Critique and Review of Leader-Member Exchange Theory: Issues of Agreement, Consensus, and Excellence

The relationship quality that develops between leaders and those designated as followers is of longstanding interest to researchers and practitioners. The purpose of the present article is to review the more recent developments in the field of leader-member exchange (LMX) theory to identify specific issues related to leader-member agreement and follower consensus that have potentially important theoretical and practical implications. We introduce the concept of LMX excellence, which involves high-quality LMX, high leader-member agreement as well as high group consensus in LMX quality. We outline how leaders and followers' behaviour as well as context can enhance or hinder the development of LMX excellence and conclude with an overview of the practical and theoretical implications as well as future research needs

Marketing as an Investment in Shareholder Value

We present resource‐based and capability‐based arguments of marketing investment intensity to offer a strategic view of marketing as an investment in shareholder value. We find that marketing investment intensity has a U‐shaped quadratic effect on shareholder value creation (Tobin's q) that calls for marketing investment to be protected and increased, not surrendered. We show how marketing investments interact with investments in R&D, human capital and operations to reveal how strategic co‐investments can alter the shareholder value of marketing. Finally, we show how competitive intensity and failings in the firm's investment productivity (its ability to convert investment expenditure into sales) point to malaise in the firm's own strategic architecture as a fault for perceived poor returns from marketing investments. Our findings suggest that marketing investment should not be scapegoated when its contributions to shareholder value are not as expected. When invested in strategically and in combination with other investments, marketing can unlock exciting improvements in shareholder value