Psychology Commons^™

Disability Severity, Professional Isolation Perceptions, And Career Outcomes: When Does Leader–Member Exchange Quality Matter?, Brent J. Lyons, David C. Baldridge, Liu-Qin Yang, Camellia Bryan

Psychology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Employees with disability-related communication impairment often experience isolation from professional connections that can negatively affect their careers. Management research suggests that having lower quality leader relationships can be an obstacle to the development of professional connections for employees with disabilities. However, in this paper we suggest that lower quality leader–member exchange (LMX) relationships may not be a uniform hurdle for the professional isolation of employees with disability-related communication impairment. Drawing on psychological disengagement theory, we predict that employees with more severe, rather than less severe, communication impairment develop resilience to challenges in lower quality LMX relationships by psychologically disengaging from …