Mutual perceptions of the leader member exchange factors by leaders and followers: A research on employees of a retail company

There are two main purposes of this research. The first one is to analyze the reciprocity in leader member relations. Leader member exchange theory proposes a dyadic devotion between leader and members. Members who are volunteer in undertaking tasks and responsibilities exceed their standard role definitions; in exchange they get their leaders support and protection. Most of the researches dealing with leader member exchange focus on the devotion and extra role taking behavior of the members. The relations have been analyzed among fairness, performance, personality characteristics, satisfaction, commitment, teamwork and membership whether in or out-group. But researches focusing on and analyzing the strength of the dyadic relations among leaders and members are relatively few. The second purpose of this study is to analyze the main differences between in-group and out-group members. In multidimensional analyzes of the leader member exchange four dimensions has been used as affect, loyalty, contribution and professional respect in multidimensional analyzes of the leader member exchange. Within this research, the main differences among these dimensions have also been analyzed either from the perspective of leader and the members. Results reveal that there are statistically significant relationships between the perceptions of LMX leaders and members on affect, contribution, loyalty and professional respect. In mutual relationships (as dyad), individuals assessed himself in “in-group” and individuals assessed himself in “out-group” were compared by leaders and members perspectives separately. According to the t-test results there are statistically significant differences on all of the LMX perceptions (affect, contribution, loyalty, professional respect). There isn’t any statistically significant difference in the context of demographic variables.