How Followers Respond to Leader Differentiation: The Importance of Considering All Leader Differentiation Properties

A central tenet of many leadership theories is that leaders treat their followers differently. Although leader differentiation is ubiquitous, its effects on leaders and followers are not well understood and theory and research have not simultaneously considered its three key properties: Leader–member exchange (LMX) differentiation, LMX quality, and LMX social comparison. We developed a theoretical model in which these three properties interact to influence followers’ supervisory interactional justice perceptions and subsequently their supervisor-directed deviance and supervisor-directed organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). To test our model, we conducted a pre-registered experiment (Study 1), a single-level, multi-wave study (Study 2), and a multilevel, multi-wave, multisource study (Study 3). Results consistently supported our theoretical model. First, LMX differentiation indirectly influenced supervisor-directed deviance and OCBs via supervisory interactional justice. Second, the three leader differentiation properties interacted to predict supervisory interactional justice. Specifically, when LMX quality and LMX social comparison were both high, the negative impact of LMX differentiation on followers’ supervisory interactional justice perceptions was the weakest and did not reliably differ from zero. Third, when LMX quality and LMX social comparison were both high, LMX differentiation’s positive indirect effect on supervisor-directed deviance, and its negative indirect effect on supervisor-directed OCBs, via supervisory interactional justice perceptions, were the weakest and not reliably different from zero. These are among the first studies to simultaneously theorize and investigate the interactive effects of the three central properties of leader differentiation, and to demonstrate its effects for both followers and leaders.