High Leader-member Exchange Research Articles

The Effect Of Leader Member Exchange On Individual Performance Of Logistics Employees And The Mediating Role Of Career Satisfaction

Employees’ individual performance is influenced by many factors, and empirical studies in various cultures and sectors are conducted on this subject. There is a need for empirical research to identify the predictive factors of individual performance in different cultures and sectors. In this study, the factors affecting employees’ individual performance were examined based on Social Exchange Theory. In this context, the purpose of the study is to reveal the effect of logistics sector employees’ perceptions of leader-member exchange on performance outcomes and to examine the mediating effect of career satisfaction on this relationship. Quantitative research methods have been used in the study. It was conducted through a survey on a sample of logistics sector employees (n= 409) operating in Türkiye. In the study, it was determined that employees with high leader-member exchange have high career satisfaction and individual performance, and career satisfaction has a partial mediating effect on the effect of LMX on individual performance. Accordingly, the effects of LMX on individual performance can be enhanced mainly by improving career satisfaction. Since career satisfaction ensures that employees are satisfied not only with their jobs but also with their career development, the positive impact of this satisfaction on individual performance is significant. Therefore, it is critical for the success of the organization that logistics firm managers give importance to the career development of their employees and be supportive in this regard. Limitations, future research directions and theoretical and practical implications are discussed at the end of the study.

The contribution of leader–member exchange (LMX) to organisational sustainable development: Results and implications from Kenyan public universities study

We aimed to establish the contribution of leader–member exchange (LMX) to sustainable development of public universities in the emerging country of Kenya. The participants were 320 employees from public universities in Kenya (female = 43.1%; middle level managers = 47.8%, top leadership team = 26.6%; mean year of service = 13 years, SD = 3.6 years). They completed measures on LMX, innovative work behaviour, organisational engagement and sustainable development. Following structural equation modelling, findings showed that high quality LMX characteristics exhibited between leaders and followers significantly contributed to organisational sustainable development. High quality LMX also significantly contributed to employee organisation engagement. The results further revealed that innovative work behaviour was positively associated with sustainable development in that high LMX relationships between leaders and their followers inspired workers to be more innovative in their jobs. Our findings suggest a need for emerging countries’ public universities to incorporate LMX in their policies and procedures for their sustainability. The results indicate that high LMX is a key factor for driving successful public universities in developing country settings.

Leading Knowledge Exploration and Exploitation in Schools: The Moderating Role of Teachers’ Open Innovation Mindset

Aim: The purpose of this paper is to identify teacher-level latent profiles of open innovation mindset and explore how these profiles moderate the effects of leader-member exchange on their exploitation and exploration activities. We also aim to investigate the indirect effects of principal transformational leadership on exploration activities via leader-member exchange. Research Design: Using a sample of 3,075 teachers working in 261 schools from 12 provinces across Türkiye, this study, first, employed a moderation analysis with latent profiles variables and, second, conduct a two-level structural equation model. Findings: Latent profile analysis produced three types of teacher mindset profiles: growth, average, and fixed. Findings indicate the quality of the dyadic exchange with the school principal did not influence engagement in exploitation activities of teachers with a growth mindset, whereas it contributed to the exploration activities of those teachers. Our results showed that when teachers perceived that their principal exhibited a higher level of transformational leadership behavior, they were more likely to have a higher leader-member exchange, which in turn increased the teachers’ exploration behavior. Implications: This study highlights both exploitative and explorative activities are facilitated by high-quality work-related social processes within the school, and we need to recognize affective and relational contexts in the schools, as they are primarily social institutions.

The development of blended friendship in high leader-member exchange relationships: Mechanisms and consequences of a relational shift

Confusion persists about the overlap between high-quality leader-member exchange (LMX) relationships and personal friendships between a leader and a subordinate. How these notions differ, shift from one to the other, and what their consequences are remain unclear. This paper proposes a framework that examines the fundamental differences between high LMX relationships and friendships. We argue that when high LMX relationships shift toward friendships, they in fact shift toward blended friendships, where the leader and the subordinate concomitantly enact two distinct roles, worker and friend. These blended friendships are qualitatively different from high LMX and from friendships. We detail the process by which blended friendship develops in the context of high LMX relationships and identify the key variables and mechanisms that drive the emergence of such blended friendships. We then examine how subordinates’ well-being, job engagement, performance, and turnover may simultaneously benefit and suffer from their involvement in a blended friendship.

The cost of protecting resources: a cross-sectional study on the interaction between LMX and role ambiguity on work addiction and burnout among Canadian first-level healthcare managers.

Using the conservation of resources (COR) theory, our study explores the interaction between role ambiguity and leader-member exchange (LMX) quality on burnout using work addiction as a mediator among Canadian first-level healthcare managers. Cross-sectional data was collected among 165 first-level managers working in healthcare with the support of interprofessional associations in Canada. Linear regression was used to test the presented hypotheses. Work addiction fully mediated the positive relationship between role ambiguity and burnout among first-level managers. In addition, high LMX exacerbated both the direct and indirect effects of role ambiguity. Our study contributes by identifying role ambiguity as a context under which LMX can have adverse effects for first-level managers in healthcare. Moreover, work addiction acted as a mediator, theorized as a risky resource investment which depletes managers' resources. Having a good relationship with their team further entices managers to develop a pathological relationship with their work to protect its members, which in turn is related to higher levels of burnout.

Waiting for the Boss's Blue Checkmark to Appear: Supervisor's Attentiveness, Negative Emotions, and Work Engagement During Instant Messaging at Work.

In organizations, employees actively manage the immediacy with which they respond to instant messages to cope with mobile connectivity overload caused by continuous interactions. This research conducted a naturalistic observational design to examine real-life mobile connectivity behaviors in organizations and measure their occupational well-being consequences. Specifically, we focused on the use of a feature (WhatsApp's blue checkmark) that enables senders to know precisely when recipients choose to read their messages. In the study, 192 participants sent important messages to their supervisors through WhatsApp. The study used Confirmatory Factor Analysis and moderation analyses to explore the relationship between supervisors' attentiveness (indicated by WhatsApp's blue checkmark), negative emotions, work engagement, and the quality of leader-member exchange (LMX). Drawing on the perspective of 'digital well-being,' we investigated the role of relationship quality between supervisors and employees (LMX) as a moderator. We hypothesized that relationship quality would buffer against negative feelings and decreased work engagement when employees await a response after sending important messages to their supervisors. Indeed, supervisor's inattentiveness was positively correlated with negative affect and negatively correlated with employee engagement. Surprisingly, we found that employees with strong relationship quality (high LMX) with their supervisors experienced lower work engagement while waiting for an indication that their message had been read. These results suggest that timely indications of message read by supervisors play an important role in mitigating negative emotions and fostering higher work engagement among employees.

Co-frequency resonance: the effect of leader-follower psychological capital congruence on employee innovative behaviour

ABSTRACT While prior studies have indicated a positive correlation between followers’ psychological capital (PsyCap) and their innovative behaviour, there has been limited exploration of the congruence effect of leader and follower PsyCap in predicting innovative behaviour. Overlooking the congruence effect of leader-follower PsyCap may lead to an overstatement of the benefits of followers’ PsyCap in shaping innovative behaviour, resulting in an inaccurate understanding of its antecedents. To address this gap, this study draws on the person-environment fit theory, specifically the person-supervisor fit theory, to examine how congruence and incongruence of PsyCap between leaders and followers influence innovative behaviour. Polynomial regression analyses were conducted with data from 55 leaders and 264 followers in China. The results demonstrate that the higher alignment of PsyCap levels between leaders and followers, the better the leader-member exchange (LMX). Moreover, a high level of leader-follower PsyCap congruence is associated with higher LMX than a low level of congruence. In cases of incongruence, the high-low combination of leaders’ PsyCap and followers’ PsyCap is associated with lower LMX than a low-high combination. Finally, LMX mediates the relationship between leader-follower PsyCap congruence/incongruence and follower innovative behaviour. These findings emphasise the importance of congruence in leader and follower PsyCap for promoting innovative behaviour. Implications for theory and implementation are discussed.

Leader-Member Exchange, Supervisor Identification, and Unethical Pro-Supervisor Behavior: The Mediating Role of Supervisor Identification

Unethical pro-supervisor behaviors (UPSB) are unethical acts that employees engage in to benefit their supervisors. Although Unethical pro-organizational behaviors (UPB) have received great attention from scholars in the field of organizational behavior, the literature has paid insufficient attention to the impact of leader-member exchange (LMX) on UPSB and the underlying mechanisms of this association. This study has examined the relationship between LMX, supervisor identification, and UPSB. Drawing on social exchange theory and social identity theory, we argue that LMX affects employees’ UPSB via the mediation of supervisor identification. Using two-wave time-lagged data from 185 employees in South Korea, we found that LMX was significantly and positively related to supervisor identification, and supervisor identification was significantly and positively related to UPSB. In addition, the indirect effect of LMX on UPSB via supervisor identification was significant and positive. LMX is associated with many positive outcomes, but our findings show that high LMX may also increase employees’ unethical behaviors to benefit their supervisors via high supervisor identification. These results contribute to the literature on LMX, UPSB by identifying the path between them.

사회복지사의 직무스트레스가 직무만족에 미치는 영향

The purpose of this study is to verify the moderating effect of the leader-member exchange relationship (LMX) in the relationship between job stress and job satisfaction in social workers. To this end, 500 social workers in the Jeonbuk area were surveyed using a self-administered questionnaire, and data from 240 of the 291 responses received were analyzed using the SPSS 25.0 statistical program. As a result, first, it was found that job stress of social workers had a negative (-) effect on job satisfaction. Second, the higher the leader-member exchange relationship (LMX), the higher the positive (+) effect on job satisfaction. Third, it was found that the negative (-) effect of job stress on job satisfaction changed more significantly in the group with a high leader-member exchange (LMX) of social workers than in the group with a low leader-member exchange (LMX). It was verified that it was effective. Based on the results of this study, practical alternatives were proposed to improve social workers' ability to cope with job stress and promote leader-member exchange (LMX) to improve job satisfaction. This study has significance in that it has been verified through a multifaceted review of social workers' job stress, job satisfaction, and leader-member exchange relationship (LMX).

The Impact of Leader Member Exchange (LMX) Theory on Employee Turnover Intention: An empirical study of employees at the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah in Saudi Arabia

The purpose of this research paper is to investigate the impact of LMX on the turnover intention of employees. Research from both Western and Arabic contexts has shown that the quality of LMX relationships has a positive impact on turnover intentions i.e., the quality of LMX in an organization may encourage employees to stay longer with the current organization and reduce turnover intention. This research study used a quantitative methodology, distributing questionnaire surveys as the research tool to a sample of 297 participants. The participants were all employees at the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah in Saudi Arabia, or who worked for associated companies at the Hajj and Umrah information center. The quantitative survey data was then analyzed to find the relationship between levels of LMX and employee turnover intention in this context. The findings show that high quality LMX relationships were positively correlated with employee decisions to stay with the organization, and indicate that well-functioning LMX may play a part in reducing employee turnover intention at the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah and its connected organizations.

Predicting the link between employees' task performance and propensity to take charge: the role of family supportive supervision and LMX

PurposeThe authors examined how employee led exchange benefits the organizations. Specifically, the authors aim at investigating the mediating role of family supportive supervision between employee performance and taking charge behavior. The authors further examined leader-member exchange (LMX) as a boundary condition between employee performance and family supportive supervision.Design/methodology/approachThe authors collected data from 295 employees and their supervisors working in various public sector organizations of Pakistan on a convenience basis. Specifically, data on family supportive supervision and LMX was collected from employees; whereas, data on employee performance and taking charge was collected from their supervisors between June–September 2021.FindingsThe statistical analysis reveals that high-performing employees are reciprocated by the high family-supportive supervision which increases their work-life balance and they further reciprocate by showing a propensity to take charge. In addition, LMX is noted to strengthen the association between employees' performance and family supportive supervision.Practical implicationsThis study explains how managers can extend the stream of employees' performance by highlighting the role of family-supportive supervision and LMX. The managers through high LMX and provision of family-supportive supervision can boost the employees' outcomes from job performance to extra-role performance (i.e. taking charge).Originality/valueThis study adds value to the existing body of knowledge by considering performance as a predictor of various organizational-level consequences. Recent studies have considered the negative consequences of employees' performance, while the positive aspect has been called for an investigation.

Compulsory Citizenship Behavior and Deviant Behavior: A Mediated Moderation Model

This study examined how and when compulsory citizenship behaviors (CCB) lead to employees’ workplace deviant behavior (WDB) through psychological entitlement. In addition, this study integrates moral licensing and equity demand perspectives to further understand the psychological entitlement raising process. More specifically, this study verifies the moderating role of leader-member exchange (LMX) on the relationship between CCB and WDB and see if the strong supervisor-subordinate relationship facilitates CCB-workers to increase their entitlement and enhance their willingness to engage in WDB. Based on a sample of 299 elementary school teachers, the results provided supports for the hypotheses. This study found that CCB was directly positive related to WDB. Psychological entitlement was been verified the mediator role of the relationship between CCB and WDB. Moreover, the results also indicated that LMX moderated the mediating effect of psychological entitlement on the relationship between CCB and WDB such that the effect is stronger when LMX is high than when it is low. The effect of CCB on WDB found in this research supports the anticipation that CCB may bring about WDB. Furthermore, by confirming the mediating role of psychological entitlement in the linkage between CCB and WDB, such a finding substantially widens the scope of subordinate behavioral outcomes caused by CCB to include an important but neglected aspect of psychological mechanism, and thus is helpful for us to gain a more complete picture of the negative consequences of CCB. By applying moral licensing theory and focusing on a negative psychological configuration, this research also highlights the self-value inflation and vindictive mentality for explaining the transition process of CCB to WDB. By empirically testing LMX as one moderated mediating mechanism that underlies the influence of CCB on WDB, this research establishes an important theoretical perspective for explaining why high LMX employees are more likely to exhibit WDB, thereby contributing to understanding the “black box” of the transforming processes from CCB to WDB.

Façade Creation and Workplace Bullying: A Mediated Moderation Model

This study examines the buffering role of a psychological contract breach in the process leading from façade creation (i.e., suppressing one’s own values and pretending to hold organization values) to workplace bullying through leader–member exchange (LMX). This study predicts that façade creation, particularly when the level of psychological contract breach is high, produces high LMX, which reduces bullying in the workplace. In total, 302 employee–employer dyads (265 males, 37 females; average age 46.07 years) from a large bank in Taiwan were surveyed. Surveys were conducted at two time points for employees and at one time point for their employers who volunteered. The findings of this study found significant relationships between facades of conformity and workplace bullying. This study further found that LMX mediates the relationship between façade creation and workplace bullying and demonstrate that a perceived breach of psychological contract moderates this mediating pathway. Strong psychological contract breach increases the relationship between façade creation and LMX. A time-lag design of two time periods and two different sources (i.e., employers and employees) were utilized to diminish common method variables (CMV) in this study. Implications and directions for future study are discussed.

Complex Cause-Effect Relationships of Social Capital, Leader-Member Exchange, and Safety Behavior of Workers in Small-Medium Construction Firms and the Moderating Role of Age

Due to workers’ vulnerability in construction sites, workplace safety has become of particular interest, and the current literature offers myriad approaches to dealing with it. From a social and organizational lens, this study explores an empirical model that integrates the dimensions of social capital theory (SCT) and leader-member exchange (LMX) in modelling the safety behavior of construction workers, particularly relevant in small-medium construction firms. The data were collected from 232 construction workers in the central Philippines. The responses were analyzed using partial least squares—structural equation modeling to investigate five hypothesized paths, including the influence of SCT dimensions (e.g., structural, relational, and cognitive) on LMX and LMX on safety behaviors (i.e., compliance and participation). We also tested whether the relationship of LMX to safety behaviors is moderated by age. The results indicate that the three dimensions of SCT have a significant and direct influence on LMX. In addition, LMX directly affects safety participation but does not significantly affect safety compliance. Particularly in small and medium construction firms with relatively flat organizational structures and supervisors displaying diverse roles, these findings suggest that the social relationships of workers tend to promote their trust and professional respect for supervisors who can leverage their position to encourage them participate in safety initiatives. On the other hand, age negatively influences the relationship of LMX to safety participation, indicating that younger workers tend to better translate high quality LMX into initiatives that promote overall workplace safety. Our findings offer the first evidence of the positive relationship between SCT and LMX in advancing the safety participation of construction workers. From these insights, practical inputs to the design of relevant measures and future research works are outlined.

Who Can Afford to Voice? Examining the Role of Resources in the Employee Voice Process

Work, money, and the economy are the most common stressors for adults in the United States (APA, 2020a, 2020b). Financial stressors may highlight the importance and precarity of work—motivating employees to avoid risky behaviors, even those that may be necessary or beneficial. Thus, it is valuable to explore how financial stress may increase barriers for positive risk-taking in the workplace. Grounded in Conservation of Resources theory (Hobfoll, 1989), the current study investigated how financial stress and leader-member-exchange (LMX) affects employee behavior at work. We examined how financial stress impacts a critical, desired form of risk-taking at work: voice, through perceived riskiness of voice. Further, we consider the potential role of leadership protective resources (i.e., high-quality LMX), such that high LMX may buffer the negative association between perceived riskiness and voice. The study utilized a multi-source and multi-time point design to understand the effects of employees' financial stress on their voice behaviors at work. Results demonstrated that financial stress impacts employees' perceptions of voice riskiness, and that perceived riskiness of voice influences voice outcomes. This work offers both theoretical integration and expansion to the voice and financial stress domains, and offers actionable practical implications for organizational leaders and decision-makers.

Giving a Good Relationship and Taking Surrogacy: Exploring the Effects for Team Performance

The leader-member exchange (LMX) literature proposes that leaders tend to differentiate the quality of relationships among their followers, but it remains unclear how establishing high LMX with some followers may facilitate a positive image of a leader across all team members, and ultimately, a superior team performance. Drawing on data from a three-wave study with 249 healthcare professionals (physicians and nurses), we explore the impact of LMX on employees’ surrogate behaviors and, in turn, team performance. Specifically, using a social exchange perspective, we postulate that high-quality LMX relationships make employees especially motivated to build support for the leader through behaviors that reflect surrogacy (i.e., promoting the leader, defending the leader, and/or modeling followership) as a form of reciprocity. By managing others’ impressions of the leader, surrogate behaviors are able to eliminate many of the barriers that might hinder team performance. Our findings corroborate our theoretical model showing that LMX increases employees’ surrogate behaviors and, in turn, team performance. Moreover, the results indicate that the amount of prestige within the team is an important boundary condition of the LMX-surrogacy relationship, such that the effects of LMX on surrogate behaviors are stronger when employees have higher levels of prestige in their teams. Overall, the study provides evidence that the social facilitation and impression management effects of surrogacy phenomenon, enacted as a result of the “give and take” nature of LMX relationships, is associated to team performance.

How and When Power Distance Oriented Leaders Shape Team Leader-member Exchange Configurations

It is an untapped question “How do power distance-oriented leaders differentiate their relationships among the followers?” Integrating role theory and a configurational approach, the present research seeks to examine the effect of leader power distance orientation on different leader-member exchange (LMX) configurations and the relevant boundary conditions. With two-wave data among 645 employees from 119 groups, we tested our hypotheses using binary logistic regressions. The results suggested that leader power distance orientation is positively related to a solo-status high LMX configurations, but not significantly related to a bimodal or solo-status low LMX configurations. Moreover, we found support for the three-way interactions of leader power distance orientation, education diversity, and team task interdependence on LMX configurations, such that when team education diversity is high and task interdependence is low, the positive relationship of leader power distance orientation with the solo-status high LMX configuration and its negative relationship with the bimodal LMX configuration are significant. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed in detail.

A contemporary view of interpersonal aggression and cyberbullying through ICT: multilevel insights from LMX differentiation

PurposeWhile the rapid adoption of information communication technologies (ICT) in organizations has been linked with a higher risk of cyberbullying, research on the influence of cyberbullying on interpersonal behaviors in the workplace remains limited. By drawing on the ego-depletion theory and the leader-member exchange (LMX) theory, this research investigates how, why and when workplace cyberbullying may trigger interpersonal aggression through ICT.Design/methodology/approachThe authors collected data from 259 employees and 62 supervisors working in large ICT organizations in China through a multi-wave survey. The authors performed multilevel analysis and used hierarchical linear modeling to test the proposed moderated mediation model.FindingsThe results revealed that workplace cyberbullying has a significant and positive influence on interpersonal aggression in the workplace via ego depletion. The authors found that differentiation in LMX processes at group level moderates the indirect relationship between workplace cyberbullying and interpersonal aggression (via ego depletion). Furthermore, the positive indirect effect of workplace cyberbullying was found to be stronger in the presence of a high LMX differentiation condition in comparison to a low LMX differentiation condition.Research limitations/implicationsThe data were collected from Chinese ICT organizations, which may limit the generalization of this study’s findings to other cultural and sectoral contexts.Originality/valueThis paper provides the first step in understanding how, why and when workplace cyberbullying triggers interpersonal aggression by investigating the role of ego depletion as a mediator and LMX differentiation as a boundary condition. This is the first study to empirically examine the relationships between workplace cyberbullying, ego depletion, LMX differentiation and interpersonal aggression in ICT organizations using multi-level modeling.

Dual Leadership in the Matrix: Effects of Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) and Dual-Leader Exchange (DLX) on Role Conflict and Dual Leadership Effectiveness

While strategic management theories have heavily engaged with the reality of matrix organizations, leadership theories that actually focus on the people working within such arrangements are missing. We argue that (a) followers perceive dual leadership effectiveness to be more than the sum of each leader's effectiveness, (b) a core detriment to perceived dual leadership effectiveness is role conflict experienced by the follower, and (c) Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) needs to be theoretically extended to the triadic level to capture the influence of dual leadership. Specifically, followers’ role conflict and leadership effectiveness perceptions are driven not only by how they perceive their LMX relationships with both leaders, but also how they perceive the relationship quality between their leaders (dual leadership exchange, DLX). As such, even though higher LMX is still better than lower LMX, having a similar exchange relationship with both leaders reduces employees’ role conflict and, by extension, heightens dual leadership effectiveness. Additionally, we reason that when employees lack a good relationship with one of the leaders, higher DLX can act as a substitute. We find support for our hypotheses by applying polynomial regression analyses to a dataset of 111 managers from a matrix organization who report to both a regional and business unit leader.

Negative role modeling in hospitality organizations: A social learning perspective on supervisor and subordinate customer-targeted incivility

The present study extends research on workplace incivility by investigating how and when supervisor customer-targeted incivility stimulates that of employees via a social learning mechanism. This study examines a dual-stage moderated mediation model using hotel samples of 409 frontline service employees from 62 service teams. The results demonstrate that employees learn (i.e., observe and imitate) from their supervisor’s customer-targeted uncivil behavior and subsequently engage in this behavior themselves. Employee devaluation of customers plays a mediating role in this social learning process. In addition, this study identifies leader-member exchange (LMX) and perceived service climate as boundary conditions of the observation and imitation processes, respectively. Specifically, employees are more likely to devalue customers when they have a higher LMX with supervisors and show more incivility to customers when perceiving a weaker service climate. Implications, limitations, and future research directions are addressed.