Examining the interpersonal process and consequence of leader–member exchange comparison: The role of procedural justice climate

• Author: Catherine K. Lam,Jun Gu,Herman H. M. Tse,Xiao Song Lin
• Published date: 01 October 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2268
• Date: 01 October 2018

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Examining the interpersonal process and consequence of

leader–member exchange comparison: The role of procedural

justice climate

Herman H. M. Tse

1

|Catherine K. Lam

2

|Jun Gu

1

|Xiao Song Lin

3

1

Department of Management, Monash

University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

2

Department of Management, City University

of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong

3

School of Management, Xiamen University,

Xiamen, Fujian, China

Correspondence

Corresponding Xiao Song Lin, School of

Management, Xiamen University, Xiamen,

Fujian, China.

Email: xiaosong.lin@xmu.edu.cn

Summary

Individuals are always sensitive to their relative standing in interpersonal comparison processes of

leader–member exchanges (LMXs) in teams. Little research, however, has investigated whether

coworkers with a higher LMX influence the emotional and behavioral reactions of individuals with

a lower LMX in different dyads. Drawing on social comparison theory and the symbolic model of

procedural justice (PJ) climate, we conducted 2 independent studies—an experimental study

focusing on the self‐perceived upward LMX comparison (i.e., an individual perceives that a

coworker's LMX is higher than the LMX that he or she has with the supervisor; N= 203; Study

1: American working adults) and a field survey study focusing on the other‐perceived downward

LMX comparison (i.e., a coworker perceives that his or her own LMX is higher than the LMX that

the individual has with the supervisor; N= 177; Study 2: Chinese software engineers). Results

from these studies consistently revealed that a coworker's higher LMX elicits an individual'shos-

tile emotions when the PJ climate is low but that this relationship is buffered when the PJ climate

is high. Results of both studies also showed that the coworker's higher LMX arouses the individ-

ual to direct harmful behavior toward that coworker (via the individual's feelings of hostility)

when the PJ climate is low but not when it is high.

KEYWORDS

coworker dyads,interpersonal hostility and harming,leader–member exchange (LMX) comparison,

procedural justice climate

1|INTRODUCTION

A key premise of leader–member exchange (LMX) theory is that

leaders tend to develop different relationships with individuals in a

team (Dansereau, Graen, & Haga, 1975). Because the differentiation

determines the amount of work‐related resources, benefits, and

support obtained from a supervisor, individuals are always sensitive

to their relative LMX (RLMX) standing in a team (Vidyarthi, Liden,

Anand, Erdogan, & Ghosh, 2010). During their daily interactions in

the workplace, individuals often learn, reflect, observe, and compare

their own LMX with that of their coworkers in order to understand

their standing in the team (Hu & Liden, 2013). Previous research has

tended to view an LMX comparison as an individual process of RLMX

that occurs when an individual evaluates his or her own actual level of

LMX relative to the average LMX of “all”other coworkers as a whole

(e.g., Henderson, Wayne, Shore, Bormmer, & Tetrick, 2008), and it

has also examined the impact of RLMX on psychological contract

fulfilment (Henderson et al., 2008), in‐role and extra‐role behaviors

(Hu & Liden, 2013), and task performance (Vidyarthi et al., 2010).

Although the findings of these studies are insightful, our under-

standing of the LMX comparison process remains incomplete owing to

two fundamental issues. First, LMX comparison is often studied as an

individual phenomenon, captured either by an objective measure of a

relative difference between coworkers' LMXs (i.e., RLMX; Henderson

et al., 2008; Tse, Ashkanasy, & Dasborough, 2012) or by a perceptual

measure of individuals' own LMX compared with the LMXs of

coworkers (i.e., LMX social comparison [LMXSC]; Vidyarthi et al.,

2010). This study approach overlooks the fact that the LMX comparison

process is dyadic and peer nested in nature. Second, the existing

research has generally focused on understanding the positive

consequences (i.e., both individual and team performance‐related

outcomes) when an individual interacts with lower LMX coworkers

and perceives that his or her LMX is better than other coworkers' LMXs

(Tse, Lam, Lawrence, & Huang, 2013; Vidyarthi et al., 2010). This line of

Received: 14 October 2016 Revised: 16 December 2017 Accepted: 6 January 2018

DOI: 10.1002/job.2268

922 Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J Organ Behav. 2018;39:922–940.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job

research has neglected the possibility that an individual may have to

face a higher LMX coworker, and such an unfavorable comparison can

create negative interpersonal implications (Tse et al., 2013). This is an

important omission in the literature because, in reality, the individual

is often required to work with another coworker who has a higher

LMX, and such a situation may emanate from the facts that (a) he or

she perceives a coworker's LMX to be higher than he or she has with

the supervisor (i.e., an individual has a upward LMX comparison with

the coworker—an individual's upward LMXSC) or (b) he or she is

perceived to be an individual with a lower LMX compared with the

coworker (i.e., a coworker has a downward LMX comparison with the

individual—a coworker's downward LMXSC). Althoughthese two types

of comparison are independently evaluated by the individual and the

coworker, both forms of LMX comparison inform an individual about

another coworker's higher relative standing and also highlight his or

her inferior status in a team, thereby causing the individual to react

negatively toward the coworker. Such a reaction occurs because

information comparing LMXs among coworkers infers hierarchical

status differences, which can often be learned and observed in

coworkers' daily interactions within a shared team environment (Sias,

1996; Tse et al., 2012, 2013). Therefore, with the use of a dyadic

approach, the core contributionof the present research is to understand

whether a coworker's higher LMX (by directly manipulating the

individual's upward LMXSC in Study 1 and by indirectly inferring an

unfavorable comparison outcome by assessing the coworker's

downward LMXSC in Study 2) may induce the individual's negative

emotion and behavior toward the coworker.

1

Drawing upon social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954), we

propose that a coworker's higher LMX, reflected by the individual's

self‐perceived upward LMXSC and the coworker's other‐perceived

downward LMXSC, will constitute an unfavorable comparison

outcome for the individual because the former LMXSC captures the

lower status perceived by the individual himself or herself, and the

latter LMXSC assigns to the individual a lower status in a hierarchical

LMX relationship. In this respect, social comparison theory (Festinger,

1954) suggests that in response to disadvantaged and unfavorable

comparison outcomes, the individual may develop negative hostile

emotions (Buunk, Collins, Taylor, Van Yperen, & Dakof, 1990; Heider,

1958) and may retaliate toward the coworker (e.g., a harmful act;

Lam, Van der Vegt, Walter, & Huang, 2011), depending on the extent

to which the individual contrasts or assimilates himself or herself with

that coworker (i.e., by focusing either on relational differences or on

commonalities; Mussweiler, Rüter, & Epstude, 2004).

More importantly, such contrastive or assimilative processes are

greatly shaped by contextual factors (Greenberg, Ashton‐James, &

Ashkanasy, 2007; Lam et al., 2011). Along this line, literature on both

LMX and justice climate has suggested that a particularly salient

contextual factor in team settings that may determine employees'

responses to an unfavorable comparison outcome is procedural justice

(PJ) climate (i.e., a team‐level cognition regarding how fairly the team

as a whole is treated procedurally

2

; Erdogan & Bauer, 2010; Naumann

& Bennett, 2000). Because supervisors are typical representatives of

an organization and also are often involved in communicating the value

and implementing the practice of the PJ climate to all team members,

employees tend to refer to PJ climate to make sense of an authority

figure's practice, such as a supervisor's exercise of LMX differentiation

(Erdogan & Bauer, 2010; Hollensbe, Khazanchi, & Masterson, 2008).

We therefore expect that the PJ climate operates as a sense‐making

mechanism, shaping the extent to which the coworker's higher LMX

is legitimate, and also determining whether the individual will contrast

or assimilate with the coworker.

Combining the identification‐contrast model of social comparison

theory (Buunk & Ybema, 1997; Mussweiler et al., 2004) and the

symbolic model of justice climate (Lin & Leung, 2014), we propose that

the relationship between a coworker's higher LMX and an individual's

hostile responses toward that coworker hinges on the PJ climate.

Specifically, unfair team procedures (i.e., in a low PJ climate) would

provide the individual with the information that the coworker's higher

LMX standing, greater resources, and influence obtained simply on the

basis of a better relationship with the supervisor do not procedurally

match, in a just way, his or her efforts spent on work. Given that the

social and economic costs of undermining supervisors are too high

(Mitchell & Ambrose, 2007), we argue that this coworker, who is a

direct competitor to the individual in a triadic relationship, would be

held responsible for creating the unfavorable LMX comparison

outcome. Such external blaming will guide the individual to contrast

himself or herself with the coworker and to develop a negative opinion

and hostile reactions toward him or her. In contrast, when team

procedures are fair (i.e., there is a high PJ climate), the individual tends

to view that the coworker's higher LMX as being legitimate and

justified, and thus the individual is more likely to assimilate and less

likely to feel hostile toward the higher LMX coworker. That compari-

son outcome is proper when implemented on the basis of the

principles of justice. Furthermore, a handful of research suggests that

hostility (e.g., anger, disgust, and hostility) is a justice‐related emotion

for outcome unfavorability (Barclay, Skarlicki, & Pugh, 2005; Brockner,

2002) and can provoke interpersonal harmful acts (i.e., “behaviors that

go against the legitimate interests of another individual in the organiza-

tion”; cf. Venkataramani & Dalal, 2007, p. 952; Glomb, 2002). To

1

In the context of a dyadic individual–coworker relationship, upward social com-

parison is made in relation to someone of a higher LMX standing and downward

social comparison is made in relation to someone of a lower LMX standing in a

team (Buunk et al., 1990; Festinger, 1954). We therefore use “self‐perceived

upward LMXSC”to refer to an individual employee's perception that a

coworker's LMX is higher than the LMX that he or she has with the supervisor,

and we use “other‐perceived downward LMXSC”to refer to a coworker's per-

ception that his or her own LMX is higher than that of the individual with the

supervisor.

2

In the present research, we focus only on the use of PJ climate as an important

boundary condition, for four reasons. First, PJ has been proposed and specified

as a primary predictor for understanding the psychological basis of whether peo-

ple socially identify with a workgroup in the group engagement model (Tyler &

Blader, 2000). Second, PJ has received more substantial research attention than

distributive justice and interactional justice have, because of its stronger predic-

tive ability for a wide range of employee attitudes and behaviors (cf. meta‐ana-

lytical review; Cohen‐Charash & Spector, 2001; Colquitt, 2001). Third,

employee reactions to distributive justice can be influenced by procedural justice

because the fairness of the actual resource distribution is largely determined by

fair decision‐making procedures and processes (Du, Choi, & Hashem, 2012).

Finally, there is a high degree of conceptual overlap among interactional justice,

distributive justice, and LMX because leaders rely on the quality of relationships

with their subordinates when they distribute organizational resources and psy-

chological support (Erdogan & Bauer, 2010).

TSE ET AL.923