The missing link? Implications of internal, external, and relational attribution combinations for leader–member exchange, relationship work, self‐work, and conflict

Abstract

Summary Attributions are causal explanations made by individuals in response to important, novel, and/or unexpected events. Numerous attribution theories have examined how people use information to make attributions and how attributions impact an individual's subsequent emotions and outcomes. However, this research has only recently considered the implications of dyadic‐level attributions (i.e., relational attributions), particularly in the context of leader–follower relationships in organizations. Therefore, the purpose of this theoretical paper is threefold. First, we integrate research on attributional biases into the research on relational attributions. Second, we integrate and extend attribution theory to consider the implications of convergent and divergent internal, external‐person, external‐situational, and relational attributions for leader–member exchange (LMX) quality, relationship work, self‐work, and conflict. Third, we make the implicit ranking of attribution combinations and the resultant levels of relationship work explicit. In doing so, we contribute to attribution theory and research by proposing how attribution combinations produce positive and negative outcomes that are both intrapersonal and interpersonal. Further, we contribute to the LMX literature by explicating how leader–follower attribution combinations influence relationship quality.

Social bonding or depleting? A team‐level investigation of leader self‐sacrifice on team and leader work engagement

“…When teams have higher levels of power distance, team members are more likely to doubt self-sacrificing leaders because of their admiration of leaders with high dominance (Hu, Erdogan, Jiang, Bauer, & Liu, 2018;Kirkman, Chen, Farh, Chen, & Lowe, 2009). Team members' attributions regarding why leaders behave in self-sacrificing ways should also be examined in future studies (Gardner, Karam, Tribble, & Cogliser, 2019). For example, if organizations explicitly encourage self-sacrifice, team members are more likely to attribute leader self-sacrifice to external rewards rather than internal characters, decreasing their respect for leaders.…”

Hospital Climate and Peer Report Intention on Adverse Medical Events: Role of Attribution and Rewards

“…As stated by Rasmussen, it is often hard to pinpoint the real causes because AME investigations are often driven by preconceived notions about their causes, which are always dominated by an attribution tendency [ 29 , 30 ]. Attribution tendency can be understood multi-dimensionally, and the most important one is external/internal [ 14 , 15 , 31 ]. Specifically, causes of AMEs may be social, cross-organizational, hospital, departmental, individual, or, more often, a combination.…”

Attribution theory: An introduction to the special issue

“…In the third paper, Gardner, Karam, Tribble, and Cogliser () examine how internal, external, and relational attributions across leaders and members differentially predict relationship work, self‐work, and conflict within leader–member relationships. Gardner et al make contributions by integrating attributional biases into our understanding of relational attributions, examining convergent and divergent attributions within leader–member relationships, and explicitly theorizing why relationship work, self‐work, and conflict arise according to the combination of leaders' and followers' attributions.…”

“…Additionally, the cross‐cultural findings from employee respondents in organizations located in China, Great Britain, and the United States show that attributions apply to a range of contexts. Further, Carson's () and Gardner et al's () conceptual papers highlight opportunities to provide nuanced insight into attributional dimensions and their application to contexts critical for understanding organizational behavior (e.g., leadership). Thus, the papers included in this special issue demonstrate some of the numerous opportunities available for scholars to investigate attribution theory from a wide range of research orientations.…”

“…Significant progress has also been made in developing and adapting attribution theory to organizational contexts. In this special issue, three of the articles (Carson, 2019;Gardner et al, 2019;Sun et al, 2019) focused on variations of relationship attributions. This focus appeared to be, in part, as a response to the recent conceptual and empirical work by Eberly and her colleagues (Eberly et al, 2011;Eberly, Holley, Johnson, & Mitchell, 2017).…”