Studies have shown that voice behavior, beneficial to an organization, can be triggered by employee and supervisor factors. Nevertheless, these studies may have overlooked the significant impact of employee-supervisor traits on employees’ voice behavior. Incorporating complementary theory and role theory with voice literature, we examine whether and how the (in)congruence of employee and supervisor proactive personalities influences employee voice behavior. A multiphase, multisource field study was conducted to test our hypotheses. Based on data from 173 supervisor-employee dyads in China, we conducted polynomial regression analyses and discovered that employees experienced higher levels of voice role conceptualization when employee and supervisor were incongruent with proactive personalities. The results further revealed asymmetric incongruence effects: employees experienced the highest levels of voice role conceptualization when their own proactive personality was higher than their supervisor’s. In addition, we found that voice role conceptualization mediated the impacts of employee-supervisor (in)congruence in proactive personality on employee voice behavior.
