees’ routines. As performance
requirements vary from time to time, employees’ typical work patterns are disrupted, requiring
them to reorient their actions to address nonroutine demands. Supervisors express “episodic
performance” demands to raise employee performance in the short term. With SBLM, super-
visors communicate bottom-line directives to employees (Wolfe, 1988), who then feel pres-
sured to contribute to the bottom line (Farh & Chen, 2018). However, owing to the ebbs
and flows of supervisors’ own dynamic work environments and changing job demands,
their emphasis on bottom-line outcomes should vary (i.e., SBLM variability), creating episodic
performance demands for employees. The times supervisors raise their focus on the bottom line
interrupt employees’ normal workflow, moving them away from their routines (Leroy &
Glomb, 2018) and requiring them to alter their work patterns to raise bottom-line outcomes.
In this respect, anxiety theory suggests that episodic performance demands, such as SBLM
variability, trigger a transient state of anxiety, “reflecting nervousness, uneasiness, and
tension about specific job performance episodes” (Cheng & McCarthy, 2018: 3).
Therefore, we argue that the varying nature of SBLM triggers anxiety in employees. Given
the difficulty of stopping routines and switching gears as well as the potential uncertainty
of raising bottom-line outcomes adequately (Becker et al., 2021; Cheng & McCarthy,
2018), when SBLM is high, employees experience the need to alter their routines, pushing
aside and neglecting normal tasks, leaving them to double their efforts to deal with
delayed tasks after bottom-line concerns are addressed.
Hypothesis 2: Within-person, SBLM will be positively related to anxiety.
Theory (Cheng & McCarthy, 2018) further proposes that anxiety elicited from episodic
performance demands (i.e., SBLM variability) produces exhaustion or “feelings of being
emotionally overextended and exhausted by one’s work” (Wright & Cropanzano, 1998:
486). Anxiety is an intrusive, self-deprecating experience that consumes energy because of

worries and doubts about one’s ability to address demands. This stewing depletes self-
resources or energy, leaving employees exhausted (Halbesleben & Buckley, 2004;
Maslach & Jackson, 1981). Similarly, COR theory proposes that employees hold a finite
pool of self-resources (e.g., fortitude, stamina) that provide energy to accomplish tasks
(Hobfoll, 1988), and demands deplete these self-resources, resulting in exhaustion. Indeed,
scholars have argued that anxiety triggered by stressful events represents a symbolic threat
of potential failure that depletes self-resources, creating exhaustion (Quinn, Spreitzer, &
Lam, 2012). For instance, Fu, Greco, Lennard, and Dimotakis (2021) found that anxiety expe-
rienced during the COVID-19 pandemic generated employee exhaustion. We contend that
day-to-day, as employees perceive their supervisors raise their focus on the bottom line,
they will experience anxiety that will leave them exhausted.
Hypothesis 3: Within-person, anxiety is positively related to exhaustion and mediates the relation-
ship between SBLM and exhaustion.
SBLM Variability and the Indirect Effects on Coworker Undermining

Workplace anxiety (Cheng & McCarthy, 2018) and COR principles (Hobfoll, 2001)
propose that anxiety and its subsequent exhaustion from episodic performance demands
give employees little energy to engage in goal-directed behavior. COR suggests that exhaus-
tion motivates employees to conserve self-resources with behavior that provides easy solu-
tions to address demands (see Halbesleben et al., 2014). Exhausted employees aim to
preserve their self-resources with strategically defensive acts that require less energy
(Hobfoll et al., 2018). Even if such acts do not fully address the problem, the smaller use
of energy aids in offsetting dwindling self-resources (Hobfoll et al., 2018). Performance
demands motivate employees to enhance profits, but exhausted employees lack energy to
raise efforts, which pushes them to give into temptations to address demands through other
means. For instance, research has shown that exhaustion motivates employees to engage in
unethical behavior to address performance demands—lying, deceiving, and undermining
others to easily accomplish tasks (e.g., Gino, Schweitzer, Mead, & Ariely, 2011; Mead,
Baumeister, Gino, Schweitzer, & Ariely, 2009). Exploiting others is an easy win by offering
actors a simple solution to obtaining bottom-line results (Gneezy, 2005). Thus, undermining
others allows exhausted individuals a way to conserve self-resources while getting what they
want at others’ expense (Wiltermuth, Newman, & Raj, 2015).
Accordingly, we propose that the anxiety-exhaustion experience of SBLM variability
results in coworker undermining because these acts hinder coworkers’ abilities to be success-
ful (Duffy et al., 2002, 2012). Undermining involves aggressive acts (e.g., belittling, with-
holding information) that increase one’s standing in relation to others (Strongman, 2013).
To increase their own standings, employees undermine coworkers to minimize coworker out-
comes, which makes them look bad to supervisors (Eissa & Wyland, 2016). In this way,
undermining bolsters the actor’s performance outcomes at the expense of others (Duffy
et al., 2012). Indeed, research has shown that coworker undermining represents harm
against others for self-gain and provides underminers an easy way to be viewed as higher per-
formers than their undermined coworkers (Crossley, 2009; Reh, Tröster, & Van Quaquebeke,
2018). In all, these arguments suggest that SBLM variability sets in motion an
anxiety-exhaustion experience that should promote coworker undermining. The anxiety
experienced from raised bottom-line demands will exhaust employees and, per COR
(Halbesleben et al., 2014), motivate them to address bottom-line demands through easy, stra-
tegic, unethical acts—namely, coworker undermining.
Hypothesis 4: Within-person, SBLM will be indirectly and positively related to coworker undermin-
ing through the mediating effects of anxiety and exhaustion.
The Cross-Level Moderating Influence of Ethical Leadership

COR theory (Hobfoll, 1988, 2001) also considers how supervisors influence exhausted
employees’ reactions to fluctuating job demands. Supervisors, as relevant role models
(Bandura, 1986), can provide guidance to these employees on how to appropriately
respond to performance demands (Halbesleben et al., 2014; Hobfoll et al., 2018). In this
respect, supervisors’ general (between-person) leadership styles provide employees with con-
sistent guidance regarding how to appropriately work to protect their self-resources, limiting
their engagement in coworker undermining. More specifically, we theorize that supervisors’
demonstration of ethical leadership can serve as a critical guidepost for employees experienc-
ing exhaustion from episodic performance events, such as on the days supervisors more
strongly focus on the bottom line.
Ethical leadership is “normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and inter-
personal relationships, and the promotion of such conduct to followers through two-way com-
munication, reinforcement, and decision-making” (Brown et al., 2005: 120). Leaders who
display ethical leadership continuously communicate and promote an ethical agenda and reg-
ularly mentor employees on how to address goals in an ethical manner. Ethical leaders set
standards, procedures, and rules that are aligned with moral principles and hold employees
accountable to ethics by rewarding ethical behavior and punishing unethical acts.
Supervisors who embody ethical leadership consistently emphasize ethical norms, and
their employees understand that ethics is a priority and criterion from which their behavior
is judged.
The foundation of ethical leadership is moral consistency, which represents patterned
behaviors, communications, and decision-making that emphasize ethics over time
(Lemoine, Hartnell, & Leroy, 2019: 156). This moral consistency is demonstrated in the
moral-person and moral-manager dimensions of ethical leadership (Treviño, Hartman, &
Brown, 2000). A supervisor is viewed as a moral person when they regularly display
ethical character and altruistic motivation and exude honesty and integrity in everything
they do. A supervisor is viewed as a moral manager when they construct ethical strategies
and structures, continually fortify ethics as a mandate, and consistently ensure accountability
by rewarding and disciplining based on ethical standards. Treviño et al. (2000) noted that
inconsistency in the display of either dimension of ethical leadership means supervisors
fall short of providing strong ethical guidance, resulting in the leader being considered hyp-
ocritical, morally mute, or unethical. These arguments suggest that within-person variations
of ethical leadership would be insufficient in offsetting the exhaustion and subsequent anxiety
produced by SBLM variability, because within-person variations signal an inconsistent
emphasis on ethics in day-to-day interactions with employees. A lack of continued emphasis

on ethics suggests these leaders do not structure the work environment in a manner that con-
stantly upholds ethics (e.g., rules, communications, rewards), are unreliable in their discus-
sions about ethics, or are disingenuous in their ethical approach (Treviño et al., 2000).
Consequently, variation in ethical leadership would likely be viewed as an inauthentic com-
mitment to ethics.
By comparison, supervisors who display a general style of ethical leadership provide
employees with ongoing ethical guidance, resources, and structures to overcome motives
to engage in unethical behavior (Brown & Mitchell, 2010; Brown & Treviño, 2006).
Ethical leadership behaviors are “socially salient against an organizational backdrop that is
often ethically neutral at best” (Brown & Treviño, 2006: 597). Thus, research has found
that when employees face ethical dilemmas, ethical leadership provides relevant information
to guide employees’ adherence to ethical standards (Kuenzi, Mayer, & Greenbaum, 2020;
Mayer, Nurmohamed, Treviño, Shapiro, & Schminke, 2013). Therefore, per COR theorizing,
we argue that supervisors’ general style can be a resource, aiding employees through their
exhaustion from SBLM variability. COR suggests that exhaustion can motivate coworker
undermining, but employees who perceive that their leaders offer support in their consistent
commitment to ethics (i.e., between-person ethical leadership) will be less likely to fall prey to
the temptation to undermine coworkers to address high SBLM demands.
Hypothesis 5: Ethical leadership will moderate the positive relationship between exhaustion and
coworker undermining, such that the relationship will be weaker when ethical leadership is
higher than lower.
Similarly, we suggest that ethical leadership will be particularly valuable the times SBLM is
high. Our arguments are consistent with Treviño et al.’s (2003) qualitative findings that super-
visors balance pressures to enhance profits with ethical strivings. Supervisors’ demands to raise
profits fluctuate, prompting a varied focus on the bottom line, day-to-day. Yet, supervisors can
regularly—across days—emphasize ethics in the obtainment of the bottom line. Even on the
days supervisors are focused on bottom-line outcomes, a continuous display of ethical leader-
ship can help employees perceive the need to meet bottom-line goals in ways that are consistent
with ethical standards (Treviño et al., 2003). Thus, supervisors may temporarily emphasize the
bottom line from time to time, which will enhance employee anxiety and subsequent exhaus-
tion, but a supervisor’s general commitment to ethics will provide anxious, exhausted employ-
ees with ethical guidance that will reduce their unethical, undermining reactions. By contrast,
the times supervisors raise their focus on the bottom line, anxious and exhausted employees
who lack ethical leadership will be more likely to undermine coworkers.
Hypothesis 6: The positive indirect effect of SBLM on coworker undermining through anxiety and
exhaustion will be weaker when ethical leadership is higher than lower.
Overview of Methods
Because we suggest SBLM varies, we conducted three ESM studies to test this idea with
our predictions. Each study builds from each other. Study 1 examines whether SBLM varies
within-person and then tests the proposed relationships for SBLM variability, anxiety,
exhaustion, and coworker undermining (Hypotheses 1 through 4). Study 2 replicates Study 1
(Hypotheses 1 through 4) and builds upon Study 1 by investigating the proposed cross-level
moderating effect of ethical leadership (Hypotheses 5 and 6). Study 3 also tests all predic-
tions, replicating findings of Studies 1 and 2, and it addresses lingering assumptions by for-
mulating and testing two research questions regarding whether (a) supervisors’ work factors
drive their own SBLM and (b) fluctuating daily ethical leadership, as opposed to consistent
ethical leadership, offsets the employee exhaustion that motivates undermining. Thus, Study
3 tests the assumption that differing work factors influence SBLM variability and measures
ethical leadership within-person, allowing us to explore its moderation effects both
between-person and within-person.
Study 1
Sample and Procedure
We collected data from a panel of full-time working adults through CloudResearch (an
online resource that enables researchers to send surveys to a preselected panel of Amazon
Mechanical Turk workers who fit eligibility requirements; Litman, Robinson, & Abberbock,
2016). Participants completed a onetime survey to screen for their availability (e.g., work
absences during the 10 days of the study) and eligibility (e.g., supervisor interaction frequency,
typical work start and end times, work status) and to provide demographics and ratings for
control variables. A week after the registration, participants received two surveys each day
for 10 working days. Of the 166 participants who met our eligibility requirements, 121 com-
pleted daily surveys. The first daily survey (including SBLM and anxiety measures) was dis-
tributed at noon (closing at 2:30 p.m.). The second daily survey (including exhaustion and
undermining measures) was distributed at 4:00 p.m. (closing at 8:30 p.m.). Participants were
compensated $0.50 for the prescreen survey, $2 for the registration survey, $0.50 for each com-
pleted daily morning survey, $1 for each completed daily evening survey, and bonuses ($3.50
for completing all 10 surveys the first week, $4.00 for completing all 10 surveys the second
week, and $5 for completing all 20 surveys for the study). We removed individuals who
failed attention-check items (Meade & Craig, 2012) and conducted multivariate outlier analysis
in Mplus to detect influential outliers (Aguinis, Gottfredson, & Joo, 2013); no participants met
our criterion for low conscientiousness (Cook’s D scores greater than three standard deviations
above the mean). The final sample had 113 participants (93.39% response rate), containing 966
observations (85.49% response rate; the average number of observations per participant was
8.55). On average, participants were 37.19 years old (SD = 8.47) and worked at their
company 7.66 years (SD = 6.34), 51.3% of the sample identified as female, 80.5% identified
as Caucasian, and 48.7% held nonsupervisory positions. Participants worked in a variety of
industries (e.g., education, finance, health care, retail).
Measures
Following best practice for ESM studies (e.g., Gabriel et al., 2019) to capture within-
person variations (SBLM, anxiety, exhaustion, and coworker undermining), measures were
adapted to ask about daily experiences. Also, following best practice (see Beal, 2015; Uy,
Foo, & Aguinis, 2010) to reduce survey fatigue and without compromising the psychometric
properties of the measures, where possible, we shorted measures (e.g., anxiety, exhaustion,
coworker undermining). Unless noted, items were rated on a 5-point scale (1 = strongly dis-
agree, 5 = strongly agree). Reliabilities represent averages across days.
SBLM. Participants rated their supervisors’ SBLM each day with four items from
Greenbaum et al.’s (2012) BLM measure (e.g., “TODAY, my supervisor has been highly
concerned with meeting the bottom line”; α = .94).
Anxiety. Participants rated their anxiety each day with five items from Shaver, Schwartz,
Kirson, and O’Connor (1987), using a 5-point scale (1 = very slightly or not at all, 5 =
extremely; e.g., “Anxious”; α = .94).
Exhaustion. Participants rated their exhaustion each day with four items from Pugh, Groth,
and Hennig-Thurau’s (2010) measure (e.g., “Exhausted”; α = .94).
Coworker undermining. Participants rated their coworker undermining each day with four
items from Duffy, Shaw, Tepper, and Scott’s (2006) seven-item measure (see Appendix A for
validity evidence of the reduced measure; e.g., “Criticized another coworker”), using a
5-point scale (1 = never, 5 = always; α = .83).
Control variables. Although the ESM design accounts for trait differences within-person,
scholars recommend controlling for trait affectivity to reduce the potential for common-
method variance (CMV) bias (Gabriel et al., 2019; Lanaj, Gabriel, & Jennings, 2023;
P. M. Podsakoff, MacKenzie, & Podsakoff, 2012). We did so with Watson, Clark, and
Tellegen’s (1988) 10-item trait affect measures (a sample item for negative affect is
“Upset” and positive affect is “Excited”; negative affect, α = .92; positive affect, α = .93).
We also followed ESM best practice (Gabriel et al., 2019) and controlled for prior-workday
lagged assessments of each endogenous construct (prior-day anxiety, exhaustion, and under-
mining), allowing us to isolate changes in dependent variables from prior-day experiences
and behaviors. We also examined the relevance of the control variables and with or
without controls (see Appendix B), and the results did not change with or without controls.
Results and Discussion

Descriptive statistics and correlations. The means, standard deviations, reliabilities (aver-
aged across days), and correlations among study variables are presented in Table 1.
Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Multilevel CFA using Mplus Version 8.5 (Muthén &
Muthén, 2012) specifying four factors for the four variables in our hypothesized model
showed adequate fit to the data (χ2 = 319.59, df = 113, p = .00; comparative fit index [CFI]
= .98; root mean square error of approximation [RMSEA] = .04; standardized root mean
square residual [SRMR] within = .06). It was a better fit than alternative models, such as a
three-factor model, where items for anxiety and exhaustion were combined on one factor
(χ2 = 1585.04, df = 116, p = .00; CFI = .83; RMSEA = .11; SRMR within = .09), and a one-
factor model, which showed a poor fit to the data (χ2 = 5854.83, df = 119, p = .00; CFI = .32;
RMSEA = .21; SRMR within = .20), providing evidence of discriminant validity for our
measures.
Table 1
Study 1 Descriptive Statistics and Correlations
Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6
Within-person variables
1. SBLM 2.53 1.10 (.94) .22 .16 .11
2. Anxiety 1.66 .86 .34 (.94) .27 .08
3. Exhaustion 2.41 1.06 .21 .60 (.94) .20
4. Coworker undermining 1.54 .67 .25 .27 .29 (.83)
Between-person variables
5. Negative affect 1.85 .71 .02 .37 .33 .12 (.92)
6. Positive affect 3.37 .80 .10 −.20 −.27 −.14 −.33 (.93)
Note: N = 966 observations; 113 participants. SBLM = supervisor bottom-line mentality. Cronbach’s alpha
coefficients are reported on the diagonal in bold. Correlations above the diagonal are group-mean centered
relationships among the daily within-person variables; correlations below the diagonal are between-person
correlations. Correlations between the daily variables and between-person variables were computed by aggregating
participants’ daily scores and then correlating them with the between-person variables. For within-person correlations
above the diagonal, values above |.06| are significant at p < .05, two tailed, and values above |.07| are significant at p <
.01, two tailed. For between-person correlations, values above |.09| are significant at p < .01.
Data analysis approach. Because the data are composed of observations nested within
individuals, we used multilevel path analysis procedures using Mplus Version 8.5 (Muthén
& Muthén, 2012). Note that we used ESTIMATER = BAYES to ensure the full decomposi-
tion of our endogenous variables when estimating the random slopes (Asparouhov & Muthén,
2018). The exogenous variable, SBLM, was person-mean centered and specified only at the
within-person level. We also estimated the same model with robust full maximum-likelihood
estimation (MLR), and the effect sizes were identical for all effects except for the random
slopes involving endogenous variables whereby those effects were larger using MLR,
which is to be expected given that it was using the full variance for anxiety and exhaustion
at the within-person level. Thus, the more appropriate estimates were from the Bayes estima-
tion. These procedures model and control for the variance in and among the constructs that
reside at the between-person level (Preacher, Zyphur, & Zhang, 2010), providing unbiased
parameter estimates at the within-person level. We first examined the within-person variance
(σ2) of our daily variables, and the results show the daily variances demonstrated sufficient
within-person variance to test the predictions (SBLM = 34%, anxiety = 36%, exhaustion =
46%, and coworker undermining = 45%). Within the leadership literature, the within-person
variance of variables seems to range from about 26% to 60% in general, with scholars sug-
gesting that around 30% is “considerable” within-person variance (e.g., Johnson, Lanaj, &
Barnes, 2014; Lanaj, Johnson, & Lee, 2016).1 Therefore, although there is considerable
between-person variance in SBLM, the within-person variance still suggests substantial
within-person fluctuation that is important to examine.
We adopted Preacher et al.’s (2010) recommended procedures to test our hypothesized
model. Error variances and correlations were not constrained to be fixed, and the within-
person predictor was group-mean centered. Because our overall model included indirect
effects, we integrated these procedures with Preacher, Rucker, and Hayes’s (2007) sugges-
tions for mediation. The direct effects of SBLM were controlled for in the equations for
the dependent variables. The within-person incremental variance explained by our model was
computed with pseudo R2 values, following Raudenbush and Bryk’s (2002) Equation 4.20
(see Table 2).
Hypothesis testing. As an exploratory inquiry related to Hypothesis 1, participants were
asked to “please indicate on the sliding bar how much your supervisor’s focus on the
bottom line changed day-to-day over the past month” on a scale of 0 to 100. Responses
ranged from 5 to 100, with a median of 49 and a mean of 45.34 (SD = 23.97), indicating
that day-to-day fluctuations in SBLM were common and that no supervisors exhibited a
static SBLM. Further supporting Hypothesis 1, SBLM varied day-to-day at the within-person
level (34%, intraclass correlation [ICC] = .42, 95% confidence interval [CI] [.39, .46]).
Supporting Hypothesis 2, SBLM was positively related to anxiety (γ = .17, SD = .04, p =
.00, pseudo R2 = .18). Supporting Hypothesis 3, SBLM was indirectly and positively
related to exhaustion through anxiety (.06, SD = .02, 95% CI = .032, .108, pseudo R2 =
.10). Supporting Hypothesis 4, SBLM had a positive serial indirect effect on coworker under-
mining through anxiety and exhaustion (.01, SD = .00, 95% CI = .002, .011, pseudo R2 =
.09). Notably, serial indirect effects trend toward smaller values (cf. Lanaj, Gabriel, &
Chawla, 2021; Sonnentag, Eck, Fritz, & Kühnel, 2020). Moreover, the pseudo R2 provides
useful information because it represents the amount of variance explained in our outcomes
by the hypothesized model, calculated by the reduction in residual variance of each
Table 2
Study 1 Multilevel Analyses Results
Coworker
Anxiety Exhaustion Undermining
Variable γ SD γ SD γ SD
Intercept .89* (.31) 1.72** (.32) 1.20 (.28)

Level 1 predictor variables
SBLM .17** (.04) .12** (.04) .04 (.02)
Anxiety .39** (.07)
Exhaustion .08** (.03)
Level 1 lagged controls
Anxiety .19** (.03)
Coworker undermining .18** (.04)
Level 2 controls
Negative affect .36** (.08) .21** (.08) .03 (.06)
Positive affect −.07 (.07) −.18** (.07) −.06 (.05)
Exhaustion .04 (.11)
Pseudo R2 .18 .10 .09
Note: N = 966 observations; 113 participants. SD = the Bayes posterior standard deviation; SBLM = supervisor
bottom-line mentality. SBLM was centered at individuals’ means. Pseudo R2 refers to the reduction in the variance of
the outcome variable compared to a null model (Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992; Tepper, Simon, & Park, 2017).
*p < .05
**p < .01 (two tailed)
outcome variable compared with a null model, thereby providing more information on the
interpretability of these results (e.g., referencing the degree of explained variance of
SBLM on coworker undermining through our mediators). Scholars have argued that a
pseudo R2 of .04 is considered a small-to-moderate effect to explain relationships among atti-
tudes and behaviors (e.g., Vacha-Haase & Thompson, 2004).
Discussion. Our Study 1 results suggest SBLM varies within-person. This finding aids in
broadening the conceptualization of SBLM beyond an orientation to a state that has implica-
tions for employees (Greenbaum et al., 2023). Supporting our theorizing, SBLM variation
sets in motion an anxiety-exhaustion experience that motivates employees to undermine
their coworkers. SBLM variation jars employees away from their routines, eliciting anxiety
that drains self-regulatory resources. Without sufficient energy to maintain appropriate behav-
ior, employees turn to undermining because it is an easy, strategic, yet unethical way to help
them look good.
Although scholars have demonstrated benefits and validity of using crowdsourcing panels
(e.g., Walter, Seibert, Goering, & O’Boyle, 2019), such as offering a platform of demographi-
cally diverse working adults (e.g., Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011), skeptics have
questioned the generalizability of these data compared with other sources of data. Because
crowdsourcing samples are unsupervised with responses linked to incentives, participants
may not take the surveys seriously or be honest in responding (see Chandler & Shapiro,
2016, for a review). Thus, we conducted a second study to test our predictions and replicate
our findings using a different sample. We also used Study 2 to test ethical leadership as a
moderator.
Study 2
We again used an ESM design, allowing us to examine within-person effects and test the
between-person moderating effects of ethical leadership. We recruited full-time working
adults from a professional MBA program at a southeastern university in the United States.
The MBA program asked us to limit the ESM survey frequency to two surveys each week,
as these professionals worked full-time and went to school around their busy schedules.
Thus, we collected data from two surveys a week for 5 weeks (10 surveys total), which
ESM scholars have argued breaks up the monotony of ESM surveys, reducing participant
fatigue (Gabriel et al., 2019), and which has been shown to sufficiently capture variation
needed to test within-person effects (e.g., Thau & Mitchell, 2010). Thus, participants com-
pleted an initial registration survey (which included eligibility criteria: participants had to
be an adult, work full-time [at least 35 hr a week], and have regular interactions with their
supervisors and coworkers) and measures of ethical leadership, controls, and demographics.
Then, we followed up with twice-a-week surveys across 5 weeks to complete the within-
person variable measures.
Participants were compensated $2.50 for completing each survey and received a $10 bonus
for completing all surveys. A total of 118 participants took the registration survey. Analyses
were conducted using a stacked data file in Mplus so that missing data for any given data col-
lection time point were omitted; but if complete data existed for other within-person time
points, they were retained and used in the analyses. As with Study 1, participants were
removed for failing attention-check items (Meade & Craig, 2012). In an additional test to
examine conscientiousness in responses, we conducted multivariate outlier analysis in
Mplus to detect influential outliers (Aguinis, Gottfredson, & Joo, 2013) and omitted two par-
ticipants with Cook’s D scores greater than three standard deviations above the mean. In par-
ticular, these individuals were removed based on the survey completion time (having
completed surveys within 1–2 min). We ran the analyses with and without these outliers,
and all effect sizes (to rounding) and conclusions were the same. The final sample included
873 total observations, nested within 100 participants. The average number of observations
completed per participant was 8.73. On average, participants were 30.44 years old (SD =
5.39) and worked at their company 3.77 years (SD = 2.63); 53% of the sample identified
as female, 70% identified as Caucasian, and 55% held nonsupervisory positions.
Participants worked in a variety of industries (e.g., finance, insurance, real estate, information
systems).
Measures
As with Study 1, we adapted the instructions of the measures to reference twice-a-week
surveys. Surveys were distributed on Mondays and Thursdays for 5 weeks, and participants
were asked to reference the last completed survey (“Since the last survey”). That is, for the
Monday survey, participants were asked to consider the prior Thursday and Friday when
answering the questions, and for the Thursday survey, participants were asked to consider
the prior Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday when answering the questions. We used the
same measures as in Study 1 for SBLM (α = .98), anxiety (α = .93), and coworker undermin-
ing (α = .81). Like Study 1, we controlled for trait affect with the same measures used in Study
1 (trait negative affect, α = .84; positive affect, α = .89), and we examined if the results
changed with or without the control variables included in the analyses. The results were
unchanged (see Appendix B). Participants responded to the following measures on a
5-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). As in Study 1, we used as few
items as possible without compromising the measures’ psychometric properties (Beal,
2015; Uy et al., 2010).
Exhaustion. Participants rated their exhaustion each day with four items from Maslach and
Jackson’s (1981) nine-item measure (e.g., “I have felt burned out from my work”; α = .91).
Ethical leadership. Participants rated their supervisors’ displayed ethical leadership with
Brown et al.’s (2005) 10-item measure (e.g., “My supervisor disciplines employees who
violate ethical standards”; α = .85).

CFA. We conducted a multilevel CFA using Mplus Version 8.5 (Muthén & Muthén, 2012)
specifying five factors for variables in our hypothesized model. The measurement model
Table 3
Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1. SBLM 2.26 1.13 (.98) .10 .21 .12
2. Anxiety 1.54 .81 .30 (.93) .24 .21
3. Exhaustion 2.87 1.21 .48 .50 (.91) .27
4. Coworker undermining 1.40 .56 .11 .21 .23 (.81)
5. Ethical leadership behavior 3.67 .74 −.43 −.26 −.29 −.20 (.85)
6. Negative affect 1.45 .44 .07 .12 .19 .04 −.01 (.84)
7. Positive affect 3.94 .64 −.18 −.06 −.24 −.17 .09 .09 (.89)
Note: N = 873 observations; 100 participants. SBLM = supervisor bottom-line mentality. Cronbach’s alpha
relationships among the twice-a-week, within-person variables; correlations below the diagonal are between-person
correlations. Correlations between the twice-a-week variables and between-person variables were computed by
aggregating participants’ twice-a-week scores and then correlating them with the between-person variables. For
within-person correlations above the diagonal, all values are significant at p < .01, two tailed. For between-person
correlations below the diagonal, values above |.07| are significant at p < .01, two tailed.
provided an adequate fit to the data (χ2 = 299.92, df = 148, p = .00; CFI = .98; RMSEA = .03;
SRMR within = .03, SRMR between = .07). It was a better fit than alternative models, such as
a four-factor model, where items for anxiety and exhaustion were combined on one factor (χ2
= 1198.85, df = 151, p = .00; CFI = .84; RMSEA = .08; SRMR within = .11; SRMR between
= .07), and a two-factor model, where items for SBLM, anxiety, exhaustion, and coworker
undermining were combined on one factor (χ2 = 4065.33, df = 154, p = .00; CFI = .40;
RMSEA = .16; SRMR within = .23; SRMR between = .07), providing evidence of discrimi-
nant validity for our measures. Note that our four-factor model is consistent with the three-
factor model in Study 1, and the two-factor model is consistent with the one-factor model
in Study 1. The difference is that ethical leadership was only a between-person variable
and so it was separate.
Data analysis approach. Like Study 1, we examined the within-person variance (σ2) of the
twice-a-week variables, which showed sufficient within-person variance to test the predic-
tions (SBLM = 18%, anxiety = 33%, exhaustion = 22%, and coworker undermining =
36%). Notably, by comparison to Study 1, the SBLM within-person variance percentage
was lower, but a meta-analysis by N. P. Podsakoff et al. (2019) suggests that this percentage
is in the range of within-person variance of stressors in published studies. Thus, we used the
same procedures for multilevel path analysis with Bayes estimation as we did in Study 1 with
Mplus Version 8.5 (Muthén & Muthén, 2012). These procedures allow us to model and
control for the variance in and among the constructs that reside at the between-individual
level (Preacher et al., 2010), providing unbiased parameter estimates at the within-person
level and to test our cross-level moderating effects.
We also adopted procedures recommended by Preacher et al. (2010) to test our hypothe-
sized model. Error variances and correlations were not constrained to be fixed, the
between-individual variables were grand-mean centered, and the within-individual predictor

(i.e., SBLM) was group-mean centered. The analyses were the same as Study 1, except for
controlling for daily prior-day criterion variables, as the data were collected twice a week
and not daily. Given that our overall model included the moderation of indirect effects, we
integrated these procedures with Preacher et al.’s (2007) suggestions for moderated mediation
(see Table 4).
Hypothesis testing. Supporting Hypothesis 1, SBLM varied within-person (18%; ICC =
.27, 95% CI [.25, .30]). Supporting Hypothesis 2, SBLM significantly and positively
related to anxiety (γ = .14, SD = .05, p = .00, pseudo R2 = .12). Supporting Hypothesis 3,
SBLM indirectly and positively influenced exhaustion through anxiety (.04; SD = .02, 95%
CI [.008, .082], pseudo R2 = .09). Supporting Hypothesis 4, SBLM’s serial indirect effect
on undermining through anxiety and exhaustion was positive and significant (.01; SD =
.00, 95% CI [.001, .012], pseudo R2 = .12). Supporting Hypothesis 5, ethical leadership mod-
erated the relationship between exhaustion and undermining (γ = −.10, SD = .03, p = .00),
and the relationship was weaker when ethical leadership was higher (γ = .07, SD = .04,
95% CI [−.002, .152]) than lower (γ = .22, SD = .03, 95% CI [.162, .281]; see Figure 2).
Supporting Hypothesis 6, the positive indirect effect of SBLM through anxiety and exhaus-
tion on undermining was weaker when ethical leadership was higher (.00; SD = .00, 95% CI
[.000, .008]) than lower (.01; SD = .00, 95% CI [.002, .019]). Notably, despite CI overlap,
research has regarded a change in significance between high and low levels of a moderator
Table 4
Coworker
Intercept 1.57** (.06) 2.90** (.10) 1.25** (.17)

Level 1 predictor variable
SBLM .14** (.05) .20** (.04) .04 (.03)
Anxiety .29** (.06)
Level 2 variable
Ethical leadership −.06 (.07)
Exhaustion × Ethical leadership −.10** (.03)
Level 2 controls
Negative affect .57** (.10) .46** (.17) .10 (.09)
Positive affect −.18 (.11) −.42* (.18) −.05 (.09)
Pseudo R2 .12 .09 .12
bottom-line mentality. SBLM was centered at individuals’ means. Level 2 (between-person) variables were
grand-mean centered.
*p < .05
Figure 2
Study 2 Cross-Level Moderating Effects of Ethical Leadership on the Relationship
Between Exhaustion and Coworker Undermining
as adequate evidence of significance of the conditional indirect effects within a serial

moderated-mediation model—the presence of zero within the CI is indicative of a nonsignif-
icant effect (Deng, Coyle-Shapiro, Zhu, & Wu, 2022; Lanaj et al., 2021).
Discussion. Study 2 replicated the Study 1 findings and offered an opportunity to test our
cross-level moderation predictions about ethical leadership. The results support COR princi-
ples that supervisors’ generalized style of leadership can be a resource for employees when
they experience exhaustion from SBLM variability. Consistent with our proposals, between-
person ethical leadership attenuated the effects of exhaustion on coworker undermining and
the overall indirect effect of SBLM on coworker undermining (through anxiety and exhaus-
tion). Exhausted employees were less likely to undermine coworkers when they perceived
their supervisors had a continual commitment to ethics.
Despite the strengths of Study 2, there are limitations we sought to address in Study
3. First, the prior studies asked participants to ensure they worked in an environment with
coworkers and had continued interactions with their supervisors. Nevertheless, we neglected
to ask participants whether they interacted with their supervisors daily, which we address in
Study 3. Second, although the findings replicated, there were differences between Studies 1
and 2, such as lower SBLM within-person variance in Study 2 and some correlation differ-
ences. Regarding the within-person variance difference, N. P. Podsakoff et al. (2019)
found that within-person variation is attributable to design and sample characteristics.
Thus, it could be that the lower Study 2 within-person SBLM variance was due to sample
or design differences (Study 2 was a twice-a-week ESM and Study 1 a daily ESM). Utilizing a
daily ESM in Study 3 allows us to test this assumption. Further, correlational differences,
such as that between SBLM and exhaustion (Study 1 = .21 vs. Study 2 = .48), may be attrib-
uted to the different exhaustion measures used across the studies. It may also be attributed to
different samples or sample sizes. In Study 3, it was important to collect data from a larger
sample of working adults for cross-validation to address the potential limitations and
strengthen our conclusions. Third, in Study 3, we sought to directly test underlying theoretical
assumptions: (a) that factors in supervisors’ workday can prompt variation in their BLM and
(b) that a generalized pattern of ethical leadership (as a between-person perception vs. within-
person variation in perceptions) moderates the effects. We designed Study 3 to collect data
from supervisors on their perceptions of their own BLM and likely antecedents of their
BLM variation, and we collected data on daily ethical leadership, allowing us to examine
both its within-person and between-person moderation effects.
Study 3
Two embedded assumptions in our theorizing deserve attention. First, we have argued that
SBLM variability occurs because supervisors’ attention to the bottom line varies with differ-
ing factors that they face across their workweeks. Greenbaum et al. (2023) argued that SBLM
can be examined as a state because supervisors focus on differing objectives throughout a
workweek. Empirical evidence supports these ideas. For instance, research has shown that
leaders’ behavior variability can be influenced in an imitative, trickle-down manner (e.g.,
Chan et al., 2022; Zhang, Zhang, Xiu, & Zheng, 2020). Indeed, at the between-person
level of analysis, Greenbaum et al. (2012) found that SBLM influences employees’ BLM,
leaving open the possibility that SBLM is affected by the supervisor’s bottom-line focus
day-to-day. Leadership scholars have also argued that the primary reason leader behaviors
vary is because leaders face stressors and job demands that alter their attention day-to-day
(McClean et al., 2019). In support of these ideas, Rosen et al. (2019) found that supervisor
behaviors vary from their daily job demands (i.e., email demands), fluctuating leader behav-
iors with the highs and lows of demands. For these reasons, we suggest that SBLM variation
is likely influenced by varying job demands and coworker competitiveness.
Research Question 1: Is SBLM variability influenced by various factors within supervi-

sors’ work environment, such as supervisors’ perceptions of their (a) leader’s BLM, (b)
job demands, and (c) coworker competitiveness?
Second, our arguments about ethical leadership’s cross-level moderation effects propose
that a continued, steadfast display of ethical leadership—between-person perceptions, not a
within-person perception—moderates the relationship between exhaustion and coworker
undermining and the indirect effect of SBLM variability on coworker undermining through
anxiety and exhaustion. These arguments are based on COR principles that supervisor behav-
iors act as a resource for employees and on ethical leadership theory (Brown et al., 2005;
Treviño et al., 2000) that suggests a supervisor’s unwavering commitment to ethics raises
employees’ awareness of the importance of ethical values. Ethical leadership scholars have
also argued that moral inconsistencies are insufficient to direct employees’ own ethical
behavior (Treviño et al., 2000). Still, the idea deserves empirical attention, particularly in con-
sideration of whether ethical leadership, as a within-person perception, moderates the effects
and if upticks in ethical leadership offset the exhaustion that motivates coworker
undermining.
Research Question 2: Does within-person ethical leadership perceptions moderate the

relationship between employee exhaustion and coworker undermining?

Study 3’s daily ESM included full-time working adults, recruited through ResearchMatch
(Harris et al., 2012), a registry supported by the National Institutes of Health where volunteers
consent to be contacted about research opportunities (cf. Muir, Sherf, & Liu, 2022). The
recruitment ad outlined study requirements and asked participants to nominate a supervisor
(who provided ratings for our supplemental analyses). Participants completed a onetime
survey that screened for their availability (e.g., planned work absences during the 10 days
of the study), eligibility (e.g., frequency of supervisor interaction,2 typical work start and
end times, work status), demographics, and control variables. A week later, participants
received two surveys each day for 10 working days—one at 11:30 a.m. (closing by 3:00
p.m.) that included SBLM and anxiety measures and another at 4:30 p.m. (closing by mid-
night) that included exhaustion, ethical leadership, and undermining measures. Of the 192
who were eligible, 172 completed daily surveys. Participants received $4 Amazon gift
cards for the registration survey, $1 for each completed daily morning survey, $1 for each
completed daily evening survey, and a bonus of $10 for completing all surveys. As with
the previous studies, individuals who failed attention-check items were removed. Like
Study 2, we conducted multivariate outlier analysis and omitted five participants with
Cook’s D value greater than three standard deviations above the mean (Aguinis et al.,
2013).3 The final sample contained 1,460 observations (99.29% response rate) from 155 par-
ticipants (90.11% response rate). Observations were nested within participants. The average
number of observations per participant was 9.42. On average, participants were 35.77 years
old (SD = 11.95) and worked at their company 6.65 years (SD = 5.27); 44.2% of the sample
identified as female, 64.9% identified as Caucasian, and 54.5% held nonsupervisory posi-
tions. Participants worked in a variety of industries (e.g., education, finance, health care,
retail).
Measures
We used the same measures as in Study 2 for SBLM (α = .92), anxiety (α = .94), ethical
leadership (α = .90), and coworker undermining (α = .93) and used the same measure from
Study 1 for exhaustion (Pugh et al., 2010; α = .94). To test our research questions, supervisors
rated their own BLM (α = .78) and their supervisor’s SBLM (α = .90) with the Study 2
measure and rated their job demands with Van Yperen and Hagedoorn’s (2003) 10-item
measure (e.g., “TODAY, I have too much work to do”; α = .93) and coworker competitive-
ness with Fletcher and Nusbaum’s (2010) four-item measure (“TODAY, I felt that I would be
acknowledged for my accomplishments only if I outperformed others”; α = .95). To conduct
supplemental analyses on whether ethical leadership moderates the effects within versus
between-person, we measured ethical leadership daily, obtaining the person means across
days to generate the between-person measure of ethical leadership. We again controlled for
trait affect with the measures used in Studies 1 and 2 (negative affect, α = .94; positive
affect, α = .93) as well as prior-workday lagged assessments of each prior-day anxiety,
exhaustion, and undermining (as in Study 1). We examined the relevance of the control var-
iables and with or without controls (as in Studies 1 and 2), and the results did not change with
or without controls (see Appendix B).

CFA. We conducted multilevel CFA using Mplus Version 8.5 (Muthén & Muthén, 2012)
specifying five factors for the five variables in our hypothesized model. The results for the
measurement model provided an adequate fit to the data (χ2 = 396.21, df = 148, p = .00;
CFI = .97; RMSEA = .03; SRMR within = .03, SRMR between = .05), and it was a better
fit than alternative models, such as a three-factor model, where items for anxiety and exhaus-
tion were combined on one factor (χ2 = 1732.181, df = 151, p = .00; CFI = .84; RMSEA =
.08; SRMR within = .07; SRMR between = .05), and a two-factor model, where the items
for SBLM, anxiety, exhaustion, and coworker undermining were combined on one factor
(χ2 = 4349.60, df = 154, p = .00; CFI = .56; RMSEA = .14; SRMR within = .15; SRMR
between = .05), providing evidence of discriminant validity for our measures.
Table 5
Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1. SBLM 2.92 1.11 (.92) .11 .12 .02
2. Anxiety 1.98 1.06 .42 (.94) .39 .07
3. Exhaustion 2.51 1.19 .35 .61 (.94) .13
4. Coworker undermining 2.04 1.14 .30 .55 .45 (.93)
5. Ethical leadership behavior 3.93 .56 .08 −.05 −.07 −.19 (.90)
6. Negative affect 2.19 .96 .28 .80 .47 .77 −.06 (.94)
7. Positive affect 3.68 .79 .05 −.10 −.18 .06 .36 −.08 (.93)
Note: N = 1,460 observations; 155 participants. SBLM = supervisor bottom-line mentality. Cronbach’s alpha
relationships among the twice-a-week, within-person variables; correlations below the diagonal are between-person
correlations. Correlations between the twice-a-week variables and between-person variables were computed by
aggregating participants’ twice-a-week scores and then correlating them with the between-person variables. For
within-person correlations above the diagonal, values above |.08| are significant at p < .01, two tailed, and values
above |.06| are significant at p < .05, two tailed. For between-person correlations below the diagonal, values above
|.07| are significant at p < .01, two tailed, and values above |.05| are significant at p < .05, two tailed.
Data analysis approach. As with Study 1, we examined the within-person variance (σ2) of
the variables, and the results show the daily variances demonstrated sufficient within-person
variance to test the predictions (SBLM = 28%, anxiety = 24%, exhaustion = 35%, and
coworker undermining = 15%). We followed the same analytic procedures for multilevel
path analysis with Bayes estimation as we did in Studies 1 and 2 using Mplus Version 8.5
(Muthén & Muthén, 2012). The results are presented in Table 6.
Hypothesis testing. Supporting Hypothesis 1, SBLM varied within-person (28%; ICC =
.36, 95% CI [.33, .38]). Supporting Hypothesis 2, SBLM significantly and positively
related to anxiety (γ = .10, SD = .05, p = .02; 95% CI [.004, .180], pseudo R2 = .10).
Supporting Hypothesis 3, SBLM had an indirect and positive effect on exhaustion through
anxiety (.05; SD = .02, 95% CI [.002, .092], pseudo R2 = .21). Supporting Hypothesis 4,
SBLM had a positive serial indirect effect on coworker undermining through anxiety and
exhaustion (.004; SD = .00, 95% CI [.001, .010], pseudo R2 = .04). Supporting Hypothesis
5, ethical leadership moderated the effect of exhaustion on undermining (γ = −.08, SD =
.04, p = .02); the relationship was weaker when ethical leadership was higher (γ = .05, SD
= .03, 95% CI [−.007, .106]) than lower (γ = .14, SD = .03, 95% CI [.071, .205]) (see
Figure 3). Supporting Hypothesis 6, SBLM’s indirect effect on undermining through
Table 6
Coworker
Intercept −.55* (.26) 1.45* (.34) −.96* (.31)

SBLM .10* (.04) .09* (.04) .00 (.02)
Anxiety .51* (.06)
Exhaustion .10* (.02)
Anxiety .08* (.03)
Coworker undermining .02 (.03)
Level 2 variable
Ethical leadership −.25* (.09)
Exhaustion × Ethical leadership −.08* (.04)
Level 2 controls
Negative affect .91* (.05) .72* (.07) .80* (.08)
Positive affect .20* (.06) −.10 (.08) .26* (.07)
Pseudo R2 .10 .21 .04
Note: N = 1,460 observations; 155 participants. SD = the Bayes posterior standard deviation; SBLM = supervisor
bottom-line mentality. SBLM was centered at individuals’ means; Level 2 (between-person) variables were
*p < .05
anxiety and exhaustion was weaker when ethical leadership was higher (.00; SD = .00, 95%
CI [.000, .007]) versus lower (.01; SD = .00, 95% CI [.001, .015]).
Research question testing. Supervisor ratings of their own BLM, their supervisor’s SBLM,
and their job demands and coworker competitiveness demonstrated sufficient within-person
variance to test the predictions (supervisor-reported BLM = 29%, supervisor’s leader BLM =
31%, job demands = 37%, and coworker competitiveness = 26%). For Research Question 1,
the results (see Appendix C) showed that the supervisors’ own BLM related to their leader’s
BLM (γ = .21, SD = .04, p = .00) and their job demands (γ = .07, SD = .04, p = .03), whereas
it was not related to coworker competitiveness (γ = .02, SD = .03, p = .18). For Research
Question 2 (see Appendix D), the Exhaustion × Within-Person Ethical Leadership interaction
term was not significant on coworker undermining (γ = −.01, SD = .01, p = .36).
Discussion. Study 3 replicated our prior findings, supporting our theorizing that SBLM
varies across the workweek and, when employees perceived SBLM upticks, they had to reori-
ent their efforts that prompted anxiety and exhaustion, which motivated coworker undermin-
ing. Study 3 also demonstrated that supervisors can offset the exhaustion from episodic
SBLM with their general ethical-leadership style. Yet, there are other theoretical nuances
to emphasize from Study 3. First, our findings for Research Question 1 provided empirical
Figure 3
Study 3 Cross-Level Moderating Effects of Ethical Leadership on the Relationship
Between Exhaustion and Coworker Undermining
Note: When the results were used to calculate the values for the plot, negative values were obtained for the under-
mining variable. To add to the interpretability of results and to maintain consistency with the Study 2 plot, a constant
of 2 was added to the final calculated plot values (Becker, Robertson, & Vandenberg, 2019).
evidence supporting our theoretical arguments that were based on the assumption that SBLM
variability ebbs and flows with supervisors’ differing goals and demands. We found that
supervisors’ leader’s BLM and their job demands influenced these supervisors’ SBLM var-
iability. Second, our findings for Research Question 2 provided empirical evidence of our
assumption that between-person ethical leadership, not within-person, attenuates the effects
of exhaustion. We found that displaying an inconsistent commitment to ethics does not
offset the damaging, anxiety-exhausting effects of SBLM variability, which supports the
notion that employees need to perceive that their supervisors’ commitment to ethics is unwa-
vering for ethical leadership to moderate the effects.
Of course, despite the strengths of Study 3, it is not without limitations. Like Studies 1 and
2, the data were collected by one source, which may enhance the likelihood of CMV bias. As
with our prior studies, we utilized a survey design that separated our variables and controlled
for prior-day experiences as well as trait affect. Although a secondary source of variables
might have been beneficial, the use of the same source was critical, given our propositions.
That is, the within-person experience specified in our hypotheses rely on (a) the employee’s
perception of their supervisor’s focus on the bottom line across their workweek, (b) the
employee’s anxiety, (c) the employee’s experience of exhaustion, and (d) the employee’s self-
reports of coworker undermining, which has been demonstrated to be more accurate when
self-reported than when reported by others (Carpenter, Rangel, Jeon, & Cottrell, 2017).
Critical to the process, however, is employees’ perceptions of SBLM over the workweek, par-
ticularly given that supervisors and employees often view the supervisors’ behaviors differ-
ently (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). Notably, because we collected supervisor-reported data on
SBLM in Study 3, we conducted a follow-up test of our hypotheses, replacing
employee-reported SBLM with supervisor-reported own BLM, and the results were not sup-
portive—meaning, for employees’ anxiety-exhaustion experience, it does not matter whether
supervisors believe they are focused on the bottom line day-to-day; it matters only if employ-
ees perceive that their supervisors’ BLM fluctuates across their workweeks.4
Last, we noted some differences in the within-person variance of SBLM and correlations
from Study 1 to Study 2. The differences might be attributed to differences in designs (with
Study 1 being a daily ESM and Study 2 a twice-a-week ESM). Study 3, like Study 1, utilized a
daily ESM, and the percentage of within-person variance was consistent with that of Study 1
and published work (N. P. Podsakoff et al., 2019). Thus, it may be that the lower SBLM
within-person variance in Study 2 is attributed to the twice-a-week ESM design
(N. P. Podsakoff et al., 2019). In relation to correlational differences, the Study 3 correlations
(e.g., between SBLM and exhaustion) were consistent with Study 1. Still, despite slight dif-
ferences across the three studies, the correlations and findings displayed consistent signifi-
cance patterns across the studies.
General Discussion
Our results demonstrated that SBLM varies, and its variability has implications for employ-
ees. Supervisors’ raised focus on the bottom line from time to time disrupts employees’ job rou-
tines and forces efforts to raise bottom-line outcomes. Ultimately, this experience heightens
employees’ anxiety that drains their self-regulatory resources, leaving them exhausted.
Exhausted employees lack energy to maintain appropriate behavior and engage in unethical
acts to offset bottom-line demands. That is, they undermine coworkers because it helps undercut
coworkers for the employees’ own self-gain. Importantly, we theorized a critical moderator and
demonstrated that supervisors’ resolute commitment to ethics reduces the likelihood that
employees respond to the SBLM-elicited anxiety and exhaustion by undermining coworkers.
Theoretical Implications
Our work has implications for theory. First, we expand the SBLM conceptualization,
which scholars have mainly examined as a static, exclusive focus on the bottom line (see
Moore & Gino, 2013; Treviño et al., 2014). Greenbaum et al.’s (2023) BLM literature
review tasked scholars to consider whether, how, and why SBLM might fluctuate across a
workweek. Our work answers this call by showing that SBLM varies and by demonstrating
that supervisors’ leader’s BLM and their job demands prompt a varying focus on the bottom
line. Our reframing of SBLM as within-person reshapes the understanding of the construct.
Leadership scholars have argued that focusing only on between-person effects of leader
behavior (McClean et al., 2019) may miss meaningful associations of the same concept
studied at the within-person level (Beal, 2015; Gabriel et al., 2019; McCormick et al.,
2020; N. P. Podsakoff et al., 2019). Thus, studying SBLM variability holds promise for
unveiling its complexities and potential impact on employees and organizations. Some super-
visors may have innate tendencies to consistently focus on bottom-line pursuits and disregard
other priorities, but not all do. Given that organizations are multivalent systems (Wolfe,
1988), supervisors’ job responsibilities fluctuate, and their bottom-line focus varies based
on the demands of the day. Indeed, much attention has been given to how fluctuating job
demands influence employees’ daily lives. In that respect, SBLM variability and the
factors that feed into this fluctuating state deserve attention, as do its effects on employees.
It may be that past cross-sectional or between-person designs to examine SBLM (e.g.,
Greenbaum et al., 2012) tell a limited story about its implications to supervisors, employees,
and the work environment. Acknowledging that SBLM can represent a state that varies and
exerts influence aids future research in uncovering how and why other factors contribute to
episodic SBLM and its daily impact on work-unit functioning.
Second, our integration of anxiety theory with COR extends both theories as well as the
SBLM literature. Cheng and McCarthy’s (2018) anxiety theory speculates that episodic per-
formance demands elicit anxiety that is exhausting, given the need to raise efforts in the short
term to address performance demands. Our results are consistent with these ideas, but anxiety
theory was not useful in explicating further downstream effects. Thus, we incorporated ideas
from COR to examine coworker undermining as a dysfunctional outcome of SBLM variabil-
ity. Although COR does not discuss anxiety specifically, COR (like anxiety theory) articu-
lates how performance demands are exhausting and motivate subsequent unethical
behaviors, like undermining. Moreover, COR offers insight on how supervisors can
address the effects of episodic performance demands (i.e., SBLM variability) with their gen-
eralized leadership style (i.e., ethical leadership). Therefore, our theoretical integration
allowed us to address Greenbaum et al.’s (2023) call for research that theoretically explains
the effects of SBLM as a state. In addition, the integration extends both theories by demon-
strating their combined utility in explaining organizational phenomena, such as SBLM
variability.
Third, the moderating role of ethical leadership extends the leadership, ethics, and COR
literatures. McClean et al. (2019) tasked scholars to consider how a leader’s fluctuating and
general styles intersect to influence employee reactions. In addition, ethics scholars have
questioned if leaders can maintain a continual commitment to ethics while also demon-
strating a bottom-line focus (Treviño et al., 2014). We drew from COR to explain why
between-person ethical leadership offsets exhaustion prompted by SBLM variability.
We found that ethical leadership as a general style is a resource for employees exposed
to SBLM variability, deterring exhausted employees from undermining coworkers.
Also, our research demonstrated that ethical leadership exhibits within-person variability,
but this variability was insufficient in offsetting the anxiety-exhaustion experience of
SBLM variability. Thus, we support McClean et al.’s assertion that while certain leader
behaviors vary, other behaviors can represent a generalized style that shapes employee
reactions to demands across the workweek. Also, this finding demonstrates the theoretical
relevance of examining SBLM within-person and ethical leadership between-person—
ethical leadership serves as a guidepost that offsets exhaustion from SBLM variability
and reduces unethicality. Hence, supervisors can demonstrate resoluteness toward ethics
and raise attention to the bottom line when needed. To offset the effects of a raised bottom-
line focus, supervisors cannot temporarily attend to ethics; a transient focus on ethics does
not serve as a resource for employees or deter their inclinations to address their exhaustion
with unethical acts.
Limitations and Future Research Directions

We acknowledge limitations of our work. First, our data were self-reported, which may
influence CMV (P. M. Podsakoff et al., 2012). Following scholarly recommendation to
reduce CMV in ESMs (Gabriel et al., 2019), we group-mean centered our within-person var-
iables, temporally separated our constructs, controlled for negative and positive affect, and
controlled for lagged variables in the daily ESMs (Studies 1 and 3), which helps to remove
the likelihood of transient states biasing Level 1 relationships. We also incorporated and dem-
onstrate ethical leadership as a moderator, which scholarship has shown cannot be inflated by
CMV but could be deflated by it (see Siemsen, Roth, & Oliveira, 2010).
Further, given our predictions, self-report data for testing the hypotheses were essential.
Self-reporting of unethical behavior is the most valid, accurate rating for these behaviors
(Carpenter et al., 2017). Also, COR proposes that understanding how job demands (i.e.,
SBLM) are internalized by employees over time is needed to track reactions (Hobfoll,
1988; Hobfoll et al., 2018), meaning self-ratings of SBLM, anxiety, and exhaustion were
needed. Indeed, the Study 3 supplemental analyses illustrated this point: Supervisor-rated
SBLM related to employee-rated SBLM, but only employee-rated SBLM instigated the
anxiety process (and so supervisor-reported SBLM was insufficient for hypotheses testing).
This finding is consistent with research that has shown that employees and supervisors do
not always interpret supervisor behavior in the same way, and employee perceptions of super-
visors more intensely impact their reactions (e.g., Fehn & Schutz, 2020). Still, we acknowl-
edge the possibility that same-source reports can raise CMV (P. M. Podsakoff et al., 2012),
which suggests future scholarship should consider separate sources of data or perhaps study
this phenomenon experimentally.
Additionally, there are notable design differences between Study 2 and the other studies.
Study 2 employed a twice-a-week ESM, whereas the other studies were daily ESMs. Because
Study 2 participants were balancing full-time employment with their MBA program, we
limited their obligation to twice a week while still capturing variability in the variables,
which scholars have argued can reduce participant fatigue (Gabriel et al., 2019) and ade-
quately capture variation in leadership phenomena (e.g., Thau & Mitchell, 2010). Still,
Study 2 SBLM variability (18%) in comparison to that in Studies 1 (34%) and 3 (28%)
may be explained by the twice-a-week ESM design, suggesting SBLM variability may be
better studied in a daily ESM. Thus, future work should consider the timing of data collection
for within-person designs.
There are other areas for future research that may emerge from our work. Anxiety theory
(Cheng & McCarthy, 2018) has other nuances that could provide areas of future research on
SBLM variability. Future research could examine whether jobs involving emotional labor or
job characteristics raise or reduce the anxiety experience. Perhaps certain jobs or job charac-
teristics (e.g., high autonomy) are particularly exhausting in the face of episodic SBLM.
Similarly, COR is a rich theory that predicts how employees conserve (as we suggested)
but also enrich their self-resources. It may be that employees seek to enhance their skills
or abilities to handle upticks in SBLM. For instance, political skill (i.e., the ability to effec-
tively understand others and influence them to accomplish personal and organizational objec-
tives) may help with managing demands by enabling aid from others (see Ferris et al., 2007),
thereby enriching self-resources. Last, researchers may consider other consequences and ante-
cedents of SBLM variability, such as how employees effectively raise bottom-line outcomes,
or take a supervisor-focused account of SBLM variability. Examining other supervisor stress-
ors at work (e.g., customer demands) or outside of work (e.g., childcare concerns) may con-
tribute to the ebbs and flows of SBLM. Further, our results suggested employees and
supervisors both perceive SBLM fluctuations, and emerging work has shown that agreement
or disagreement can explain interesting outcomes, and so these different source perceptions
may be an important avenue for future scholarship.
Managerial Implications
Our work suggests that SBLM varies, which negatively affects employees and thus has
important practical implications for organizations. Our findings that SBLM variability
prompted employee anxiety, exhaustion, and coworker undermining give insights into its
costly nature. Undermining behaviors are costly (e.g., Borak, 2018) because they tarnish rela-
tionships, diminish employee performance and well-being, elicit similarly dysfunctional
actions, and motivate employees to withdraw or leave organizations (e.g., Duffy et al.,
2002; Kammeyer-Mueller, Wanberg, Rubenstein, & Song, 2013; K. Y. Lee, Kim, Bhave,
& Duffy, 2016). In addition, SBLM’s variability can be costly in that it impacts employee
anxiety and exhaustion, which can motivate additional dysfunctional employee outcomes,
such as decreases in productivity (see Cheng & McCarthy, 2018). Hence, our work highlights
the importance of managing (and mitigating) the detrimental effects of SBLM variability.
At first blush, our results might suggest that the solution is for supervisors to avoid taking
on exclusively a bottom-line focus. However, that suggestion is impractical because financial
viability is an overarching goal in organizational life (Venkatraman & Ramanujam, 1986),
meaning supervisors must focus on the bottom line from time to time to maintain organiza-
tional financial stability. Given this, our findings for the moderating effect of ethical leader-
ship offer a solution by showing that supervisors who display ethical leadership as a general
style can reduce the costly outcomes of SBLM variability. This finding should not be taken
lightly. A main takeaway of our work is that a supervisor’s steadfast commitment to ethics
(i.e., between-person ethical leadership) is sufficient to reduce coworker undermining.
Conversely, a lack of consistency to ethics raised employees’ efforts to undermine their
coworkers. Our results show that supervisors cannot intermittently raise attention to ethics,
even at times when their focus on SBLM is raised over time, because employees do not
attend to temporary upticks in supervisor ethical leadership. Instead, it is only a general com-
mitment to ethical leadership that guides their behavior. Ethical leadership enables employees
to recognize ethics as a priority even in the face of episodic SBLM that may pressure unethi-
cality. As such, it is prudent for organizations to emphasize ethical leadership in supervisors’
continued work style, perhaps through training interventions and mentorship (Lanaj, Foulk, &
Erez, 2019; Neube & Wasburn, 2006), as ethical leadership can prompt adherence to ethical
standards in pursuit of the bottom line (Brown & Treviño, 2006). In addition, organizations
should work to build ethical climates to reduce the likelihood of unethicality (Kuenzi et al.,
2020). Managers should ensure that human resources practices (e.g., recruitment, selection,
orientation) consistently encourage ethical decision-making and that reward systems are
structured in ways that hold employees accountable. Rewards and punishments should
create explicit ethical expectations for all organizational members.
Conclusion
We found that SBLM varies over time, which elicits employee anxiety, exhaustion, and
unethicality. SBLM variability disrupts employees’ natural workflow—when it is high,
employees break away from the comfort of their routines. The discomfort of these episodes
instigates anxiety that exhausts employees and motivates coworker undermining. The silver
lining is that supervisors can manage employee unethical reactions with a general ethical-
leadership style. Because SBLM episodes may ultimately threaten the bottom line, supervi-
sors’ consistency in ethical leadership can help reduce costly employee reactions.
ORCID iDs
Marie S. Mitchell https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0651-6273
Andrea L. Hetrick https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8771-5137
Mary B. Mawritz https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8162-1623
Rebecca L. Greenbaum https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5594-8606
Notes
1. The range of 26% to 60% is based on our review of published work on leader variability. The review by
N. P. Podsakoff, Spoelma, Chawla, and Gabriel (2019) noted similar within-person variance percentages for leader-
ship and that stressors (such as supervisor bottom-line mentality [SBLM]) can vary as low as 19%.
2. We also asked employees to rate their daily contact with supervisors (“In relation to the contact you have had
with your supervisor [again, any type of interaction—whether it be a physical interaction, virtual interaction such as
email, text, or Zoom/Skype/Microsoft Teams, or by phone], please indicate how much interaction you have had with
your supervisor TODAY.”) and examined this item as a control variable; with or without this variable in the analyses,
the results were unchanged.
3. With and without these outliers, all effect sizes were the same (to rounding) and conclusions unchanged with
one exception: The cross-level moderating effect was marginally significant with the outliers included (effect = −.05;
it was significant, one tailed) and was significant with the outliers excluded (effect = −.08).
4. The results testing our proposals using supervisor-reported BLM (α = .86) showed that supervisor-reported
BLM demonstrated sufficient within-person variance (32%; intraclass correlation = .30, 95% confidence interval [.27,
.33]), consistent with Hypothesis 1. However, supervisor-reported BLM was not related to anxiety (γ = −.04, SD =
.06, p = .27), and therefore the indirect effects of supervisor-reported BLM (through anxiety) to exhaustion were not
significant, making the serial indirect effect of supervisor-reported BLM (through anxiety and exhaustion) to under-
mining nonsignificant.
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APPENDIX A
To aid in reducing survey fatigue (Gabriel et al., 2019), we shortened Duffy et al.’s (2006)
seven-item measure to a four-item measure. We examined the factor structure of a measure-
ment model with the seven-item measure compared with the four-item measure, and exam-
ined our predictions comparing the seven-item with the four-item measure, using data
collected for a larger, unpublished study of 151 undergraduate students from a research
pool at a southeastern university (Mage = 20.81, SD = 1.70; Mcompany tenure = .88 years, SD
= 1.29; 54% = female). Students worked at least 10 hr per week and had regular interactions
with supervisors and coworkers. Participants worked in a variety of industries (e.g., finance/
insurance, education, retail). The hypotheses were tested with the same procedures used in
Studies 1 through 3.
Measures. Unless noted, the measures used were the same as used in Study 1 (SBLM, α =
.94; anxiety, α = .93; exhaustion, α = .94; coworker undermining seven-item measure, α =
.90; Duffy et al., 2002; coworker undermining four-item measure, α = .85; from Duffy
et al., 2002, Items 1, 2, 3, and 7; and ethical leadership, α = .85).
Results. Multilevel CFAs using Mplus were conducted (with same procedures followed as
Studies 2 and 3, included ethical leadership). Results showed the five-factor measurement
model with the four-item undermining measure provided an adequate fit to the data (χ2 =
556.01, df = 148, p = .00; CFI = .95; RMSEA = .04; SRMR within = .04, SRMR between =
.04), and it was a better fit than alternative models (e.g., a four-factor model, where
anxiety and exhaustion items were combined on one factor [χ2 = 1081.60, df = 151, p =
.00; CFI = .88; RMSEA = .07; SRMR within = .08; SRMR between = .04], and a two-factor
model, where leader BLM, anxiety, exhaustion, and coworker undermining items were
combined on one factor [χ2 = 3846.64, df = 154, p = .00; CFI = .52; RMSEA = .13; SRMR
within = .19; SRMR between = .04]), providing evidence of discriminant validity of the mea-
sures. A CFA of the measurement with the full seven-item undermining measure also fit the
data well (χ2 = 777.11, df = 232, p = .00; CFI = .94; RMSEA = .04; SRMR within = .05,
SRMR between = .12), although the CFA with the shortened four-item survey fit better
than the CFA with the seven-item survey. The bivariate correlations between the four-item
and seven-item undermining measures (r = .97) also provided evidence that the shortened
measure assessed the same construct as original measure.
Following the same procedures to test the hypotheses in Studies 1 through 3, we replicated
the results with both the shortened and original undermining measures (see Table A1). All
hypothesized relationships were significant, as predicted, and the effect sizes were similar
to those obtained Studies 1 through 3. Further, the cross-level moderating effect, the serial
indirect effect, and the conditional indirect effects were also significant and as expected.
In all, these results provide cross-validation evidence that the reduced four-item coworker
undermining measure assessed the same variable as the seven-item coworker undermining
measure, since the pattern of results (effect sizes and statistical significance) replicated
across all four samples (this validation data, Study 1, Study 2, and Study 3).
Table A1
Results of Multilevel Analyses
Four-Item Coworker Undermining Measure Seven-Item Coworker Undermining Measure
Coworker Coworker
Anxiety Exhaustion Undermining Anxiety Exhaustion Undermining
Variable γ SD γ SD γ SD γ SD γ SD γ SD
Intercept .91* (.16) 1.66* (.39) .72* (.27) .92* (.17) 1.68* (.38) .77* (.23)
Level 1 predictor variables
SBLM 20* (.03) .17* (.03) .04 (.02) .20* (.03) .17* (.03) .03 (.02)
Anxiety .49* (.05) .49* (.05)
Exhaustion .41* (.13) .35* (.12)
Anxiety .41* (.05) .40* (.05)
Exhaustion .27** (.04) .27* (.04)
Coworker undermining .42* (.05) .44* (.05)
Level 2 variable
Exhaustion .02 (.05) .02 (.04)
Ethical leadership .02 (.04) .02 (.04)
Exhaustion × Ethical leadership −.07* (.03) −.07* (.03)
Level 2 controls
Negative affect .19* (.06) .20 (.15) .17* (.07) .19* (.06) .19 (.14) .13* (.06)
Positive affect −.01 (.07) −.23 (.15) −.12 (.08) −.01 (.07) −.22 (.15) −.11 (.06)
Pseudo R2 .17 .29 .04 .18 .29 .33
Note: N = 1,417 observations; 151 participants. SD = the Bayes posterior standard deviation; SBLM = supervisor bottom line mentality. SBLM was centered at
individuals’ means. Pseudo R2 refers to the reduction in the variance of the outcome variable compared with a null model (Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992; Tepper e al., 2018).
*p < .05 (two tailed)
35
APPENDIX B
Table B1
Study 1 Multilevel Analyses Results Without Control Variables
Coworker
Level 1 Predictor variables

SBLM .19** (.04) .10* (.04) .05* (.02)
Anxiety .39** (.06)
Exhaustion .07* (.03)
bottom-line mentality. SBLM was centered at individuals’ means.
*p < .05
Table B2
Coworker

SBLM .14* (.06) .20** (.04) .04 (.02)
Anxiety .28** (.06)
Level 2 variable
Exhaustion × Ethical leadership −.10* (.03)
*p < .05
Table B3
Coworker
Level 1 Predictor variable

SBLM .09* (.05) .08* (.04) .00 (.02)
Anxiety .49** (.06)
Level 2 variable
Exhaustion × Ethical leadership −.08** (.04)
*p < .05
APPENDIX C
Table C1
Multilevel Analyses Results for Predictors of Supervisor Bottom-Line Mentality
Model 1
Supervisor-
Rated Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Coworker
BLM SBLM b Anxiety Anxiety Exhaustion Undermining
Variable γ SD γ SD γ SD γ SD γ SD γ SD

Supervisor-rated leader .23** (.04) .31** (.04) −.06 (.04) .04 (.04) .02 (.03)
BLM
Supervisor-rated job .17** (.04) .05 (.04) .16** (.05) .13 (.04) .01 (.03)
demands
Supervisor-rated .08* (.03) .04 (.04) −.02 (.05) −.04 (.04) −.01 (.03)
competition
Supervisor-rated BLM .36** (.05) −.05 (.05) −.07 (.06)
SBLMa .10** (.04) .11* (.04)
Anxiety .52** (.06)
Anxiety .09** (.03)
Coworker undermining .05 (.03)
Level 2 variable
Ethical leadership −.25** (.09)
Exhaustion × Ethical −.07* (.04)
Leadership
Level 2 controls
Negative affect .33** (.07) .35** (.19) .90** (.05) .90** (.05) .72** (.07) .80** (.08)
Positive affect .05 (.09) −.03 (.10) .18** (.06) .19** (.06) −.09 (.08) .25** (.07)
Note: Results for testing Research Question 1. Models 1 and 2: N = 1,539 observations; 155 participants. Models 3
and 4: N = 1,567 observations; 157 participants. SD = the Bayes posterior standard deviation; BLM = bottom-line
mentality; SBLM = supervisor bottom-line mentality; exhaustion = emotional exhaustion. Supervisor BLM was
centered at individuals’ means; Level 2 (between-person) variables were grand-mean centered.
a
SBLM is reported by focal participants or supervisor’s subordinates.
*p < .05
**p ≤ .01 (two tailed)
APPENDIX D
Table D1
Multilevel Analyses Results Ethical Leadership as a Within-Person Moderator
Coworker

SBLM .09* (.04)
Anxiety .48** (.06)
Ethical leadership −.13** (.05)
Exhaustion × Ethical leadership −.01 (.01)
Anxiety .08** (.03)
Coworker undermining −.01 (.03)
Level 2 controls
Negative affect .91** (.05) .72** (.07) .88** (.06)
Positive affect .20** (.06) −.09 (.08) .19** (.07)
Note: Results for testing Research Question 2. N = 1,467 observations; 155 participants. SD = the Bayes posterior
standard deviation; SBLM = supervisor bottom-line mentality. SBLM was centered at individuals’ means; Level 2
(between-person) variables were grand-mean centered.
*p < .05

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Oh the Anxiety! The Anxiety of Supervisor

Supplemental material for this article is available at http://jom.sagepub.com/supplemental

Keywords: supervisor bottom-line mentality; anxiety; exhaustion; undermining; ethical

A number of business scandals provide evidence of supervisors prioritizing proﬁtability

SBLM variability. Anxiety theory suggests the consideration of anxiety as a mechanism,

Hypothesis 1: SBLM will vary within supervisors over time.

Accounting for the Consequences of SBLM Variability for Employees

SBLM Variability and Employee Anxiety and Exhaustion

Note: Ethical leadership is examined only in Studies 2 and 3.

Hypothesis 2: Within-person, SBLM will be positively related to anxiety.

486). Anxiety is an intrusive, self-deprecating experience that consumes energy because of

SBLM Variability and the Indirect Effects on Coworker Undermining

The Cross-Level Moderating Inﬂuence of Ethical Leadership

emphasis on ethics in day-to-day interactions with employees. A lack of continued emphasis

Results and Discussion

Intercept .89* (.31) 1.72** (.32) 1.20 (.28)

Results and Discussion

between-individual variables were grand-mean centered, and the within-individual predictor

Intercept 1.57** (.06) 2.90** (.10) 1.25** (.17)

as adequate evidence of signiﬁcance of the conditional indirect effects within a serial

Research Question 1: Is SBLM variability inﬂuenced by various factors within supervi-

Research Question 2: Does within-person ethical leadership perceptions moderate the

Sample and Procedure

Results and Discussion

Intercept −.55* (.26) 1.45* (.34) −.96* (.31)

Limitations and Future Research Directions

Four-Item Coworker Undermining Measure Seven-Item Coworker Undermining Measure

Level 1 Predictor variables

Level 1 predictor variable

Level 1 Predictor variable

Level 1 predictor variable

Level 1 predictor variable

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Intercept 1.57 (.06) 2.90 (.10) 1.25** (.17)