Leader-member exchange quality (LMX) and psychological climate: A longitudinal analysis of their reciprocal relationship

Abstract

Although the relationship between climate and leadership has been taken into account from different research and theoretical approaches, there is a lack of effort in the development of conceptual framework to understand the relationship between the development processes in both constructs. Grounding on the interactionist approach to the formation of climate and the Leader Member Exchange in leadership, Kozlowski and Doherty (1989) developed a conceptual framework that specifies the theoretical mechanisms linking both constructs. The lack of longitudinal designs hinders the possibility to test causal relationship between both constructs. The main objective of the present paper was to test a number of reciprocal causal hypotheses regarding the relationship between LMS and climate by means of a longitudinal design. Results show LMX and climate to be longitudinally related but the existence of reciprocal relationship was not supported.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17575/rpsicol.v21i1.356