Abstract

The purpose of this study is two-fold. First is to investigate the influence of superior-subordinate's interdependency, the characteristics of superior's feedback and superior's leadership styles on subordinate's liking of his superior. Second is to investigate the influence of the superior-subordinate's interdependency and the levels of subordinate's performance on superior's liking of his subordinate. Two experiments were conducted in laboratory settings to achieve these purposes. The characteristics of superior's feedback and his leadership styles were differently manipulated in each experiment, that is, by the written message in the first experiment(study 1) and by the sound message in the second experiment(study 2). The results of this study are as follows. First, the subordinate who received positive feedback from his superior evaluated him more favorable than one who received negative feedback. Second, superior-subordinate's interdependency by the characteristics of superior's feedback interaction showed that the subordinate who can control benefit of his superior evaluated him more favorable in the positive and less favorable in the negative feedback condition than the subordinate who can't control benefit of his superior. Third, the characteristics of superior's feedback and his leadership styles had an interaction effect on subordinate's liking for him. Fourth, the superior evaluated his subordinate more favorable when his subordinate achieved high level of performance than low level of performance. In addition, superior-subordinate's interdependency by the levels of subordinate's perfomance interaction showed that the superior who can control benefit of his subordinate evaluated him more favorable in the high level of performance and less favorable in the low level of performance than the superior who can't control benefit of his subordinate. These results were discussed on the basis of exchange theory of leadership.