Abstract: Chinese indigenized Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) refers to vertical relationship based on work between supervisor and subordinate. The controversies on LMX’s concepts and measures in western literature are found to be the conflicts between single dimension and multiple dimension, “relationship” and “exchange”, vertical dyad relationship and social network relationship. The indigenized LMX in China largely consists of the incomplete indigenization and the indirect indigenization of LMX theories. There are six typical scales of LMX, which are LMX-7, LMX-MDM, Supervisor-subordinate Guanxi Scale, Subordinate-supervisor Relationship Type Scale and so on. To sum up, the indigenous LMX concept includes the definition, classification standards, basic dimensions, quality evaluation of LMX and so on. The measuring approaches of LMX are therefore recommended to start from the analysis of cultural differences, psychometric adequacy, and validity examination.

Key words: leadership, Leader-Member Exchange (LMX), Guanxi, indigenization