The (In)Congruence Effect of Leaders’ Humility Identity and Reputation on Employee Voice Behavior

Leader humility is characterized as an explicit and altruistic leadership, which any related outcomes associated with, are emerge from the interactions between leaders and their followers. Interestingly, a scarcity of research considers whether correspondence between the judgments of employees regarding their leaders' humility and leaders’ self-perceptions can yield significant and distinct insights. Based on socioanalytic theory, a mediation model was developed to explore the potential link between (in)congruence on leaders’ self-perception of humility (i.e., identity) and followers’ perceptions of their leaders’ humility (i.e., reputation) and employee voice behavior via organization-based self-esteem. The survey was conducted with 333 employees and 98 corresponding supervisors in several large manufacturing enterprises on the mainland of China. Testing the hypotheses was conducted through cross-level polynomial regressions and response surface analyses. Our findings indicate that leaders’ humility identity-reputation congruence effects are more likely to facilitate followers’ voice behavior. Specifically, identity–reputation congruence at a high level of leaders’ humility were correlated with higher levels of employee voice behavior, in contrast to situations where such congruence occurs at a low level. Furthermore, the congruence between leaders’ humility identity and reputation is associated with employee voice behavior through organization-based self-esteem.