تبادل رهبر - عضو در یک زمینه چینی : سوابق، نقش واسطه ای توانمندسازی روانشناختی و نتایج

This study examines organizational antecedents of LMX and the mediating influence of empowerment on the relationships between LMX and the work outcomes of job satisfaction, task performance and psychological withdrawal behavior. Data were obtained from employees of a listed Chinese company in Guangdong Province, People's Republic of China. The results revealed that: (a) supervisor control of rewards and work unit climate were related to LMX and (b) empowerment fully mediated the relationship between LMX and the work outcomes as hypothesized.

The findings revealed that the two contextual antecedents examined, work unit climate and supervisory control of rewards relate positively to high LMX quality. Work unit climate (with its emphasis on consensus decision-making, cooperation, warmth and friendliness) provides a less threatening context that facilitates initiation of relationship building and the subsequent role-making process between a supervisor and his/her subordinate (Dienesch and Liden, 1986). Such work unit climate is particularly important in a Chinese context where gaining and maintaining face is a significant component of interpersonal relations. Our finding is consistent with previous research (Cogliser and Schriesheim, 2000) reporting a positive work unit climate to be positively related to high LMX quality. The significant relationship between supervisor control of rewards and LMX quality is consistent with previous findings (Cogliser and Schriesheim, 2000 and Green et al., 1996). Much like in the individualistic culture of the US where much of the LMX research has been done, Chinese employees may initiate LMX with supervisors they perceive as controlling resources so as to enhance the favorability of their organizational experiences. Given the centralization of resources in a Chinese context and the pervasiveness of personalism as a basis of decision making, the need to establish a high quality LMX with supervisors may be even more critical in Chinese than US organizational settings. Consistent with our prediction, high LMX quality relates to empowerment (Keller and Dansereau, 1995 and Liden et al., 2000). The leadership techniques of access to information, developmental opportunities, job challenge and decision latitude that high LMX quality subordinates enjoy tend to enhance their cognitions of empowerment. Thus, high LMX quality constitutes an interpersonal or informal source of empowerment which complements the social structural sources of empowerment identified by Spreitzer, 1995a and Spreitzer, 1995b. The findings further revealed that empowerment fully mediated the relationships between high LMX quality and the work outcomes of job satisfaction, task performance and psychological withdrawal behavior. The leadership techniques enjoyed by high LMX quality subordinates enhance their levels of intrinsic motivation or sense of control in the context of work leading to the work outcomes examined. The elements of empowerment converge with the critical psychological states (experienced meaningfulness, experienced responsibility and knowledge of results) that underpin job characteristics theory and are considered intrinsically motivating (Hackman and Oldham, 1980). As an intrinsic source of motivation, the experience of empowerment enhances levels of job satisfaction and task performance, and reduces psychological withdrawal behavior. This study has a number of limitations which must be highlighted. First, the cross-sectional correlational data preclude causal inferences. Future research that uses a longitudinal methodology will be particularly useful in establishing the causal status of the variables examined in this study. Second, with the exception of task performance that was rated by immediate supervisors of respondents, data for the study variables were self-reports, which may have given rise to concerns about common method bias. These concerns should be somewhat lessened by the CFA results that revealed the 10 constructs in this study to be distinct. Third, we were unable to establish the construct validity or the extent to which the empowerment construct elicited a common frame of reference in our Chinese sample as in the American samples used in the extant literature. However, given that some of our findings replicate those reported in earlier studies that used US samples and coupled with the acceptable α reliability for the empowerment measure, measurement equivalence may not be a major issue in our study. Future cross-cultural research on empowerment in a Chinese context may need to establish the construct validity of empowerment. Fourth, although we explained the mediating influence of empowerment in terms of intrinsic motivation, we did not measure and include intrinsic motivation in our study. In view of research evidence that empowerment is an antecedent of intrinsic motivation (Gagne et al., 1997), future research should examine the mediating influence of intrinsic motivation on the relationship between empowerment and the outcomes examined in this study as well as on organizational citizenship behavior and actual withdrawal behaviors like turnover and absenteeism. Lastly, support for the hypothesized influence of the contextual variables on the development of LMX appears to suggest a mechanical link between these variables and LMX development. Future research should examine the extent to which these variables interact with personality variables like proactive personality and positive affectivity in influencing the development of LMX. These limitations are, however, counterbalanced by the strengths of this study. First, this study adds to the sparse literature on the organizational or contextual influences on LMX development. Second, this is only the second study (Liden et al., 2000) to have examined the mediating role of empowerment in the LMX–work outcome relationships reported in the extant literature. Third, confidence in our model was reinforced by the finding that the alternative nested models did not fit the data as well as the hypothesized structural model. Finally, the non-western sample provides preliminary evidence of the cross-cultural generalizability of LMX and the intrinsic motivational implications of empowerment on employee work attitudes and behaviors. The findings of this study suggest two implications. First, understanding the organizational influences on LMX quality should provide an informed basis for creating conditions that facilitate the development of high LMX quality as an important source of positive work-related attitudes and behaviors. Second, the mediating influence of empowerment in a high power distance culture such as China provide preliminary evidence for the effectiveness of empowerment as a managerial technique to influence motivational levels across cultures.