56 The Influences of Leaders’ Negative Implicit Followership Theories on Employees’Work Behaviors: A DualPathway Model 1996). Moreover, leaders play an important role in influencing employees’ psychological empowerment (Seibert, Wang, and Courtright, 2011). A number of studies have shown that LMX—a construct reflecting leaders’ support and trust is positively correlated with psychological empowerment (Dulebohn, Bommer, Liden, Brouer, and Ferris, 2012). LMX theory contends that a leader develops differentiated relationships with subordinates (Graen and Uhl-Bien, 1995). Developing a high-quality LMX relationship means that any two parties are willing to invest time and resources in each other. However, when having only a limited amount of time and resources, leaders are unable to develop high-quality LMX relationships with all subordinates (Bolino and Turnley, 2009). Most leaders quickly form superficial and preliminary impressions of a specific subordinate. Specifically, a short interaction experience with a subordinate can instantly shape, trigger, or activate a leader’s unpleasant implicit theories, and determine or at least strongly influence the leader’s approach to future interactions with the subordinate (Epitropaki et al., 2013; Weick, 1995). Accordingly, the IFTs that leaders have can influence their initial attributions and interpretation of subordinates’ behaviors and performance. Sy (2010) states that “leaders’ IFTs may shape the pattern of interactions between leaders and followers because many aspects of dyadic relationships are based on the automatic use of implicit theories in perceiving and interpreting the behaviors of one’s dyadic partner”. Under the influence of their NIFTs, leaders tend to attribute negative traits to subordinates, whose behaviors, competence, and trustworthiness are cast in doubt. Therefore, leaders’ NIFTs are a disadvantageous factor impeding the relational investment and social exchanges between leaders and subordinates. With or without full awareness, leaders express their NIFTs through facial expressions or body language during encounters with subordinates (Epitropaki et al., 2013; Whiteley et al., 2012). Moreover, most subordinates can perceive and interpret their leaders’ messages (Weick, 1995) and can, thus, relatively correctly judge the quality of their relationship with their leaders. In this regard, we propose the following hypothesis. Hypothesis 4: Leaders’ NIFTs are negatively related to LMX. A high-quality LMX relationship is characterized by trust, loyalty, support, obligation, professional respect, and open communication (Graen and Uhl-Bien, 1995). In line with previous literature, we hold the view that LMX influences subordinates’ psychological
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