Examining the Relationship Between Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) and Subordinate Achievement Goal Orientations

ABSTRACT

To date, organizational behavior and leadership scholars have placed a considerable amount of effort into understanding and expanding upon the LMX framework. One way that scholars have attempted to expand upon the LMX framework has been to examine whether certain moderators qualify the LMX process. This manuscript proposes that organizational members’ achievement orientations (i.e. mastery, performance-avoidance, and performance-approach orientations) constitute one likely set of member characteristics that qualify the effects of LMX. In testing this general proposition, a sample (N = 818) of organizational members from myriad organizations were sampled. Regression analyses suggested that those with mastery orientations perform exceedingly better in high-quality LMX relationships, whereas those with performance-approach orientations perform exceedingly worse. Alternatively, the effects of performance-avoidance orientations are direct and negative. Implications, future directions, and limitations are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Organizational relationships
• leader-member exchange
• achievement orientations
• performance
• organizational commitment

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10510974.2023.2282221

Notes

1. Although the LMX construct is not thought of usually as a communication construct, a substantial amount of evidence and theorizing allows for such claims. Theoretically, LMX is indicative of social exchange processes, which means that communicative behaviors are rooted strongly in this construct. Perhaps unsurprisingly, empirical evidence has shown that numerous communication behaviors form a critical part of this theoretical construct (e.g., see Fairhurst, 1993; Jian et al., 2014; Manata & Grubb, 2022).

2. This investigation forms a part of a larger project, which is described in Manata (2023).

3. Subjects were compensated by Qualtrics and their panel providers.

4. In a CFA, item invalidity may be inferred when items produce large residuals. Large residuals can be produced for various reasons (e.g., non-linear item-characteristic curves), but two primary reasons include heterogeneous item content and shared specific factor variance (i.e., confounding specific factors). In either case, the item(s) in question are not homogeneous with the other items in their respective factor cluster (i.e., subjects are responding to items for reasons unrelated to the main construct of interest). For this reason, they were removed.

5. This measurement model conformed to a strict unidimensional solution. Specifically, items were only predicted by one factor (i.e., no cross-loadings were stipulated), and item error variances were not correlated.

6. An additional measurement model was investigated in which all the first-order factors were made to load on one factor, which provided a poor representation of the data, χ²(594) = 14,141, CFI = .40, SRMR = .23. As others have noted, this test provides some evidence against the hypothesis that there is a confounding method factor driving item responses (see Podsakoff et al., 2003).

7. Age (β = −.14, p < .05), being white (β = −.09, p < .05), and education (β = .08, p < .05) had significant effects on unproductivity. No other significant effects were produced.

8. All variance inflation factors were below 2.5 (see Cohen et al., 2014).

9. Age (β = .09, p < .05) and being a female (β = .12, p < .05) had significant effects on commitment. No other significant effects were produced.

10. All variance inflation factors were below 2.5 (see Cohen et al., 2014).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brian Manata

Brian Manata (PhD Michigan State University, 2015) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA. His research focuses on organizational behavior, especially as it pertains to groups and teams. His work has appeared in Management Communication Quarterly, Project Management Journal, International Journal of Project Management, and Human Communication Research.