Leader–member exchange differentiation and employee performance: A political perspective

Summary Variability in the quality of relationships between leaders and followers, referred to as leader–member exchange differentiation (LMXD), is common in organizations. In the current study, we propose a political perspective to illustrate the mechanism through which LMXD influences employee task performance and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). Using multisource survey data collected from 304 employees working in 62 work groups, we found that LMXD is an antecedent of group political climate, which in turn influences employee work behaviors. The mediating effects of group political climate remained significant after controlling for supervisory justice climate, which has been considered as the dominant mechanism in prior studies in explaining group‐level outcomes of LMXD. Furthermore, we found moderating effects of group political climate and indirect moderating effects of LMXD via group political climate on the relationships between individual level LMX quality and members' work behaviors. Specifically, the results showed that political climate strengthens the positive relationships between individual level LMX quality and employees' task performance and OCB toward individuals and that LMXD indirectly moderates the relationships through group political climate.