The dark side of leader–member exchange: Observers' reactions when leaders target their teammates for abuse
研究团队中不同领导-成员交换水平的成员，在目睹领导对队友实施辱虐管理时的情绪和行为反应，发现高交换者更可能合理化辱虐并减少同情。
Abstract We draw on deonance theory and social learning theory to propose a framework that explains how individual team members with varying levels of leader–member exchange (LMX) with their team leader have different emotional and behavioral responses upon observing teammate‐directed abusive supervision. After employing a social relations paradigm with two‐wave round‐robin data collected from a sample of 378 engineers on 89 work teams, we did not find that witnessing teammate‐targeted abusive supervision increased sympathy for the targeted teammates, but we did find that observers with a higher level of LMX were more likely to legitimize such abuse and less likely to sympathize with its victims. Furthermore, we found that for individuals with a higher level of LMX, perceiving leaders' abusive supervision of teammates was negatively related to providing help to those teammates through the mediating role of sympathy for the teammates.