How You Appraise Your Relationship With Your Colleagues Matters, but Not as Much as How You Appraise Your Relationship With Your Manager: Predicting Employee Job Satisfaction and Commitment

Leader-member exchange (LMX) is the foremost relational approach to leadership. Building upon the LMX theory, this study aimed to examine the associations between three types of relationship appraisals in the workplace: leader-member (leader LMX), member-leader (member LMX), and member-member relationships (collegial climate), and their impact on employee work attitudes (i.e., employee job satisfaction and commitment). Questionnaire data were obtained from a sample of retail managers (n = 113) and retail workers (n = 555) in the Swedish retail sector. Mediation analyses confirmed the novel hypotheses that member LMX and collegial climate fully mediate the association between leader LMX and employee job satisfaction. However, in predicting employee commitment, the only significant mediator was member LMX. This study not only contributes to the existing LMX theory and research but also adds to the expanding body of knowledge in the field of positive organizational scholarship exploring the significance of positive workplace relationships in shaping employee attitudes.