Affect and leader-member exchange in the new millennium: A state-of-art review and guiding framework

Abstract

The idea that affect plays a key role in leader-member exchange (LMX) processes is not new, but it has become a subject of considerable research attention since the turn of the Millennium. This interest has, however, resulted in a multiplicity of views that have tended to obfuscate rather than clarify the affect-LMX nexus. To deal with this lack of clarity, we conducted a systematic integration of affect-LMX literature published in leading journals since 2000, including the role of personal affectivity, discrete affect, emotional intelligence, emotional labor, and affective climate. We structured our review using a multilevel framework of affect that encompasses five levels of analysis: (1) within-person, (2) between persons,(3) interpersonal, (4) team, and (5) organizational levels; as well as consideration of cross-level effects. We address in particular three fundamental issues that we argue may have hampered the development of the affect-LMX nexus in the literature: theoretical diversity, problems of data analysis, and measurement issues. We conclude by discussing opportunities for future research across the different levels and develop a set of research questions that we hope will help to promote research into the role of affect in LMX.

Emotional competence at work

“…Despite the studies conducted so far, there have been calls for more studies on the influence of specific human resource management (HRM) interventions and processes (Tse et al, 2018). The overall need is to better understand emotions in the workplace, and the ways in which training interventions might promote awareness of emotions within the everyday practice of organizations.…”

Team Emotional Intelligence: Emotional Processes as a Link Between Managers and Workers

“…Within the literature on TEI, various theories have been used in an attempt to explain how group emotional processes may affect individuals. Based on the notion of emotional contagion (Barsade, 2002) and affective events theory (AET; Weiss and Cropanzano, 1996;Weiss, 2002) it has been proposed that the extent to which teams engage in interpersonal emotional processes could influence not only a team's effectiveness but also -through trickle-down effects -employees' individual affect and behaviors (Tse et al, 2018). Although team emotional intelligence can be expected to influence intrateam conflict (i.e., task conflict and relationship conflict) and team effectiveness (i.e., team performance, innovation, and cohesion), team emotional intelligence has been largely unexplored (Lee and Wong, 2019).…”

Cognitive Flexibility Matters: The Role of Multilevel Positive Affect and Cognitive Flexibility in Shaping Victims’ Cooperative and Uncooperative Behavioral Responses to Trust Violations

“…Affect is a broad category that includes individual dispositional tendencies (e.g., positive and negative trait affectivity); interpersonally directed affective experiences, such as liking or emotional bonds; and discrete emotions (e.g., anger, joy). Affect is a multilevel phenomenon, which can occur at the individual, interpersonal, and collective (i.e., team or organizational) levels, and has been found to have cross-level effects (see Tse et al, 2018, for a review). Discrete emotions are defined as more specific and complex products of simple affective feelings or experiences, usually high in intensity and short in duration, that arise in response to stimuli (Frijda et al, 1991).…”