领导-成员交换关系差异化与员工公平感:集体主义导向的调节作用

Leader-Member Exchange Differentiation and Employee Justice:Moderating Role of Collectivistic Orientation

本文以63个工作团队的315名员工为研究对象,考察了领导—成员交换关系差异化对员工公平感的影响以及员工集体主义导向的调节作用。多层次分析结果表明:在控制了员工自身与领导的交换关系质量后,关系差异化对员工分配和程序公平感均有显著负向影响;员工集体主义导向在关系差异化与分配公平感关系中有显著调节作用,即关系差异化对分配公平感的负向影响对高集体主义导向的员工来说更加明显;员工集体主义导向在关系差异化与程序公平感关系中无显著调节作用。研究发现,领导—成员交换关系差异化具有一定的"阴暗面",表现为领导对不同成员的亲疏有别和差异对待会损害员工公平感,尤其是对高集体主义导向的员工来说,这种消极作用更明显。

The past 30 years witnessed a growing interest in leader-member exchange （LMX）research. Existing literature has demonstrated the importance of LMX as a predictor of employee＇s attitude and behavior at dyadic level. Nevertheless, different from leadership theories adopting average leadership style approach, LMX theory claimed that leaders developed differentiated exchange relationships with different followers, suggesting that LMX differentiation （DLMX） was the core element of LMX theory. However, less study investigated the implications of this kind of differentiation. Recently, research attention has shifted toward understanding the implications of high- and low-quality exchanges that coexist within the same work group. A handful of studies found that DLMX was detrimen- tal to the team and team members. As for the underlying reasons, they used organizational justice theory as frame- work and stated that leader＇s differentiated treatment toward employees was inconsistent with justice principle, indu- cing negative consequences at both individual and team level. However so far, few studies investigated this rationale. Indeed, evidence has illustrated some important limits to this rationale in that because of their individual difference employees may not respond to DLMX with the same justice perception. In spite of this, we are aware of little such consideration. In the current study, we examined the effect of DLMX on team member＇s distributive and procedural justice and the moderating role of member＇s collectivistic orientation. By incorporating LMX theory into organizational justice theory, we hypothesized that leader＇s differential treatment toward members broke the rule of equality, the most im- portant factor that determines individual＇s evaluation of distributive justice with team context. Meanwhile, the fact that leaders build differentiate exchange relationships with members was opposite to the rule of consistency, bias suppression, and representatives, decreasing team member＇s procedural justice. Furthermore, according to prior state- ment,individuals higher and lower in collectivistic orientation possessed different resource allocation preference that high collectivistic-oriented team members were more sensitive to equality rule so that they would be more likely to respond to DLMX with lower distributive justice. Whereas, because low collectivistic-oriented members cared more about equity rule, which is not inconsistent with leader＇s differential treatment, their distributive perception would be less influenced by DLMX. Regarding procedural justice, given few study has been paid to collectivistic orientation and procedural justice preference, we only proposed an exploratory research question concerning collectivistic orientation＇s moderating role in the DLMX- procedural justice relationship. We examined these questions using 315 employees within 63 teams. Consistent with hypothesis, results indica- ted that DLMX negatively affected member＇s distributive and procedural justice. The moderating effect was also found that DLMX was more negatively associated with distributive justice for members higher in collectivistic orien- tation. This study contributes to the literature in two ways. First, we illustrated the dark side of leader-member ex- change by demonstrating that DLMX was detrimental to both distributive and procedural justice, providing empirical support for the role of DLMX. Second, the moderating role of team member＇s collectivistic orientation suggested there is a contextual factor that influences DLMX-justice linkage. In general, this study responded to the research calls that the relationship and the boundary condition between DLMX and justice should be addressed.