Examining the behavioral aspect of leader-member exchange: The integral roles of leadership style and communication exchange

This study seeks to improve leader-member exchange (LMX) theory by conceptualizing leadership style as an integral part of the LMX process and by explicitly refining LMX into four aspects: work communication exchange, tangible work exchange, social communication exchange, and tangible social exchange. With a sample of 306 mainland Chinese respondents, AMOS’ estimations indicated that the refined LMX model, incorporating transformational and transactional leadership styles, explained 62.2% more variance in total LMX and 77.3% more variance in employee outcomes than did the original LMX model. The results support the treatment of leadership style as an integral part of the LMX process. Findings further indicated that, when tested against each other, communication exchange outweighed tangible exchange, and work exchange outweighed social exchange in predicting positive employee outcomes; work communication was by far the most powerful exchange predictor of employee outcomes. Communication appears to be a vital part of leader-member exchange.