International Journal of Business Communication 1–25 © The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/2329488415597517 jbc.sagepub.com Article An Examination of Leader-Member Dyadic Politeness of Exchange and Servant Leadership on Group Member Performance Hassan Abu Bakar 1 and Robert M. McCann 2 Abstract Integrating conversational constraint theory and models of homophily and relational dyadic communication, this study investigates how leader-member politeness exchange and servant leadership influence group member performance in a Malaysian organizational context. Using hierarchical linear modeling with data obtained from a sample of 510 employees, 65 workgroups, and 3 organizations, a politeness of exchange-servant leadership model was tested. Results show that servant leadership was positively and significantly associated with workgroup manager’s ratings of group member’s performance. The positive association between servant leadership and group member performance is more pronounced when managers and members in workgroups are high in politeness of exchange in their interactions. As predicted, leader-member dyadic politeness of exchange within the workgroup manager-group member dyads moderated this positive association. Keywords leader-member, politeness exchange, servant leadership, cross-level analysis, group performance, Malaysia A substantial body of literature on the relationship between leader-member dyadic interaction and group outcomes has been amassed over the past few decades (see 1 Universiti Utara Malaysia, Sintok, Malaysia 2 University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA Corresponding Author: Hassan Abu Bakar, School of Multimedia Technology and Communication, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Sintok 06010, Malaysia. Email: abhassan@uum.edu.my 597517JOB XX X 10.1177/2329488415597517International Journal of Business CommunicationAbu Bakar and McCann research-article 2015 at UNIV NEBRASKA LIBRARIES on October 24, 2015 job.sagepub.com Downloaded from brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by UUM Repository