Influence of Leader–leader Exchange on Team Prosocial Voice: Empowering Leader Behavior as a Mediator

Abstract

As the business environment becomes more competitive and uncertain, organizations are increasingly relying on their employees' knowledge and ideas. This study focused on leader–leader exchange (LLX) to explore how it affects team prosocial voice through the empowering behavior of team leaders. We also investigated the moderating role of team proactive behavior. Through empirical testing of matched data from 182 pairs of leaders and members of a large enterprise in China, we found that LLX positively affected team prosocial voice behavior, and that leader empowering behavior played an intermediary role between LLX and team prosocial voice behavior, such that high LLX increased empowering leader behavior and thus improved team prosocial voice. Finally, we found that the moderating effect of team proactive behavior on the relationship between empowerment leader behavior and team prosocial voice was not significant. Implications of our findings are discussed.