The influencing mechanism of leader and employee exchange satisfaction on employees’ proactive behavior

On the basis of social exchange theory, we proposed the concept of exchange satisfaction, which refers to employees’ and leaders’ subjective perception of and degree of satisfaction with the quality of leader–member exchange. We found through an empirical study that exchange satisfaction had a significant positive impact on employees’ proactive behaviors. Further, the higher the consistency between leader’s exchange satisfaction and employees’ exchange satisfaction, the greater was employees’ work engagement, especially in the case of high–high consistency, where employees performed best when their proactive behaviors were affected via work engagement. Finally, employees’ work engagement was greater and their proactive behaviors were more prominent when the satisfaction of the leader was higher than that of the employees. This research provides a new perspective and basis for understanding the leader–employee dual interaction.