“Seeing Eye to Eye” About Our Relationship Is Good for Us and Everyone Else: An Examination of LMX Agreement and Views of Fair Treatment

Abstract

Research across a wide array of fields has established the organizational importance of fair treatment and why it should be a primary consideration of supervisors. As such, scholars have begun to unpack characteristics of organizations, supervisors, and employees that may promote fair treatment. Although this literature has been informative and is growing, we know little about how the dyadic interplay between leaders and followers—and, in particular, how both parties’ perceptions of that joint interplay—may facilitate or hinder views of fairness. The lack of clarity on this phenomenon is particularly problematic when one considers that there are several features of dyadic relationships within work units that—by their nature—work against the facilitation of fair treatment (e.g., supervisors inevitably provide some employees more/less information, support, and attention than others because they cannot establish high-quality exchange relationships with every employee). Drawing from common threads found in theories of fairness and role theory surrounding expectation alignment, we posit that the key to facilitating views of fair treatment at any level of relationship quality is for supervisors and employees to “see eye to eye” on LMX quality-LMX agreement. We further theorize that each party’s views of fair treatment flowing from LMX agreement (within the dyad) will ultimately result in leaders being more efficacious about their fairness-related abilities and employees performing at higher levels (beyond the dyad). Results of three field studies (and two supplemental preregistered experiments) largely support our theorizing and further show that fair treatment can result in a self-reinforcing positive fairness-efficacy spiral for supervisors. Funding: This research was partially funded by the University of Georgia's Institute for Leadership Advancement Research Scholar Award. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.15475 .