Leader–member exchange and turnover before and after succession events Gary A. Ballinger a, * , David W. Lehman b , F. David Schoorman c a University of Virginia, McIntire School of Commerce, Monroe Hall, P.O. Box 400173, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4173, United States b National University of Singapore, School of Business, 15 Kent Ridge Drive, Singapore 119245, Singapore c Purdue University, Krannert Graduate School of Management, 425 West State Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2056, United States article info Article history: Received 15 February 2008 Accepted 27 April 2010 Available online 31 May 2010 Accepted by Daan van Knippenberg Keywords: LMX Turnover Leadership succession Groups Affect abstract We conducted two studies that investigated the role of leadership succession as a moderator of the rela- tionship between LMX and turnover in organizations. In a sample of 330 employees in 45 veterinary hos- pitals, high-LMX employees were less likely to leave the organization prior to a succession event but in nine hospitals that experienced a succession event, high-LMX employees were more likely to leave than low-LMX employees following the event. In the second study, we used a between subjects repeated mea- sures simulation of leadership succession in a survey of 496 employed adults across different organiza- tions. We found LMX is predictive of affective and cognitive reactions to succession events, and that these reactions mediate the relationship between LMX and turnover intentions after a simulated succession event. We discuss the implications of finding that succession events can be disruptive to organizations and groups because high-LMX employees may subsequently leave. Ó 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Introduction There has been a renewed interest in the role interpersonal rela- tionships play in building attachments to organizations and in reducing turnover (Mitchell, Holtom, Lee, Sablynski, & Erez, 2001; Mossholder, Settoon, & Henagan, 2005). High-quality rela- tionships with other individuals in the workplace are seen as increasing ‘‘embeddedness” in the organization (Mitchell et al., 2001) and decreasing the likelihood of an individual deciding to leave. Research on leader–member exchange (LMX) highlights the positive power of high-quality leader–member relations in embedding staff in the organization and increasing retention (Bauer, Erdogan, Liden, & Wayne, 2006; Ferris, 1985; Gerstner & Day, 1997; Graen, Liden, & Hoel, 1982). Yet this embeddedness may be fragile if it is based only on a relationship with the leader. What happens when the leader leaves the group? Do those individ- uals who had a high-quality relationship stay or do they leave? Recent theoretical discussions point to the potential impact of leadership succession events on individuals’ emotions and attitudes at work (Ballinger & Schoorman, 2007) and, not surpris- ingly, these discussions suggest that those individuals closest to an outgoing leader would be most affected by the loss of that leader. Our primary aim in this paper is to better understand how leadership succession events shape the turnover behaviors and intentions of those group members left behind. We argue that leadership succession events produce such a significant shock to a workgroup that those who were least likely to leave prior to the event are most likely to leave after the event. Whereas most re- search tends to view high-quality leader–member relationships as a force that embeds an individual into an organization, we suggest that following a succession event, it may be viewed as a force that actually drives an individual away from an organization. In other words, we propose that leadership succession events should moder- ate the LMX-turnover relationship such that high-LMX should in- deed be negatively related to turnover as is traditionally believed but only so long as the leader remains; however, high-LMX with an outgoing leader should be positively related to turnover. In this paper we report results of two complementary studies investigating the role of leader–member exchange (LMX) in employ- ee turnover and turnover intentions before and after leadership suc- cession events. In the first study, we used archival and survey data to demonstrate the role of high-LMX as a force that drives employee turnover following the tenure of the work group leader (Maertz & Griffeth, 2004). In the second study, we used a between subjects re- peated measures design to test how affective and cognitive reactions to a hypothetical leadership succession event mediated the effects of LMX on turnover intentions. These complementary approaches should help us better understand how individuals make judgments about the succession and decisions about whether to leave the 0749-5978/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.obhdp.2010.04.003 * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: ballinger@virginia.edu (G.A. Ballinger), dwlehman@nus.edu.sg (D.W. Lehman), schoor@purdue.edu (F.D. Schoorman). Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 113 (2010) 25–36 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/obhdp