Seminar (Dept. of Organization and Human Resources)

Theme：Followers’ Reactions to Leader Differentiation

Speaker：Yuchuan Liu (Visiting Scholar ofSingapore Management University)

Time：2020-10-21 14:00

Address：Room 713, Mingde Business Building & Tencent Meeting

Language：English

Tencent Meeting

https://meeting.tencent.com/s/o4YqnoDVSOxO

Meeting ID：517 440 729

Password：201021

ABSTRACT:  

Leaders generally differentiate their relationships with followers, for example, by providing some with more respect, trust, support, or information than others (Liden&Graen, 1980). However, the effects of such leader differentiation on followers remain inconclusive such that research suggests that leader differentiation may have negative, positive, or null effects on favorable employee work-related outcomes (for a recent review, see Martin et al., 2018). To better understand the effects of leader differentiation on followers, utilizing leader-member exchange (LMX) theory, this research examined how three inherently connected properties in the leader differentiation process (i.e., LMX differentiation, LMX quality and LMX social comparison) interacted to influence followers’ supervisory interactional justice perceptions and subsequently their discretionary behaviors toward their leaders. Results from three studies, with different research designs and conducted in different cultures, supported the hypothesized conditional moderated mediation model. When LMX quality and LMX social comparison were both high, the negative impact of LMX differentiation on followers’ supervisory interactional justice perceptions was the weakest. In addition, when LMX quality and LMX social comparison were both high, LMX differentiation’s positive indirect effect on followers’ supervisor-directed deviance and its negative indirect effect on followers’ supervisor-directed organizational citizenship behaviors via followers’ supervisory interactional justice perceptions were the weakest.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY:

Yuchuan Liu is a visiting scholar in the Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University. His research is broadly in the area of Organizational Behavior. In particular, he focuses on leadership, inequality, and discretionary behaviors in business contexts. Adopting multiple methodologies and across multiple levels of analyses, he examines theoretical and practical issues in these three domains. For example, how to become an effective leader? How to help employees with disadvantages backgrounds work their way up? Why some employees reject their colleagues' helping behaviors? His research had been presented in many conferences such as the annual conferences of AOM and SIOP.