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Security Management
home > Unit 3: supervision
Leader-member exchange (LMX) theory
- supervisor and employee develop behavioral role interdependency: each must offer something the other sees as valuable, and the exchange must be seen as relatively equitable (Gerstner and Day, 1997).
- relationships will vary (because people vary), so supervisor may act differently toward various subordinates
- in "high-LMX dyads" supervisors become leaders, employees given more management responsibility. Relationship of trust.
- in "low-LMX dyads," there are negative reciprocal relationships: workers given less supervisory attention, support, responsibility: get more menial tasks, aren't promoted as quickly. Workers may retaliate by calling in sick, etc., violate rules.
- "Research has shown that an employee's perceptions of fairness of even a singular event (my emphasis) becomes part of the history of experiences that influences that persona's attitudes and behaviors toward the other party (Masterson, Lewis, and Taylor, 2000)
- similarities among their personalities tends to result in better LMX relationships (Bauer and Green, 1996).
- tends to occur early in supervisor/employee relationship, and may not change, and variables such as age and gender may affect it (Settoon, Bennett, and Liden, 1996; Yuki, 1998).
- doesn't address issue of balance of high and low-quality LMX relationships should have to be effective: for example, should supervisor try to create a few high-quality dyads, or improve overall quality with lower ones (Sherony and Green, 2002)
- supervisor/employee relationship may also affect employee-employee ones, including conflicts (Sherony and Green, 2002).
- common-denominator: good supervisors must be committed to organization objectives and goals -- and to employees. Employees must develop commitment to the organization: increases chance they'll stay and dedicate selves to it.
- Workers may have varying commitments:
to coworkers, teams of workers, superiors, subordinates, customers,
etc., and their bases of commitment -- the motives that lead
to attachment, may also vary, and employee can have a variety
of motivations:
base of commitment description affective worker's emotional commitment continuance exchange-based: leaving would cost worker too much normative desire to stay is based on duty, etc. -- right thing to do.
supervisors must work to strengthen these commitments: "research has confirmed that measures of supervisory support are positively correlated with one's level of commitment (Do, Price, and Mueller 1997) and that feelings of commitment are important if changes in the organization are to be implemented (Herschcovitz and Meyer, 2002)