Leader–Member Exchange and Relational Quality in a Singapore Public Sector Organization

Abstract

An objective of Singapore's ongoing public sector reform (PS21) requires agencies to focus on getting the best out of its employees. One way of doing this is by creating a positive leadermember exchange (LMX) relationship, enabling supervisors to motivate their subordinates towards the development of organizational citizenship behaviours (OCB). This paper reports the extent of LMX and relational quality in a public sector agency experiencing PS21 reform and high staff turnover. In addition, we examined the effects of organisational justice perceptions and job satisfaction towards a subordinates' OCB. A path model was developed to examine the relationships between LMX, organisational justice, job satisfaction and OCB and tested by applying LMX theory. The path analysis results showed that LMX mediates the relationship between organisational justice perceptions and OCB. The results also showed that one's job satisfaction led to higher level of OCB. The study findings have implications for theory and practice which are presented in the discussion section.

Government Employees’ Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Impacts of Public Service Motivation, Organizational Identification, and Subjective OCB Norms

“…Although meta-analyses conducted by Organ and Ryan (1995) and Fassina, Jones, and Uggerslev (2008) showed a positive relationship between job satisfaction and OCB, and other studies (Bateman & Organ, 1983;1994;LePine et al, 2002;Morrison, 1994;Yoon & Suh, 2003) also confirmed job satisfaction as an independent predictor of OCB, the results of studies conducted in the public sector have not been so consistent. For example, while a positive association between job satisfaction and OCB was found in the studies conducted by Yeo et al (2013) and by Tang and Ibrahim (1998), the associations reported in studies conducted by Alotaibi (2001) and Kim (2006) were nonsignificant.…”

“…For example, while Tang and Ibrahim (1998) and Yeo et al (2013) reported a statistically significant relationship between job satisfaction and OCB, Kim (2006) did not find such a relationship in a sample of Korean civil servants. Moreover, results of other studies that have presented a statistically positive association between job satisfaction and OCB variables are inconclusive in that these findings were based primarily on bivariate correlation coefficients (Alotaibi, 2001;Noblet et al, 2006).…”

“…Early OCB studies focused on the relationship between job satisfaction and OCB based on the assumption that satisfied employees would be more grateful toward their employers and thus show more OCB (Smith, Organ, & Near, 1983), and previous OCB studies conducted in the public sector organizations have also examined the potential impact of job satisfaction on OCB (Alotaibi, 2001;Kim, 2006;Noblet et al, 2006;Tang & Ibrahim, 1998;Yeo, Ananthram, Teo, & Pearson, 2013). Although meta-analyses conducted by Organ and Ryan (1995) and Fassina, Jones, and Uggerslev (2008) showed a positive relationship between job satisfaction and OCB, and other studies (Bateman & Organ, 1983;1994;LePine et al, 2002;Morrison, 1994;Yoon & Suh, 2003) also confirmed job satisfaction as an independent predictor of OCB, the results of studies conducted in the public sector have not been so consistent.…”

Leadership Styles as Predictors of Work Attitudes: A Moderated–Mediation Link

“…Of note, not much research has been conducted on the possible differences between sectors in the working market (e.g., private, public, government). Most of the extant research has been concerned with investigating specific sectors, independently of each other (e.g., Kunze & Miller, 2017;Yeo, Ananthram, Teo, & Pearson, 2015) and scarcely have the different sector types been compared (but see Johnson, Leenders, & McCue, 2017;Top, Akdere, & Tarcan, 2015).…”

Trust, Leader-Member Exchange and Organizational Outcomes: A Structural Equation Model in the Malaysian Work Setting

“…As such, there would be a strong relationship between trust and LMX. Yeo et al (2015) found that LMX mediates the relationship between organizational justice and OCB in a Singapore public sector organization. LMX was also positively correlated to job satisfaction.…”