As the employees’positions rise, the stimulation of employee followership has become an important issue for organizations. Starting from the phenomenon that employees and leaders have unequal perceptions of their relationship quality (LMX), based on role theory, this study constructs a theoretical model of the effects of LMX combinations on followership and examines the boundary conditions of traditionality and perceived strength of human resource management. By collecting data from paired sample of 75 leaders and 350 employees and conducting latent profile analysis, polynomial regression and response surface analysis, the results show that: There are four combinations of LMX between employees and leaders. Specifically, “high-high” combination is more likely to stimulate followership than “low-low” combination, and “high-low” combination is more likely to stimulate followership than “low-high” combination. Moreover, the relationship between different LMX combinations and followership is moderated by employees’ traditionality and perceived strength of human resource management (PHRMS). Specifically, when employees’ traditionality is high, the relationship between the “high-high” combination and followership is enhanced compared to the “low-low” combination, and the relationship between the “low-high” combination and followership is enhanced compared to the “high-low” combination. What’s more, when employees’ PHRMS is high, the relationship between the “low-low” combination and followership is amplified compared to the “high-high” combination, and the relationship between the “high-low” combination and followership is amplified compared to the “low-high” combination. This study deepens our understandings of the different influences and boundary conditions of LMX combination on followership, and provides theoretical sights and practical implications to address unbalanced relationship between employees and leaders.