Understanding the relationship between span of control and subordinate consensus in leader–member exchange

Birgit Schyns, John M. Maslyn, Jürgen Weibler
2010 European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology  
2010) 'Understanding the relationship between span of control and subordinate consensus in leader-member exchange.', European journal of work and organizational psychology., 19 (3). pp. 388-406. Further information on publisher's website: http://dx.This is an electronic version of an article published in Schyns, B. and Maslyn, J.M. and Weibler, J. (2010) 'Understanding the relationship between span of control and subordinate consensus in leader-member exchange.', European journal of work and
more » ... anizational psychology., 19 (3). pp. 388-406. European journal of work and organizational psychology is available online at: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/ with the open URL of your article. Additional information: Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Abstract Leader-member exchange (LMX) refers to the relationship quality a leader shares with members of his or her workgroup, typically described as differentiation in quality within the group. Numerous empirical studies demonstrate that the quality of this relationship is positively related to followers' attitudes and organisational outcomes. It has been proposed that the quality of possible relationships between the leader and the led will be affected by the number of employees directly reporting to the leader, with empirical findings showing a slight negative relationship between span of control and LMX. Little is known, however, about how span of control influences variability in the quality of leader-member-exchange within the context of work groups. Therefore, following a recognized assumption to strive for as many as possible leadership relations on a high LMX level, we examine how individual and group level (consensus in) LMX can be based on different dimensions of the LMX relationship. We suggest how LMX consensus and a high LMX level can be established even in large spans of control.
doi:10.1080/13594320903146485 fatcat:h2fnkx4e5jbjvbu2aqri4inmdq