We’re in This Together: A Dyadic Approach to Organizational Cynicism, Leader-Member Exchange, and Performance

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite renewed interest in organizational cynicism, we still know little about how it affects relationships with others in the organization. Using a shared reality framework, we apply the common-fate model to explore how supervisor and subordinate’s organizational cynicism operates in tandem to influence the quality of leader-member exchange (LMX) at the dyad level and affects job performance ratings. Across 199 supervisor-subordinate dyads, we find that dyad-level organizational cynicism has negative effects on dyad-level LMX, impacting supervisory perceptions of subordinate performance. Expanding our understanding of organizational cynicism beyond the individual and incorporating methodology from the interpersonal relationships literature into the study of LMX, our results suggest that to understand the impact of cynicism in the workplace, we need to move beyond the study of subordinates alone.