ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1615144
Inclusive Leadership and Employee Job Performance: Mediation of Leader-member Exchange and Organizational Identification
Provisionally accepted
- 1Institute of Psychology and Behavior, Henan University, Kaifeng, China
- 2Henan University of Animal Husbandry and Economy, Zhengzhou, Henan Province, China
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Background: Previous studies indicated that inclusive leadership is related to a series of positive working outcomes, but the internal acting mechanism remains unclear. This study used a three-month longitudinal design to investigate the acting mechanism of inclusive leadership on individual job performance by introducing leader-member exchange and organizational identification as mediators.Methods: The data were collected through self-reported questionnaires and a leader-rated survey of 206 employees of a car battery manufacturer in central China. Results: The results revealed that inclusive leadership is positively associated with job performance, leader-member exchange, and organizational identification. A hierarchical regression and bootstrap analysis indicated that organizational identification and leader-member exchange significantly mediated the relationship between inclusive leadership and job performance, and the structural equation model supported the results. Conclusions: The findings provide significant lessons for how organizations can gain a competitive advantage in terms of employee performance by fostering inclusive leadership, leadermember exchange, and organizational identification.
Keywords: inclusive leadership, job performance, leader-member exchange, Organizational identification, longitudinal design
Received: 19 May 2025; Accepted: 21 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Feng, Wang and Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Kai Feng, Henan University of Animal Husbandry and Economy, Zhengzhou, Henan Province, China
Yongxin Li, Institute of Psychology and Behavior, Henan University, Kaifeng, China
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