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Leader-member exchange is the foremost dyadic leadership theory. According to this approach, high-quality trust- and respect-based relationships between leaders and employees are the cornerstone of leadership.

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Leader-member exchange (LMX) is the foremost dyadic theory in the leadership literature. Whereas contemporary leadership theories such as transformational, servant, or authentic leadership theories focus on the effects of leader behaviors on employee attitudes, motivation, and team outcomes, relational leadership theory views the dyadic relationship quality between leaders and members as the key to understanding leader effects on members, teams, and organizations.
This approach views trust- and respect-based relationships as the cornerstone of leadership.

LMX has grown from a new theory in the 1970s to a mature area of research in 2015. Interest in this theory has increased rapidly over the past four decades, and the pace of research in this area continues to accelerate dramatically. The Oxford Handbook of Leader-Member Exchange takes stock of the literature to examine its roots, what is currently known, what research gaps may exist, and what areas are in need of the most urgent research.

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Talya N. Bauer (Ph.D., Purdue University) is Cameron Professor of Management at Portland State University, and Berrin Erdogan (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Chicago) is Professor of Management at Portland State University. Both are fellows of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and the American Psychological Association, and are well-known scholars in the area of leader-member exchange (LMX). Since 1996 they have been engaged in understanding
how LMX relationships form, develop, and evolve. In addition, they have examined important boundary conditions related to understanding LMX. Bauer is Associate Editor for the Journal of Applied Psychology and Erdogan is Associate Editor for Personnel Psychology.

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