Are there career benefits to leaders and followers agreeing about the quality of their leader–member exchange (LMX) relationship? Is LMX disagreement always detrimental for a follower's career? Can the examination of LMX agreement as a substantive variable help us cast new light on some of the inconclusive findings of past research on LMX and career outcomes? These questions motivate our research. Using theories of social exchange and sponsorship, and responses from 967 leader–follower dyads of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) professionals in seven European countries, we examined the role of LMX agreement on subjective and objective career outcomes. After conducting polynomial regression combined with response surface analysis, we found that both follower-rated and leader-rated employability were higher when the leader agreed with the follower at a high level of LMX (vs. a low level of LMX). In case of disagreement, strong support was found for leader-rated employability being higher when the leader's perceptions of LMX exceeded those of their follower. Furthermore, follower-rated employability was found to mediate the relationship between LMX (dis)agreement and perceived career success, promotions, salary, and bonuses. Support was also found for the mediating role of leader-rated employability in the case of perceived career success, promotions, and salary but not for bonuses. Our findings highlight the importance of LMX (dis)agreement for career outcomes and further point to the possibility of employability offering an alternative explanation for the mixed findings of past LMX–career research.

中文翻译：

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“意见一致”对职业有何影响？检查领导-成员交换 (LMX) 协议对就业能力和职业成果的作用

领导者和追随者对他们的领导-成员交换 (LMX) 关系的质量达成一致是否有职业利益？LMX 分歧是否总是不利于追随者的职业生涯？将 LMX 协议作为一个实质性变量进行检查是否可以帮助我们对过去关于 LMX 和职业成果的研究的一些不确定的发现有新的认识？这些问题激发了我们的研究。使用社会交换和赞助的理论，以及来自七个欧洲国家的 967 名信息和通信技术 (ICT) 专业人士的领导与追随者的回应，我们研究了 LMX 协议对主观和客观职业成果的作用。进行多项式回归结合响应面分析后，我们发现，当领导者以高水平的 LMX（与低水平的 LMX）同意追随者时，追随者评级和领导者评级的就业能力都更高。在分歧的情况下，当领导者对 LMX 的看法超过其追随者的看法时，发现领导者评价就业能力更高的强烈支持。此外，发现追随者评级的就业能力在 LMX（不）同意与感知的职业成功、晋升、薪水和奖金之间的关系中起中介作用。在感知职业成功、晋升和薪水的情况下，领导者评级的就业能力的中介作用也得到了支持，但不是奖金。