Incidence of Leader–Member Exchange Quality, Communication Satisfaction, and Employee Work Engagement on Self-Evaluated Work Performance

Abstract

Within the scope of the Theory of Demands and Labor Resources, the Healthy & Resilient Organizations (HERO) Model, and the Leader–Member Exchange (LMX) Theory, this research contrasts a mediation model in which evidence on the factors that affect work performance is integrated, thus establishing the direct and indirect relationships between LMX quality, communication satisfaction, employee work engagement, and self-rated work performance. A total of 488 workers participated in this research. Adequate goodness of fit was found in the model (χ2 = 3876.996, df = 3715, p = 0.031; χ2/df = 1.044; CFI = 0.999; TLI = 0.999; SRMR = 0.056; RMSEA = 0.010): the LMX–work performance relationship is mediated by communication satisfaction and work engagement, whereas the LMX–work engagement relationship is mediated by communication satisfaction. This has led to the conclusion that, as employees consider the relationship with their superiors to be of higher quality, the satisfaction they experience in terms of organizational communication increases, and as organizational communication satisfaction increases, the extent to which employees feel more vigorous, involved and concentrated, and absorbed by work also increases, which, in turn, leads them to perceive their work performance to be higher.