Employee work performance mediates empowering leader behavior and employee voice

Drawing on the practical perspective of empowerment, we investigated how empowering leader behavior influences employee voice via in-role (i.e., task performance) and extrarole (i.e., organizational citizenship behaviors toward individuals) performances, and examined the moderating effect of work stress on the empowering leader behavior–employee voice process. Using multiwave data from 996 supervisor–subordinate dyads, we found that empowering leader behavior promoted employee prosocial voice via organizational citizenship behaviors toward individuals, whereas it prohibited employee acquiescent voice and defensive voice via task performance. Further, work stress attenuated empowering leader behavior’s indirect effect on prosocial voice via organizational citizenship behaviors toward individuals, whereas it augmented empowering leader behavior’s indirect effects on employee acquiescent voice and defensive voice via task performance, respectively.