Peering Into The Black Box Of Dyadic Relationships: A model to describe Dyadic Relationship Quality (DRQ) Development

This thesis addresses the research question of how trust and relational leadership interact; it offers a model to describe how the quality of leader-follower relationships develops and explains how context impacts on these relations. There is a large body of scholarly research focused on leadership and leading, and millions of dollars and pounds are spent each year in attempting to understand and improve the practice of leading in the workplace (Day & Antonakis 2012). A growing body of thought suggests that rather than focusing on leaders, the focus should be on relationships within organizations as they “are central to social and organizational life” (Uhl-Bien, Maslyn and Ospina, 2012:291). An essential part of leader-follower relationships is trust (e.g. from Blau in 1964 to Bligh & Kohles in 2013). It is the ability of trust to support a relationship when “uncertainty, vulnerability, the stakes and relational interdependence are all high” (Li, 2012:102) which makes its inclusion essential in any attempt to describe dyadic relationship quality. In order to understand relationships, however, we also need to understand the environment in which they occur, the context in which they are embedded.
Empirical work for this thesis was carried out through qualitative research and mixed methods of analysis. Sixty semi-structured interviews were conducted in a longitudinal study of twelve leader-follower relationships. Qualitative and quantitative data analysis methods were used to develop a model that describes leader-follower relationship development and accounts for contextual influences on the dyad. This model also suggests a definition for Dyadic Relationship Quality (DRQ) and descriptors for differentiating between high and low quality relations in the workplace. The DRQ model offers an academic framework with which to better understand workplace relations, which could support practitioners through improved collaboration and organizational outcomes as well as being used to enhance leadership training and development.