A Meta-Analysis of Antecedents and Consequences of Leader-Member Exchange

Although leader-member exchange (LMX) was identified in the literature nearly 40 years ago, a comprehensive empirical examination of its antecedents and consequences has not been conducted. The authors’ examination included 247 studies, containing 290 samples, and 21 antecedents and 16 consequences of LMX quality. Results indicated that while leader behaviors and perceptions, follower characteristics, interpersonal relationship characteristics, and contextual variables represent significant groups of LMX antecedents, leader variables explained the most variance in LMX quality. Moderator analyses revealed that the particular LMX scale, country of participants, and work setting studied did not produce meaningful…