Where You Lead, I Will Follow: Leader–Member Exchange,Motivation to Lead and Employee Counterproductive Work Behavior

The leader–follower relationship plays an important role in preventing employees from engaging in counterproductive work behavior (CWB). We investigate the interplay among perceived leader–member exchange (LMX), leaders’ motivation to lead (MTL), and CWB, specifically examining the cross-level effect of leaders’ MTL in the relationship between individuals’ LMX and CWB. We tested our hypotheses in two studies: a two-source field study in three large European Union companies (217 employees nested into teams with 31 unique leaders) and an experiment with 106 participants in which we manipulated LMX and MTL using vignette scenarios. Field study results indicated that individuals with higher levels of LMX exhibit lower levels of CWB. This relationship is more negative in cases of low MTL, indicating a trade-off effect of LMX and MTL. The experiment replicated these effects. We additionally tested a moderated-mediation model, which included the explanatory mechanism (mediator) of followers’ MTL. Taken together, this paper proposes and simultaneously tests interplay effects of followers’ dyadic perceptions of their relationships with leaders and leaders’ individual differences in reducing CWB. It develops and tests the role-modeling process of leaders’ MTL translation into followers’ MTL. The paper also shows the multilevel nature of the proposed model with a two-source examination (leader vs. follower perspective)