Good relationships at work: The effects of Leader–Member Exchange and Team–Member Exchange on psychological empowerment, emotional exhaustion, and depression

• Published date: 01 July 2016
• Date: 01 July 2016
• Author: Bertolt Meyer,Carsten C. Schermuly
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2060

Good relationships at work: The effects of Leader–

Member Exchange and Team–Member Exchange

on psychological empowerment, emotional

exhaustion, and depression

CARSTEN C. SCHERMULY

1

*AND BERTOLT MEYER

2

1

SRH University Berlin, Berlin, Germany

2

Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz, Germany

Summary Emotional exhaustion and depression pose a threat to employees’psychological health. Social relationships at

work are important potential buffers against these threats, but the corresponding psychological processes are

still unclear. We propose that the subjective experience of high-quality relationships with supervisors (i.e.,

Leader–Member Exchange [LMX]) is one of the protective factors against psychological health issues at

work and that this effect is mediated by psychological empowerment. We tested these assumptions with

two studies (one cross-sectional and one time lagged) on diverse samples of employees from different orga-

nizations. The first study employed emotional exhaustion as the outcome measure; the second used depres-

sion. Results from both studies support the proposed process by showing that LMX positively affects

empowerment, which negatively affects emotional exhaustion (Study 1) and depression (Study 2). Addition-

ally, Study 2 also showed that Team–Member Exchange is as important as LMX for preventing psychological

health issues among employees. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: Leader–Member Exchange; Team–Member Exchange; psychological empowerment; emotional

exhaustion; depression

Psychological health issues at work are on the rise: In any given year, 9 percent of the US labor force suffers from

Major Depression (Doshi, Cen, & Polsky, 2008). Mood disorders account for more than $50 billion in US produc-

tivity losses and result in 321.2 million lost workdays per year (APA, 2010). The consequences of psychological

health issues at work are manifold and include early retirement (Doshi, Cen, & Polsky, 2008) and elevated risks

of suicide (Hawton, Casanas i Comabella, Haw, & Saunders, 2013). Thus, mental health issues constitute an enor-

mous personal and financial burden for employees, organizations, and societies as a whole. It is therefore important

to identify causes and potential remedies for such issues (Maslach & Leiter, 2008).

Prior research on psychological health issues in the workplace primarily investigated emotional exhaustion

(Maslach & Leiter, 2008), the basic individual strain dimension of the burnout construct (Halbesleben & Bowler,

2007). Emotional exhaustion “refers to feelings of being overextended and depleted of one’s emotional and physical

resources”(Maslach & Leiter, 2008, p. 498). In contrast, workplace antecedents of depression (continuous feelings

of gloom, despair, and a general lack of enthusiasm and optimism; Spell & Arnold, 2007) are investigated less

frequently. Although burnout and depression are related, they differ (Maslach & Leiter, 2008), especially with

regard to their contextual specificity: Burnout and emotional exhaustion focus on the individual’s social and orga-

nizational work context, whereas depression reflects general personal beliefs and feelings and is more global in

nature (Leiter & Durup, 1994).

Prior research has advanced the notion that social relationships at work affect employee health (e.g., Viswesv aran,

Sanchez, & Fisher, 1999) and found that positive social interactions at work even affect employees’immune,

*Correspondence to: Carsten C. Schermuly, SRH University Berlin, Ernst-Reuter-Platz 10, 10587 Berlin, Germany. E-mail: carsten.

schermuly@srh-hochschule-berlin.de

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 2 May 2014

Revised 17 September 2015, Accepted 22 September 2015

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 673–691 (2016)

Published online 2 November 2015 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2060

Research Article

cardiovascular, and neuroendocrine systems (for a review, see Heaphy & Dutton, 2008). Particularly, employee per-

ception of the quality of their relationship with their supervisor, that is, Leader–Member Exchange (LMX; Graen &

Uhl-Bien, 1995), has been the focus of research on causes of emotional exhaustion (Thomas & Lankau, 2009). How-

ever, the underlying psychological processes that govern the association between social relationships at work and

psychological health variables are still enigmatic. Furthermore, research on psychological health frequently focuses

on emotional exhaustion (Maslach & Leiter, 2008) without investigating wider issues such as depression that span

beyond the work context.

With the present research, we broaden the scope of the impact of LMX and psychological empowerment on

psychological health by showing that LMX not only affects emotional exhaustion but also depression. We address

further gaps by proposing that the relationship quality that employees perceive with their supervisors (LMX) and

with their colleagues (i.e., Team–Member Exchange [TMX]; Seers, 1989) are both important determinants of

depression. Our study also sheds light on the processes that mediate the relationship between social relations at

work and psychological health. Specifically, we propose that the relationship between TMX and LMX on one

hand and depression on the other is mediated by employees’experience of psychological empowerment, which

consists of four central work-related cognitions: meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact (Spreitzer,

1995). Taken together, these contributions provide a more thorough understanding of how the social environment

at work affects psychological health and could therefore pave the way for more effective prevention strategies, as

outlined in the discussion section.

Leader–Member Exchange, Psychological Empowerment, and Emotional

Exhaustion

Research on the impact of LMX on work-related outcomes is burgeoning (Dulebohn, Bommer, Liden, Brouer, &

Ferris, 2012). LMX is a relationship-based approach to leadership (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995) focusing on the unique

dyadic relationships between supervisors and subordinates that develop through interactions and exchanges. Differ-

ent dimensions of LMX are correlated to such extents that “they can be tapped into with the single measure of LMX”

(Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995, p. 237). Therefore, we treat LMX as a unidimensional construct and focus on the aspect

of relationship quality and not on the social exchange perspective of LMX (Bernerth, Armenakis, Feild, Giles, &

Walker, 2007). Relationship quality can differ among the subordinates of a given supervisor (Graen, Liden, & Hoel,

1982) and employees perceiving a good relationship experience interactions with their supervisors that go beyond

the formal job description (Nahrgang, Morgeson, & Illies, 2009).

There is a lack of research in the areas of health-related outcomes of LMX, as evident in the assertion that

“the role of leadership processes in burnout has received only scant research attention”(Thomas & Lankau,

2009, p. 419). We address this gap by proposing that LMX predicts employees’psychological health, which

includes emotional exhaustion and depression, and that this effect is mediated by employees’psychological

empowerment. Psychological empowerment is a motivational construct that consists of four central cognitions

towards the job: meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact (Spreitzer, 1995). Meaning refers to

“the value of a work goal or purpose, judged in relation to an individual’s own ideals or standards”(Spreitzer,

1995, p. 1443). Experiencing meaning implies finding a purpose in a job that is greater than the extrinsic out-

comes and constitutes a fundamental human motive (Arnold, Turner, Barling, Kelloway, & McKee, 2007).

Competence (or occupational self-efficacy) refers to the belief that one can perform well in the workplace,

whereas self-determination refers to the perception of having choices or autonomy in initiating and regulating

actions at work (Spreitzer, 1995). Impact refers to the experience of having the opportunity to influence stra-

tegic, administrative, or operative outcomes at the workplace (Spreitzer, 1995). Meta-analytic findings show

that these cognitions combine into a uniform perception of empowerment (Seibert, Wang, & Courtright,

2011). In the following, we explain why LMX is related to empowerment before turning to the relationship

between empowerment and emotional exhaustion.

674 C. C. SCHERMULY AND B. MEYER

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 673–691 (2016)

DOI: 10.1002/job