Gains and Losses: Week-to-Week Changes in Leader-Follower Relationships

Although the importance of leader-follower relationships in the workplace has been widely acknowledged, the impact of changes in such relationships has not been ade-quately examined in the literature. Leader-member exchange (LMX) theory and re-search have suggested that leader-follower relationships develop, mature, and then stabilize. Integrating recent work that has found important and impactful within -individual variations in what was thought to be relatively unvarying relationships, we theorize that leader-follower relationships (like other linkage types), are not only differ-entiated (varying between people) but also fluctuate across time periods (varying within people). We also discuss how people can understand their relationships better by com-paring them to a relevant and proximal referent; this underlines how prior levels of LMX serve as a lens by which followers evaluate their current LMX. Across two studies, we discuss how comparing this week's LMX to last week's LMX can signal improvement (i.e., gains) or deterioration (i.e., losses) in the relationship, with differential implications for positive and negative affect. We also provide additional insights into LMX fluctua-tions by contrasting within-and between-individual variance in established and newly founded relationships, and by examining those incidents that are more likely to influ-ence LMX in a given week.