The Influence Of Relative Leader-Member Exchange On Innovative Behavior In Blended Teams

Confronted with fiercely competitive environment, an increasing number of organizations have recognized the importance of innovative behavior. As a core concept in leadership research, leader-member exchange (LMX) is a critical conduit through which managers allocate social and tangible resources and foster employee innovation. Prior studies, however, have seldom taken into account the context of workforce diversity. Nowadays, more and more organizations employ temporary workers to form blended teams and work together with internal workers, in order to reduce cost, increase flexibility and cope with environmental turbulence. If managers want to boost employee innovative behaviors in blended teams, it is important to know how such blending affects the impact of LMX on innovative behavior.Since LMX theory is rooted in the concept of differentiation, a growing number of studies examining the effect of the RLMX and the underlying psychological processes involved have emerged in recent years. In blended workgroups, when it comes to comparison between an individual’s own LMX relationship and others’ LMX relationships, an individual would not only compare his or her LMX relationship with that of other in-group members (i.e., interpersonal RLMX or individual RLMX), but also compare the average LMX relationship of in-group with that of out-group (i.e., intergroup RLMX). This study focused on individual RLMX and investigated its impact on innovative behavior. Given the difference in work status between internal workers and temporary workers, they have different concerns when comparing their own LMX relationships with others’. Accordingly, the present study attempted to examine the joint effect of individual RLMX and work status on innovative behavior. Moreover, because individual values could exert influences on psychological factors such as fairness perception, the author also investigated the interactive effect of individual RLMX, work status and individual modernity/traditionality on innovative behavior. Based on social comparison theory, the author developed a cross-level model to test the proposed hypotheses. The results showed that individual RLMX is positively related to innovative behavior; that the positive relationship between individual RLMX and innovative behavior is stronger for internal workers than for temporary workers; and that such positive relationship is weaker for temporary workers whose modernity is high rather than low, whereas such positive relationship is stronger for internal workers whose modernity is high rather than low.