The Influence Of Leader-Member Exchange On Employee Engagement

Research on employee engagement has received increasing attention recently.Western scholars believe that highly engaged employees can complete their work with high efficiency and high quality,and bring more extra-role behavior,that will improve organizational performance and reduce turnover intention.In China,the central government work report mentioned the term “artisan spirit” for three times,whose essence is “love and engagement”.It means that the importance of employee engagement is raised to the national strategic level.How to improve employee engagement has become the focus of attention the theoretical and practical circles at both local and overseas.Leader behavior is an important factor affecting employee engagement.Based on the Chinese context,due to the particularity of China’s social relations orientation,especially under the influence of the quanzi culture,the leaders will treat the subordinates differently according to the differences between the neighbors and the close relatives.In this kind of differential leadership style,how the leadership-member exchange will affect employee engagement remains to be further studied.Based on the theory of resource conservation,this study collected multi-level data of 303 employees from 62 teams in 16 companies in Wuhan,Changxing,Nanjing and Zhengzhou.We constructed a moderated mediation model and used HLM hierarchical regression analysis and Bootstrap test empirically tested the mechanism and boundary conditions of leader-member exchange on employee engagement.We focused on the mediating role of job crafting between leader-member exchange and employee engagement and the moderating effects of differential leadership in these relationships.The results of empirical research show that: first,leader-member exchange can positively affect employee engagement.Second,job crafting mediates the positive relationship between leader-member exchange and employee engagement.Third,differential leadership positively moderats the relationship between leader-member exchange and job crafting: compared with low differential leadership,positive influence of leader-member exchange on job crafting is enhanced.Last,the interaction between differential leadership and leader-member exchange on employee engagement is mediated by job crafting:compared with low differential leadership,positive influence of leadermember exchange on job crafting is enhanced,and this role futher affects employee engagement.