The Power and Pitfalls of Narrow Thinking with Rebecca Greenbaum
This episode of The Leadership Initiative explores how “bottom-line mentality” and narrow thinking shape leadership behavior, revealing how an intense focus on results can both enhance performance and lead to ethical blind spots. Rebecca Greenbaum unpacks the balance leaders must strike between achieving outcomes and maintaining ethical, multidimensional decision-making in today’s organizations.
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Guest, Rebecca Greenbaum:
"...one of my colleagues kept saying, why do you call it "bottom line" mentality? Because in his mind, of course, corporations are gonna care about the bottom line. And so that's a good thing...so to him, the name wasn't resonating in terms of it being potentially dysfunctional.
But actually me and my coauthors, those of us who really study this the most, we actually think that this way of thinking, especially as an activated cognitive state is more of a tool that people use in order to secure the outcomes that are important to them...So, it's not all dysfunction. It can be functional if used in the short term. I see it with myself all the time...
...But if this is your only mentality and that's the way that you always operate in an organization, it can lead to unethical conduct. But yeah, I mean, I think it does resonate with people…I'm very, very interested in this idea of narrow thinking and how that narrow thinking is both helpful, which I think is really important, but then extremely dysfunctional in some instances too. So, you can try to balance that..."
Rebecca L. Greenbaum received her bachelor’s degree in Finance from the Warrington College of Business Administration, the University of Florida, in 2003. She then worked for two years as a Claims Adjuster for a rapidly-growing insurance company. She returned to school and received her Master’s in Human Resources Management from the University of Central Florida in 2008, followed by her PhD in Business Administration in 2009. In 2009, Rebecca also began her first academic appointment in the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University. In 2018, Rebecca was promoted to Professor of Human Resources Management in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
