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The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of team-member exchange (TMX) differentiation on team creativity by developing a moderated mediation model. The model focuses on the mediating role of team proactivity in linking TMX differentiation with team creativity and the moderating role of leader-member exchange (LMX) median in influencing the mediation.

A time-lagged field survey data from 331 employees and 68 team leaders in more than ten high-technology firms from Northern China was used to test the model.

Results indicated that the negative relationship between TMX differentiation and team creativity was mediated by team proactivity. Moderated mediation analyses further revealed that team proactivity mediated the relationship between TMX differentiation and team creativity for only those teams with a low-LMX median.

The empirical study provides preliminary evidence of the mediating role of team proactivity in the negative relationship between TMX differentiation and team creativity. The moderated mediation model also extends the existing finding by showing that LMX quality can moderate the indirect impact of TMX differentiation on team creativity (via team proactivity).

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of leader-member exchange (LMX) differentiation on team creativity by developing a moderated mediation model. The model focuses on the mediating role of relationship conflict in linking LMX differentiation with team creativity and the moderating role of team-member exchange (TMX) median in influencing the mediation.

The authors tested the model with a time-lagged field survey data from 358 employees and 98 supervisors belonging to 98 teams in a large diversified company with more than 15,000 employees, based in Shanghai, Southeastern China. In the first stage (T1), employees assessed LMX, TMX, relationship conflict, and control variables. In the second stage (T2), the leaders were asked to report team creativity.

Results indicated that the relationship between LMX differentiation and team creativity was mediated by relationship conflict. Moderated mediation analyses further revealed that relationship conflict mediated the relationship between LMX differentiation and team creativity for only those teams with low-TMX median.

Testing the moderated mediation model helps to advance our theoretical understanding of the intervening processes that underlie the effect of LMX differentiation on team creativity. The findings may also help Chinese managers to inform the importance of helping subordinates better adapt to LMX differentiation, reducing relationship conflict, and constructing high-quality TMX relationships within groups, in order to promote team creativity.

This empirical study provides preliminary evidence of the mediating role of relationship conflict in the negative relationship between LMX differentiation and team creativity. The moderated mediation model also extends the existing finding by showing that not only the quality of social exchange relationships with a supervisor (i.e. LMX) but also with team members (i.e. TMX), can moderate the impact of LMX differentiation on team outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual model that delineates the psychological process and boundary condition of how leader-member exchange (LMX) differentiation influences team performance.

Based on theories of LMX and social information processing, it is argued that several important mechanisms underpin the relationship between LMX differentiation and team performance. The role of these variables in the relationship is discussed.

The team mechanisms such as affective climate and team-member exchange (TMX) serve as a boundary condition and psychological process to influence the LMX differentiation-team performance relationship. Their conceptual significance and how they affect the relationship are discussed.

This study focusses on theorizing TMX and affective climate as key variables in the LMX differentiation-team performance relationship. Future research considers examining the relative importance of other variables such as team potency or team cohesion to advance the understanding of the precise mechanisms that explain the relationship.

The proposed model increases the understanding of the role of affective climate in the relationships between LMX differentiation, TMX and team performance. It helps minimize the negative effect of LMX differentiation, and may ultimately lead to better team performance.

Although the implication of LMX differentiation has been discussed extensively, the research has not yet led to a firm conclusion as to its relationship with team outcomes. This study is one of the first to theorize affective climate and TMX as an important psychological mechanism and boundary condition to simultaneously influence the LMX differentiation – team performance relationship.

Accumulating evidence suggests that Team-member exchange (TMX) influences employee work attitudes and behaviours separately from the effects of leader-member exchange (LMX). In particular, little is known of the effect of LMX differentiation (in-group versus out-group) as a process of social exchange that can, in turn, affect TMX quality. To explore this phenomenon, this chapter presents a multi-level model of TMX in organizations, which incorporates LMX differentiation, team identification, team member affect at the individual level, and fairness of LMX differentiation and affective climate at the group-level. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our model for theory, research, and practice.

This paper aims to examine the mediating roles of self-efficacy and team commitment in linking service employees’ relative leader-member exchange (RLMX) with customer service behaviors and also the moderating roles of team-level differentiations in leader-member exchange (LMX) and team-member exchange (TMX) in influencing these mediation processes.

Data were collected from 467 customer-contact employees working in hotel restaurants. Hierarchical linear modeling analysis was used to test the mediation hypotheses, and moderated path was used to assess the moderated mediation.

Self-efficacy and team-commitment both mediated the relationship between RLMX and customer service behaviors. The differentiations in LMX and TMX significantly interacted with RLMX in predicting self-efficacy and team commitment and also moderated the indirect effects of RLMX on customer service behaviors.

Future studies need to incorporate customers’ or immediate supervisors’ ratings of subordinates’ customer service behaviors and replicate the findings in different countries and work settings.

Hospitality managers should foster a work environment wherein they develop equal quality relationships with their subordinates in a workgroup and promote high-quality relationships among subordinates in the workgroup to improve subordinates’ self-efficacy, team commitment and, subsequently, their customer service behaviors.

This study incorporates both self-efficacy and team commitment as motivation-based and social exchange-based mediators, respectively, in predicting customer service behavior. It also extends the boundary condition for the mediations by considering the team-level differentiations in both vertical exchange (LMX) and horizontal exchange (TMX).

Emotional intelligence (EI) is deemed important in developing interpersonal relationships. However, in the development of team-member exchange (TMX), the effect of EI on TMX and the team context have been largely ignored. For filling these gaps, this study explores the effect of employee EI on employee TMX and introduces EI-based leader-member exchange (LMX) differentiation as a team context to moderate the EI-TMX relationship.

Data were drawn from 51 teams (consisting of 293 followers and 51 team leaders) selected from 30 companies (across the industries of technology, real estate, commerce and manufacturing).

Results revealed that employee EI was positively related to employee TMX. EI acted as the basis of LMX differentiation (EI was positively related to LMX, EI variety was positively associated with LMX differentiation), and EI-based LMX differentiation acted as a favorable context for high-EI employees to develop high-quality TMX.

This study contributes to the understanding of EI’s significant and complex influence on interpersonal exchange relationships between leaders, followers and coworkers.

In the context of team's influence on its members, this paper aims to investigate the effects of team-member exchange (TMX) on members' innovative work behaviour (IWB). The current study presents a moderated mediation model and examines the mechanisms and conditions involved in TMX-IWB relationship.

A quantitative research methodology was adopted where 156 engineering and management students (grouped into 33 teams) were given a task in the form of an assignment to be completed in three weeks’ timeframe. Post task, perceptions about TMX and IWB of members were captured using a questionnaire and the innovative output of each team was assessed using multi-rater technique.

Psychological empowerment fully mediates TMX’s effect on team member's IWB. Furthermore, the results indicate that creative self-efficacy moderates the mediated path from TMX to IWB via psychological empowerment. The mediating effect of psychological empowerment is stronger when creative self-efficacy of a team member is higher. Furthermore, the relation between group-level innovative behaviour and the team's innovative output has been established.

The current research has contributed to the limited literature on team performance and management. This paper has uniquely investigated psychological empowerment in the context of TMX and IWB. The paper has encapsulated the theoretical and practical underpinnings of the mediated effect of psychological empowerment on team members' innovation-oriented behaviour.

Relying on the principles of the social exchange theory, the current study is aimed at investigating the impact of team-member exchange relationships (TMX) among school management team (SMT) members on school outcomes (organizational citizenship behavior [OCB], job satisfaction and innovation) via the mediating role of leader-member exchange (LMX) relationships between principals and SMTs.

Data were collected from multiple sources in 86 elementary and junior high schools to avoid one-source bias: 86 principals, 357 SMT members and 683 schoolteachers who were not members of the management teams.

The results revealed a positive relationship between TMX and teachers' job satisfaction and OCB, but no significant link between TMX and innovation. LMX partially mediated the relationship between TMX and OCB and between TMX and teachers' job satisfaction. Full mediation was found in TMX-innovation relationship.

The findings carry a message for school principals and policymakers regarding the importance of developing and maintaining high-quality horizontal and vertical exchange relationships among the SMT members for their positive influence on school outcomes.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to examine the link between TMX and LMX as a team phenomenon, and specifically in the educational setting. The finding that there is a positive link between the two constructs may imply that SMTs contribute to school success not only directly by exhibiting high-quality TMX but also indirectly through the high-quality LMX.

Previous studies have examined the empowerment of individual teachers, while neglecting the fact that such a phenomenon might grow within a team. Building on the crossover model and social exchange theory, the aim of this study is to explore whether team empowerment among school management teams (SMTs), is transmitted to the school level and affects schoolteachers' job satisfaction and thereby schoolteachers' organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Furthermore, we explored whether those relationships are moderated by team-member exchange (TMX) relationships.

Data were collected from 86 principals, 357 SMT members and 683 schoolteachers from 86 schools.

Results confirmed the mediating role of schoolteachers' job satisfaction, showing a positive relationship between SMT empowerment and schoolteachers' job satisfaction, and between job satisfaction and OCB. The moderation of TMX and the overall moderated mediation hypotheses were not supported.

The nature of data collected in the current study precludes any inference concerning the direction of casual links among the study constructs. Therefore, longitudinal studies could be designed, aimed at confirming the direction of links among the variables.

The findings reinforce the impact of schoolteachers' job satisfaction on achieving OCBs. Hence, SMT members carry the responsibility to cultivate satisfied schoolteachers through schools' support mechanisms and guidance in order to achieve schoolteachers' OCB.

The study identifies SMT empowerment as a key factor that may indirectly encourage schoolteachers to invest in OCBs through positive attitudes of schoolteachers' job satisfaction.

The aim is to test the influence of leader-member exchange relational separation (LMXRS) on individual creativity by building up a cross-level moderated mediation model. Besides exploring the mediating role of emotional support in linking LMXRS with individual creativity, this study also examines the moderating role of group-level team-leader exchange (TMX) in affecting the mediation.

Longitudinal data for 321 employees on 68 groups in over ten enterprises from China was employed to examine this model.

Results showed that LMXRS affected individual creativity negatively. Further, LMXRS had an indirect effect on individual creativity via emotional support. Finally, moderated path analysis revealed TMX median attenuated LMXRS direct influence on emotional support and indirect effect on individual creativity.

The empirical research investigates the mediating influence of emotional support on the association between LMXRS and individual creativity. The multilevel moderated mediation model also expands the current findings by examining that group-level TMX quality can moderate the indirect influence of LMXRS on individual creativity through emotional support.