Self-Other agreement in Perspective Taking and Employee Affective Commitment: The Mediating Role of Leader-Member Exchange

Abstract

This study seeks to establish and test the integrative theory of Leader- Member Exchange (LMX) that extends our understanding of self-other agreement in perspective taking and affective commitment. We predicted that differences in employee perceptions of the quality of their LMX relationship and their affective commitment might be related to the degree of agreement between leader and employees’ perceptions of leader perspective taking. We aim to represent the managerial and psychological outcomes in the leader-employee dyad. The study relies on data from 116 leader-employee dyads working within various business areas in companies located in Norway. The results revealed that the in agreement good group and under-estimators received the highest employee reported LMX and affective commitment. Additionally, relative to the constant group, mediation occurred for the in agreement poor group and over-estimator group. As well as providing valuable insights for understanding self-other agreement, perspective taking, LMX and affective commitment and their relation to each other, our theoretical perspective and empirical findings provide important contributions.