Professor Olga Epitropaki olga.epitropaki2@durham.ac.uk
Professor
Professor Olga Epitropaki olga.epitropaki2@durham.ac.uk
Professor
Anders Friis Marstand
Beatrice van der Heijden
Nikos Bozionelos
Nikolaos Mylonopoulos
Claudia M. van der Heijde
Dora Scholarios
Aslaug Mikkelsen
Izabela Marzec
Piotr Jędrzejowicz
The Indicator Group
Are there career benefits to leaders and followers agreeing about the quality of their leader‐member exchange (LMX) relationship? Is LMX disagreement always detrimental for a follower's career? Can the examination of LMX agreement as a substantive variable help us cast new light on some of the inconclusive findings of past research on LMX and career outcomes? These questions motivate our research. Using theories of social exchange and sponsorship, and responses from 967 leader–follower dyads of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) professionals in seven European countries, we examined the role of LMX agreement on subjective and objective career outcomes. After conducting polynomial regression combined with response surface analysis, we found that both follower‐rated and leader‐rated employability were higher when the leader agreed with the follower at a high level of LMX (versus a low level of LMX). In case of disagreement, strong support was found for leader‐rated employability being higher when the leader's perceptions of LMX exceeded those of their follower. Furthermore, follower‐rated employability was found to mediate the relationship between LMX (dis)agreement and perceived career success, promotions, salary, and bonuses. Support was also found for the mediating role of leader‐rated employability in the case of perceived career success, promotions, and salary but not for bonuses. Our findings highlight the importance of LMX (dis)agreement for career outcomes and further point to the possibility of employability offering an alternative explanation for the mixed findings of past LMX‐career research.
Epitropaki, O., Marstand, A. F., van der Heijden, B., Bozionelos, N., Mylonopoulos, N., van der Heijde, C. M., Scholarios, D., Mikkelsen, A., Marzec, I., Jędrzejowicz, P., & Group, T. I. (2021). What are the career implications of ‘seeing eye to eye’? Examining the role of leader-member exchange (LMX) agreement on employability and career outcomes. Personnel Psychology, 74(4), 799-830. https://doi.org/10.1111/peps.12432
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Oct 16, 2020 |
Online Publication Date | Oct 29, 2020 |
Publication Date | 2021 |
Deposit Date | Oct 20, 2020 |
Publicly Available Date | Jan 25, 2022 |
Journal | Personnel Psychology |
Print ISSN | 0031-5826 |
Electronic ISSN | 1744-6570 |
Publisher | Wiley |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 74 |
Issue | 4 |
Pages | 799-830 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1111/peps.12432 |
Public URL | https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1253564 |
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Copyright Statement
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. ©2020 The Authors. Personnel Psychology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC
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