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

This study uses field data from a realty company in Taiwan to investigate the relationship between goal consensus (involving both regional managers and branch managers), branch offices’ prior sales performance, and regional managers’ resource allocation preferences. Additionally, this study examines whether a branch office’s previous sales performance affects the goal consensus–resource allocation preference relation. The results show that the greater the goal consensus between regional and branch managers, the more likely a branch office is to receive advertising funding, and the better the previous sales performance of a branch office, the more likely a regional manager deploys senior sales agents to the branch office. However, the branch offices’ prior sales performance does not have any moderating effect on the goal consensus–resource allocation preference relation. Ultimately, our findings suggest that a supervisor’s decision to distribute resources to a subordinate is affected both by his/her preferred goal and by the subordinate’s past contributions.