Development and validation of the Legitimate Monitoring and Control Questionnaire (LMCQ)

In this paper, we present the multidimensional Legitimate Monitoring and Control Questionnaire (LMCQ), which is based on social-exchange and institutional theory. Our aim was to develop and validate a widely applicable leadership inventory that accounts for comparable criterion variance as transformational leadership. While transformational leadership scales emphasize charismatic or visionary behavior, the basis for the LMCQ is the belief that perceptions of control legitimacy are essential and lead to high-quality social-exchange relationships between supervisors and subordinates. To build the dimensions comprising the LMCQ, an exploratory study (study 1, 38 respondents) was conducted to investigate which kinds of socioemotional benefits actually drive subordinates' perceptions of control legitimacy. The interview data were used to compile an initial item pool that was condensed as a subsequent step (study 2, 494 respondents). Lastly, the resulting measurement instrument representing six dimensions of legitimacy-enhancing supervisory behavior was validated (study 3, 936 respondents).