The X-Factor: On the Relevance of Implicit Leadership and Followership Theories for Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Agreement

While Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) research shows that leaders engage in different kinds of relationships with different followers, it remains somewhat of an enigma why one and the same relationship is often rated differently by a leader and the respective follower. We seek to fill that conceptual void by explaining when and why such LMX disagreement is likely to occur. To do so, we reconsider antecedents of LMX quality perceptions and outline how each party’s LMX quality perception is primarily dependent on the perceived contributions of the other party, moderated by perceived own contributions. We then integrate the notion of Implicit Leadership and Followership Theories (ILTs and IFTs) to argue that the currencies of contributions differ between leaders and followers. This dyadic model sets the stage to explain that LMX disagreement can stem from (1) differences in both parties’ ILTs as well as both parties’ IFTs, but also from (2) differences in perceptions of own and other’s behavior. We conclude by discussing communication as a means of overcoming LMX disagreement and propose an array of potential studies along the lines of our conceptualization

Morality in Interactions: On the Display of Moral Behavior by Leaders and Employees

Recent research has tried to understand moral behavior in the workplace mainly from an intra-personal perspective, blaming ethical failures on the person’s moral character, moral development or moral identity, or on isolated aspects of the situation. In doing so, little attention has been paid to the interplay between the person and the interpersonal context in which this behavior takes place. Thus, an important angle for investigating the question why good people do bad things has yet remained unexplored. In this thesis I present four chapters that illustrate this interpersonal influence in the context of ethical behavior within organizations – I discuss how leaders and followers influence each other’s moral behavior, how the organization’s moral norms influence employees moral decisions especially when they identify strongly with the organization, how follower moral awareness influences the effects of ethical leadership on the employee’s deviant behavior, and how demographic differences between leaders and followers influences the effect moral leadership has on employee performance. Together these chapters aim to increase understanding of the importance of factors in the interpersonal for moral decision making by individuals

In the moral eye of the beholder:the interactive effects of leader and follower moral identity on perceptions of ethical leadership and LMX quality

Previous research indicated that leader moral identity (MI; i.e., leaders’ self-definition in terms of moral attributes) predicts to what extent followers perceive their leader as ethical (i.e., demonstrating and promoting ethical conduct in the organization). Leadership, however, is a relational process that involves leaders and followers. Building on this understanding, we hypothesized that follower and leader MI (a) interact in predicting whether followers will perceive their leaders as ethical and, as a result, (b) influence followers’ perceptions of leader–follower relationship quality. A dyadic field study (N = 101) shows that leader MI is a stronger predictor of followers’ perceptions of ethical leadership for followers who are high (vs. low) in MI. Perceptions of ethical leadership in turn predict how the quality of the relationship will be perceived. Hence, whether leader MI translates to perceptions of ethical leadership and of better relationship quality depends on the MI of followers

On Kink-Dynamics of Stacked-Josephson Junctions

Dynamics of a fluxon in a stack of coupled long Josephson junctions is studied numericallv. Based on the numerical simulations, we show that the dependence of the propagation velocity c on the external bias current γ is determined by the ratio of the critical currents of thc two junctions J