A Study on How Leaders Build Group Identification Through the Lens of LMX Theory

Leader-Member exchange (LMX) literature describes two exchange relationships that are relevant to motivate employees to engage in desirable behaviors toward the group. The first one is LMX, the quality of relationship between a leader and a member. The second one is leader-leader exchange (LLX), the quality of the leaders’ upward exchange relationship with their own supervisors. Thus far, the current state of LMX research attributes the source of the leaders’ influence on members’ motivation to be the leader’s resources that he or she provides to their members. When members receive valuable resources from the leader, they attempt to reciprocate by displaying behaviors that benefits the leader. Moreover, the leaders with high LLX leverage the resources from the upper management to motivate their followers. In this study, I approach LMX and LLX more intrinsically. Members with high LMX and/or LLX are driven intrinsically, because high LMX and LLX lead to their identification with the group. To these members, the group membership is an important part of their selves. Moreover, they perceive the group’s success represents their own success. As such, their behaviors on behalf of the group are ways of enhancing their own self-views through group’s success rather than exchange processes between the leader and the members. To this end, I developed and tested a model contending that LMX and LLX qualities influence members’ status judgments, which, in turn, lead to identification with the group and discretionary behaviors toward the group. Moreover, I tested two moderators on the links between LMX and LLX and members’ status judgments and moderated mediation for the indirect effects of LMX and LLX on members’ identification with the group. Using survey data from 328 employees and their team leaders from 63 teams in South Korea, I discovered that LMX and LLX are significantly related to members’ perceptions of respect, and pride in the group, respectively. Furthermore, the results supported the influence of LMX and LLX on members’ discretionary behaviors by means of status judgments and identification with the group. The results provided support for the moderating role of LMX differentiation on the relationship between LMX and respect: the higher the LMX differentiation becomes, the weaker the link between LMX and respect.