Suzanne Zivnuska

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the mechanisms underlying prevention-focus and promotion-focus, two distinct dimensions of regulatory focus undertaken to fulfill different goals. The authors explore distinct triggers (mindfulness and leader-member exchange (LMX)) and outcomes (role overload and burnout) of each.Design/methodology/approach: The model is grounded in regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997), and is tested with data collected at two times from 206 full-time workers.Findings: Findings revealed mindfulness was positively related to prevention- and promotion-focus, while LMX was positively related to only promotion-focus. Prevention-focus mediated the relationship between mindfulness and role overload and burnout, while promotion-focus mediated the relationship between both mindfulness and LMX and role overload, but not burnout.Originality/value: This research expands the nomological network describing individual and dyadic antecedents to regulatory focus. It also explores the nature of the relationships between regulatory focus and career management consequences, and may allow us to offer useful advice for practicing managers trying to understand employee career trajectories.

Drawing upon similarity-attraction theory (Byrne, 1971), we explore whether deep-level perceived similarity or surface-level actual similarity is more predictive of agreement between supervisors and subordinates about the quality of their relationship (LMX). To examine this question we analyze supervisor-subordinate agreement on four antecedents of LMX: one surface-level similarity variable (relational demography), and three deep-level similarity variables (common perspective, receptiveness, and liking). Responses from a matched set of 203 supervisor-subordinate dyads indicate that deeplevel similarity matters more than surface-level similarity since all three deep-level perceptual variables explain variance in LMX agreement above and beyond the variance explained by surface-level actual similarity.