娀 Academy of Management Journal

2012, Vol. 55, No. 1, 111–130.

http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amj.2009.0865

LEADER-FOLLOWER CONGRUENCE IN PROACTIVE

PERSONALITY AND WORK OUTCOMES: THE MEDIATING
ROLE OF LEADER-MEMBER EXCHANGE
ZHEN ZHANG
Arizona State University

MO WANG
University of Florida

JUNQI SHI
Peking University

Drawing upon prior research on proactive personality and person-environment fit, we

examine the congruence effect of leader and follower proactive personality on leader-
member exchange (LMX) quality, which in turn influences follower job satisfaction,
affective commitment, and job performance. Results of cross-level polynomial regres-
sions on 165 dyads supported the congruence effect hypothesis. Further, asymmetrical
incongruence effects were found wherein followers had lower-quality LMX and poorer
work outcomes when their proactive personality was lower than their leaders’ as
compared with when their proactive personality was higher. These findings highlight
the pivotal role played by leaders in promoting employee proactivity at work.

Organizations are relying more upon the initia-
tives of employees as a consequence of heightened
global competition and the need for continuous
innovation (Frese, Garst, & Fay, 2007; Grant & Ash-
ford, 2008; Morrison & Phelps, 1999). Mere com-
pletion of assigned tasks is no longer sufficient for
an employee, and being proactive has become a
highly desirable qualification for many jobs (Chan,
2006; Erdogan & Bauer, 2005; Frese & Fay, 2001;
Parker, Bindl, & Strauss, 2010). Proactive personal-
ity, one of the most important dispositional ante-
cedents of proactive behavior at work, has thus
received extensive research attention (e.g., Ashford
& Black, 1996; Lambert, Eby, & Reeves, 2006; Li,
Liang, & Crant, 2010; Parker, Williams, & Turner,
2006; Seibert, Kraimer, & Crant, 2001; Thompson,
We thank Associate Editor Elizabeth Morrison and the
three anonymous reviewers for their insightful com-
ments and suggestions. We are also grateful to Cheri
Ostroff and Jinyan Fan for their advice on earlier
versions of the article. This research was supported
in part by National Natural Science Foundation of China
(no. 91024032) and a Key Project in the Chinese National
Science and Technology Pillar Program (no.
2009BAI77B04).
Correspondence regarding this article should be ad-
dressed to Zhen Zhang or to Junqi Shi.
Editor’s note: The manuscript for this article was ac-
cepted for publication during the term of AMJ’s previous
editor-in-chief, R. Duane Ireland.
111
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2005). Proactive personality refers to the enduring
behavioral tendency of people to take action to
influence their environment (Bateman & Crant,
1993). People high in proactive personality seek to
improve current circumstances and “identify op-
portunities and act on them, show initiative, take
action, and persevere until meaningful changes oc-
cur” (Crant, 2000: 439). In contrast, people low in
proactive personality do not challenge the status
quo, fail to identify opportunities, show little ini-
tiative, and only passively adapt to their work con-
ditions. Employee proactive personality predicts
various individual and organizational outcomes,
including career success (e.g., Seibert, Crant, &
Kraimer, 1999; Van Dyne & LePine, 1998; Van Scot-
ter, Motowidlo, & Cross, 2000; also see a meta-
analysis by Fuller and Marler [2009]), job perfor-
mance (Crant, 1995; Thompson, 2005), innovation
and creativity (Parker et al., 2006), entrepreneur-
ship (Becherer & Maurer, 1999), and newcomers’
socialization (Kammeyer-Mueller & Wanberg, 2003).
Although researchers have started to use a dy-
adic, relational approach to examine the outcomes
of employee proactive personality and behavior
(e.g., Frese, Teng, & Wijnen, 1999; Li et al., 2010;
Parker et al., 2006), a critical question remains re-
garding a leader’s role in shaping the relationship
between employee proactive personality and work
outcomes. Prior research has commonly focused on
proactive employees as the agents for enacting pos-
112 Academy of Management Journal
itive changes and improving existing processes in
workplaces (e.g., Parker & Sprigg, 1999; Seibert et
al., 1999; Thompson, 2005). However, it has largely
overlooked the roles played by other stakeholders
(including leaders) in these workplaces. Proactive
employees do not live in a social vacuum. In their
pursuit of influencing their work environment, pro-
active employees seek allies and gather social sup-
port to achieve their objectives (Erdogan & Bauer,
2005). Other individuals at work inevitably affect
their initiatives for “enacting” the environment,
among whom the leader of the proactive employ-
ees’ work group is perhaps the most important per-
son (Campbell, 2000).
Leaders control job-related resources and evalu-
ate employees’ performance, and thus they can
play a critical role in affecting employees’ engage-
ment in initiative taking, as well as its outcomes.
Research has shown that leaders’ response to em-
ployees’ proactivity is crucial for proactive employ-
ees’ work outcomes. For example, Grant, Parker,
and Collins (2009) contended that leaders may
make different attributions for followers’ proactive
behavior, which can result in either positive or
negative performance evaluations. Moreover,
Campbell (2000) acknowledged an “initiative par-
adox” for leaders, referring to the fact that although
some leaders overtly encourage employee proactiv-
ity, they may view it as a threat when employees
challenge accepted practices (cf. Frese & Fay, 2001;
Miceli & Near, 1994; Morrison & Phelps, 1999;
Parker et al., 2006). Also, as Frese and Fay (2001)
suggested, employees’ initiatives may be greeted
with skepticism when leaders do not share the em-
ployees’ perspective on enacting constructive
change and seeking improvement. As such, it is
important to examine the congruence, or fit, be-
tween employees’ and leaders’ proactive personal-
ities, rather than to look at employees’ proactive
personalities alone, in predicting their work
outcomes.
In this study, we examine the joint effect of
leader and follower proactive personality on fol-
lower work outcomes. Drawing upon the literature
on person-environment fit (specifically, person-
supervisor fit [Kristof, 1996; Kristof-Brown, Zim-
merman, & Johnson, 2005]) and on research on
dyadic goal congruence, we examine the effects of
congruence and incongruence in leader-follower
proactive personality on follower work outcomes
(i.e., job satisfaction, affective commitment, and job
performance) that are mediated via LMX quality.
By hypothesizing and testing these relationships,
we make three important contributions. First, we
contribute to work on proactive personality by con-
ceptualizing and showing the need for leaders to
February
match followers in proactive personality to en-
hance work outcomes. Extant research has largely
kept leaders in the distal background when exam-
ining the employee proactivity-outcome relation-
ship. This theoretical treatment tends to ignore the
important contextual effect of leader characteristics
in influencing how employee proactive personality
may manifest its effects on work outcomes. This is
problematic, because previous research has shown
that leaders play an important role in shaping how
employees’ personalities influence their job atti-
tudes and job performance (Kamdar & Van Dyne,
2007). Therefore, in the current study, we explicitly
incorporated leader proactive personality into the
model by integrating the person-supervisor fit lit-
erature and proactive personality literature. We not
only examine the various congruence effects of
leader and follower proactive personalities, but
also identify differing outcomes generated in two
scenarios of incongruence (i.e., when a leader has
either higher or lower proactive personality than a
follower). This comparison provides an opportu-
nity to achieve a more nuanced understanding of
congruence and incongruence effects of leader-fol-
lower proactive personality, thus helping us to de-
lineate the complex effects that may result from
different patterns of leader-member matching on
proactive personality (Grant & Ashford, 2008).
Second, we contribute to the theory and research
on person-supervisor fit by explicitly examining a
relationship-based mechanism that links person-
supervisor fit (i.e., dyadic congruence in leader-
follower proactive personality) to positive work
outcomes. Prior person-supervisor fit research has
typically examined the direct relationship between
fit and follower work outcomes without delineating
the underlying mechanisms. In the current study,
we propose and test a relationship-centered vari-
able (LMX quality) as the mediator and try to ex-
plicitly link the differing effects of congruence and
incongruence in leader-follower proactive person-
ality to employees’ attitudes toward their job and
their organization, and their levels of job perfor-
mance via this relationship-based mechanism. By
exploring this mediation model, we provide a di-
rect test of the potential relational mechanism that
links person-supervisor fit to followers’ job atti-
tudes and performance.
Third, this study extends the LMX literature by
examining proactive personality congruence and
incongruence between follower and leader as ante-
cedents of LMX quality. Previous research that has
studied antecedents of LMX has either overlooked
the effects of personality congruence and incongru-
ence between follower and leader (e.g., Li et al.,
2010; Wayne, Shore, & Liden, 1997) or only focused
2012 Zhang, Wang, and Shi
on the similarity in affect-related traits between
follower and leader (e.g., positive affectivity [Bauer
& Green, 1996]). Therefore, the effects on LMX of
congruence and incongruence between leader and
follower in traits related to work motivation, such
as proactive personality (Parker et al., 2010), re-
main to be examined. It is important to study traits
related to work motivation, because they are
closely related to employees’ attitudes and behav-
iors at work (Erdogan & Bauer, 2005) and are often
one of the components in employee selection tests
(Chan, 2006). In addition, diverging from previous
studies that have relied on the similarity-likeability
argument in theorizing an effect of leader-member
similarity on LMX (e.g., Bauer & Green, 1996), we
used dyadic goal congruence as the explanatory
mechanism to hypothesize and test proactive per-
sonality congruence and incongruence effects on
LMX quality. By doing so, we also enrich the the-
oretical mechanisms for LMX development.
LEADER-FOLLOWER CONGRUENCE IN
PROACTIVE PERSONALITY
Leader-follower congruence in personal charac-
teristics has been an important line of research in
both the relational demography literature (e.g., Tsui
& O’Reilly, 1989) and the person-environment fit
literature (particularly in regard to person-supervi-
sor fit [Kristof-Brown, Zimmerman, & Johnson,
2005]). Dyadic congruence in personality between
a follower and a leader has been shown to result in
superior work outcomes (e.g., Schaubroeck & Lam,
2002; Strauss, Barrick, & Connerley, 2001). In the
present study, we draw upon person-environment
fit theory as well as research on goal congruence to
examine the effect of leader and follower congru-
ence in proactive personality. Proactive personality
is a person’s behavioral proclivity to influence his
or her work environment to improve work life
(Bateman & Crant, 1993; Crant, 2000). Clearly re-
flected in this definition are proactive employees’
work goals of seeking continuous improvement in
work processes and outcomes (Parker et al., 2010).
When a leader and a follower are congruent in their
levels of proactive personality, they tend to have
similar goals of improving their work environment.
We expect that this similarity in work goals can
facilitate the dyadic interactions that, over time,
help to develop better dyadic relationships (i.e.,
higher LMX quality).
LMX refers to the dyadic exchange relationship
between a leader and a follower (Graen & Uhl-Bien,
1995; Liden & Maslyn, 1998). Evolved from role
theory, LMX theory posits that a dyadic relation-
ship is developed over time during a series of ex-
113
change processes, including “role taking” during
initial interactions, “role making” (the ongoing pro-
cesses of leaders’ delegation and followers’ meeting
expectations, and role negotiation), and “role rou-
tinization” (Bauer & Green, 1996; Dienesch &
Liden, 1986; Graen & Scandura, 1987). The result of
this series of processes is that leaders develop
unique relationships with each of their individual
followers. The quality of these relationships ranges
from low, characterized by transactional exchange
based on employment contract, to high, character-
ized by trust, respect, loyalty, and mutual obliga-
tions (Liden & Maslyn, 1998; Liden, Sparrowe, &
Wayne, 1997).
According to LMX theory (Dienesch & Liden,
1986; Graen & Scandura, 1987), the “sent roles” and
the responses of both parties during their initial
and subsequent interactions can impact the quality
of the dyadic relationship later on. In the role-
taking phase, relationship testing occurs when a
leader “sends roles” to a follower (e.g., assigning a
trial task) and evaluates the follower’s responses.
The follower’s successful fulfillment of the role
requirements allows the leader to send other roles
and continue to build the relationship. When the
dyad progresses to the role-making phase, both par-
ties can send roles to each other and evaluate the
other’s responses. In the role routinization phase,
the relationship becomes formalized and affect-
laden (Graen & Scandura, 1987).
We expect dyadic congruence in proactive per-
sonality to not only play a salient role in the initial
stage of leader-member interaction, but also serve
as the basis for work goal congruence that facili-
tates both parties’ expectations and increases the
predictability of the other party’s reactions. Over
time, proactive personality congruence between
leader and follower can help them to develop high-
quality LMX. This is because a critical role of lead-
ers is to define goals for work groups and to align
the efforts of followers with these goals (Colbert,
Kristof-Brown, Bradley, & Barrick, 2008), and
leader-follower proactive personality congruence
can lead to higher levels of dyadic goal congruence
regarding continuous workplace improvement.
This goal congruence helps to establish high-qual-
ity LMX relationships because it saves the leaders’
time and resources by allowing them to skip the
goal-setting processes and save on goal alignment
effort. Therefore, a leader-follower dyad whose
members have similar levels of proactive personal-
ity will be more efficient in setting up mutually
agreed upon role expectations regarding whether to
enact their environment and to improve work pro-
cesses. This shared perspective on work goals is
likely to facilitate the two parties’ coordinated in-
114 Academy of Management Journal
teraction (Meglino, Ravlin, & Adkins, 1991). When
both parties understand each others’ behavioral ex-
pectations better, they behave in a way that is
aligned with each others’ preferences even when
consistent monitoring or provision of incentives is
absent. This can result in greater leader delegation,
which has been proved to be a very useful predictor
of LMX quality (Bauer & Green, 1996). Specifically,
when a leader and a follower share a high level of
proactive personality, they can easily form a high-
quality relationship characterized by a common
preference for enacting improvement in their work-
place. When both parties prefer stability and main-
tenance of the status quo (i.e., both are low in
proactive personality), they can also easily form a
high-quality relationship based on such a common
preference.
As we argued above, shared aspirations and goals
facilitate the development of high-quality relation-
ships because each party has a vested interest in
fulfilling these goals. Prior research has indirectly
supported this argument by showing positive out-
comes of leader-follower goal congruence, includ-
ing better follower attitudes (e.g., Vancouver &
Schmitt, 1991; Vancouver, Millsap, & Peters, 1994)
and a less negative impact of organizational politics
on followers (Witt, 1998). Moreover, research in
conflict resolution has shown that perceived goal
congruence promotes better cooperation among the
involved parties (Deutsch, 1973) and more effective
integration of their opinions (e.g., Tjosvold, 1998).
In sum, we expect that the enhanced attitudes and
cooperation that result from shared perceptions of
work goals can facilitate interaction in the role-
taking and role-making phases of LMX develop-
ment. In contrast, leader-follower incongruence in
proactive personality is likely to be detrimental to
dyadic relationships because the difference in pro-
active personality may hinder the members of a
dyad from forming a shared perspective on im-
provement as the work goal, thus making it difficult
for both parties to set the social exchange in motion
and to maintain the exchange process over time.
Our above argument is also consistent with the
notion of “supplementary fit,” in which a follower
fits into a work environment because he or she
supplements or possesses certain characteristics
that are similar to those of others in the workplace
(Muchinsky & Monahan, 1987). It is notable that
several studies have shown that positive work out-
comes may also result from opposite personality
characteristics in a dyad (i.e., complementary fit
may exist between, for example, an extraverted
leader and an introverted follower [Kristof-Brown,
Barrick, & Stevens, 2005] or a dominant leader and
a submissive follower [Glomb & Welsh, 2005]).
February
However, our arguments above lead us to expect
that dyadic similarity (supplementary fit) in proac-
tive personality, rather than dissimilarity (comple-
mentary fit), is associated with goal congruence
that facilitates the development of high-quality
LMX as well as better work outcomes. As Kristof-
Brown, Zimmerman, and Johnson (2005: 290) con-
tended, for goals, congruence (as well as supple-
mentary fit) is always preferable because “sharing
goals makes it more likely that individuals will
receive support and reinforcement for goal attain-
ment.” Therefore, we expect that two equally pro-
active (or nonproactive) individuals are more likely
to have a rewarding interpersonal relationship be-
cause they have shared perspectives regarding ef-
fecting continuous improvement at work. We thus
hypothesize a higher level of LMX quality for dyads
whose members are congruent in their levels of
proactive personality.
Hypothesis 1. The more aligned a follower’s
and his or her leader’s levels of proactive per-
sonality are (i.e., higher congruence), the better
the leader-member exchange (LMX) quality.
Leaders and followers can be congruent at either
high or low levels of proactive personality. Because
proactive employees seek out ways to improve
their work life, when a proactive follower teams up
with a proactive leader, their common understand-
ing of work goals (i.e., making improvements) may
encourage them to exert effort to develop a better
work relationship. In contrast, when follower and
leader are congruent at low levels of proactive per-
sonality, although they have a common goal (i.e.,
maintaining the status quo)—which may still result
in a fairly good dyadic relationship—this goal en-
tails passively adapting to the environment. When
both parties aim to maintain the status quo, the
follower is likely to receive positive reinforcement
for withholding his or her efforts for improvement.
Because of this lack of effort, leaders and followers
with low levels of proactive personality are less
likely to develop relationships that have quality as
high as do those between highly proactive leaders
and followers. We thus hypothesize different levels
of LMX quality for dyads congruent at high versus
low levels of proactive personality.
Hypothesis 2. LMX quality is higher when a
follower is aligned with a leader at a high level
of proactive personality rather than when a
follower is aligned with a leader at a low level
of proactive personality.
It is also important to differentiate two scenarios
of leader-follower incongruence in proactive per-
sonality: when the leader’s proactive personality is
2012 Zhang, Wang, and Shi
higher than the follower’s, and vice versa. We ex-
pect the incongruence effect to be asymmetrical in
such a way that it is more detrimental to LMX
quality when the leader has a higher level of pro-
active personality than the follower. Specifically,
when there is incongruence and the follower has
higher proactive personality than the leader, al-
though the leader may view the follower’s proac-
tivity as somewhat “threatening,” the follower’s
proactivity may itself mitigate or offset this nega-
tive effect of incongruence. As Wilson, Sin, and
Conlon contended, followers can provide valuable
resources to leaders via “greater levels of initiative
and proactive behavior on tasks” (2010: 358). These
initiatives from followers can help leaders to be-
come more effective (e.g., leaders have faster task
completion) and more flexible (e.g., leaders have
more time to work on other issues). We thus expect
that proactive followers, through their deliberate
efforts to better their relationships with their lead-
ers, can to some extent alleviate the negative con-
sequences of proactive personality incongruence.
In support of this argument, prior research has
shown that more proactive employees have better
political knowledge and skills (Seibert et al., 2001)
and clearer understanding of the need to construct
strong networks with those in control of resources
(Thompson, 2005). Almost by definition, proactive
employees are predisposed to be constantly on the
lookout to improve their work lives and seek ways
to “construct a social environment conductive to
their own success on the job” (Thompson, 2005:
1012). Thus, when they face the potentially nega-
tive social environment resulting from proactive
personality incongruence, they are likely to initiate
actions to find better ways of presenting their ini-
tiatives, thus mitigating the negative influence of
incongruence on their relationships with their
leaders.
In contrast, when followers have lower levels of
proactive personality than their leaders, this low
proactivity provides the followers with little moti-
vation to initiate actions aimed at improving the
relationships with the leaders. Rather, these follow-
ers may fail to identify opportunities to better their
relationships and may just passively accept and
adapt to a low-quality LMX relationship. This is
particularly devastating to followers in the role-
taking phase of LMX development, because the fol-
lowers’ lack of effort may make the more proactive
leaders become reluctant to send other roles to the
followers, accentuating the negative effects of pro-
active personality incongruence. Further, a more
proactive leader is likely to punish followers who
are less proactive than he/she is, resulting in lower
LMX. This use of negative reinforcement is less
115
likely to occur when the leader’s proactive person-
ality is lower than the follower’s. On the whole, we
expect that when a follower has higher proactive
personality than a leader, the incongruence effect is
less detrimental to LMX quality than when the
follower has lower proactive personality than the
leader. We hypothesize that:
Hypothesis 3. LMX quality is lower when a
leader’s proactive personality is higher than a
follower’s rather than when a follower’s proac-
tive personality is higher than a leader’s.
LMX AS A MEDIATOR OF THE
(IN)CONGRUENCE EFFECT ON WORK
OUTCOMES
Prior research has conceptually stated and em-
pirically shown positive relationships between
LMX and employee work outcomes that are impor-
tant to individuals’ workplace success (e.g., job sat-
isfaction, affective commitment, and job perfor-
mance). Job satisfaction is defined as “a pleasurable
or positive emotional state resulting from the ap-
praisal of one’s job or job experiences” (Locke,
1976: 1304). Affective commitment refers to the
extent to which employees identify with, are in-
volved in, and are emotionally attached to an or-
ganization so that they want to remain in it (Meyer
& Allen, 1997). According to LMX theory (Graen &
Uhl-Bien, 1995), because of the expanded resources
and strong support available to a follower in a
high-quality LMX relationship, such a relationship
can result in more positive attitudes toward the job
and the organization as well as higher job perfor-
mance for the follower. In fact, Gerstner and Day
(1997) found strong support for positive links be-
tween LMX and overall job satisfaction (␳ ⫽ .50),
organizational commitment (␳ ⫽ .42), and job per-
formance (␳ ⫽ .30).
As we argued above, congruence in proactive
personality may allow leader-follower dyads to
have similar goals of improving their work environ-
ment or keeping the status quo. Research on dyadic
goal congruence has shown that such congruence
reduces ambiguity about effort allocation and helps
to ensure that the followers’ work contributes di-
rectly to the goals endorsed by the leaders (Colbert
et al., 2008; Jauch, Osborn, & Terpening, 1980).
Therefore, when leader and follower have similar
levels of proactive personality, their common un-
derstanding of priorities at work and their con-
certed effort (or lack of effort) can result in better
follower attitudes toward job and organization and
higher job performance. Prior empirical studies
have supported this argument and shown that sim-
116 Academy of Management Journal
ilarity in work goals is positively related to follower
job satisfaction (Kristof-Brown, Zimmerman, &
Johnson, 2005; Vancouver & Schmitt, 1991), affec-
tive commitment (Reichers, 1986; Vroom, 1960),
and team performance (Colbert et al., 2008).
Given that we have hypothesized the effects of
leader-follower congruence in proactive personal-
ity on LMX (i.e., Hypothesis 1) and the established
positive relationship between LMX and employee
outcomes, we expect that LMX quality carries these
congruence effects to follower job satisfaction, af-
fective commitment, and job performance. We thus
hypothesize a mediating role for LMX quality. This
mediating role highlights that proactive personality
congruence is important to organizations because it
can affect employee discretionary attitudes and job
performance through employees’ enhanced rela-
tionships with their leaders.
We also specify a partial mediation effect of LMX
because there may exist other mechanisms through
which leader-follower congruence/incongruence in
proactive personality can influence work outcomes
directly. For example, when leader-follower con-
gruence at a low level of proactive personality is
present, a follower may like his/her job and be
committed to the organization, not necessarily be-
cause of better LMX quality, but because leaving
the job for a new organization would mean losing
a comfortable and low-demand job. Moreover,
congruence in proactive personality may directly
benefit a follower’s performance because the cog-
nitive load imposed on the follower in interact-
ing with the leader is low (Mayer & Gavin, 2005).
Thus, a partial mediating role for LMX quality is
hypothesized.
Hypothesis 4. LMX quality partially mediates
the relationship between leader-follower con-
gruence/incongruence in proactive personality
and follower job satisfaction (H4a), affective
commitment (H4b), and job performance (H4c).
METHODS
Data and Sample
Participants were recruited from a Chinese
bank’s credit card service branches located in
Shanghai, China. A branch manager (i.e., the
leader) heads each branch. At time 1 of the data
collection, we distributed the surveys, along with a
cover letter assuring confidentiality and voluntary
participation, to 39 leaders and 203 followers from
all 39 branches in Shanghai. Among them, 33 lead-
ers (84.62%) and 187 followers (92.12%) returned
the survey. We were able to link 174 of the follow-
ers who returned the survey to their leaders. We
February
surveyed all the time 1 participants again
three months later (time 2). All 33 leaders (100%)
returned the second survey, and 165 followers
(94.83%) from these 33 branches did so. The final
sample consists of 33 branch leaders and an aver-
age of 5 followers in each branch. We were able to
achieve these high response rates because of com-
pany sponsorship and the use of work time to com-
plete the questionnaires.
Among the followers, 29 (17.6%) were female,
and their average dyadic tenure with their leaders
was 0.95 years (s.d. ⫽ 0.52). The mean age was
22.38 years (s.d. ⫽ 1.91). Followers had, on aver-
age, 14.64 years of education (s.d. ⫽ 1.37). Among
the leaders, 6 (18.18%) were female. The mean age
was 25.36 years (s.d. ⫽ 4.68). On average, leaders
had 14.88 years of education (s.d. ⫽ 1.48). We
examined potential nonresponse bias using person-
nel records from the bank. We did not find any
significant differences in age, gender, years of edu-
cation, or company tenure between respondents
and nonrespondents among leaders or followers.
Measures
For both leaders and followers, demographic in-
formation (age, gender, and years of education) and
proactive personality were measured at time 1. In
addition, followers reported their dyadic tenure
with their corresponding leaders and provided
LMX ratings at time 1. Three months later (time 2),
followers rated their job satisfaction and affective
commitment, and leaders rated each follower’s job
performance. All surveys used at both data collec-
tion points were in Chinese. Translation/back-
translation procedures (Brislin, 1980) were fol-
lowed to translate the English-based measures into
Chinese.
Proactive personality. Followers’ and leaders’
proactive personality were measured at time 1 us-
ing Seibert and colleagues’ (1999) ten-item Proac-
tive Personality Scale (PPS). Participants were
asked to indicate the extent to which they agreed or
disagreed with statements including “If I see some-
thing I don’t like, I fix it” and “I am always looking
for better ways to do things” (1 ⫽ “strongly dis-
agree,” 7 ⫽ “strongly agree”). Reliability coeffi-
cients (␣’s) for this scale were .90 for followers and
.87 for leaders.
Leader-member exchange (LMX). LMX was
measured at time 1 from each follower’s describing
the quality of his or her exchange relationship with
his/her leader. Follower reports have been fre-
quently used in prior studies of LMX (e.g., Chen,
Kirkman, Kanfer, Allen, & Rosen, 2007; Erdogan &
Enders, 2007). We used the eight-item scale devel-
2012 Zhang, Wang, and Shi
oped by Bauer and Green (1996), which is identical
to the LMX-7 scale (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995; Scan-
dura & Graen, 1984) except that one item from the
LMX-7 scale has been split into two items. Example
items include “My manager understands my prob-
lems and needs” and “I would characterize the
working relationship I have with my manager as
extremely effective” (1 ⫽ “strongly disagree,” 7 ⫽
“strongly agree”; ␣ ⫽ .92).
Job satisfaction. Followers’ job satisfaction was
measured using the eight-item Abbreviated Job in
General scale (Russell, Spitzmuller, Lin, Stanton,
Smith, & Ironson, 2004) at time 2. Participants were
asked to think of their jobs in general and rate how
certain adjectives (e.g., “pleasant”) or phrases (e.g.,
“makes me content”) described their jobs by choos-
ing from “yes,” “no,” and “uncertain.” Following
Russell and colleagues (2004), we scored these
three response options as 3, 0, and 1, respectively.
The reliability coefficient of this scale was .88.
Affective commitment. Followers’ affective
commitment to the organization was assessed at
time 2 using Allen and Meyer’s (1990) six-item
measure. Example items include “I would be very
happy to spend the rest of my career at this organ-
ization” and “This organization has a great deal of
personal meaning for me” (1 ⫽ “strongly disagree,”
7 ⫽ “strongly agree”; ␣ ⫽ .85).
Follower job performance. Leaders’ ratings of
follower job performance were on a five-item gen-
eral performance scale (Janssen & Van Yperen,
2004). A sample item from this scale is “This em-
ployee fulfills all responsibilities required by his/
her job” (1 ⫽ “strongly disagree,” 5 ⫽ “strongly
agree”; ␣ ⫽ .88).
Control variables. Prior research suggests that
LMX quality may be related to similarity in leader
and follower demographic characteristics such as
age, gender, and years of education (e.g., Bauer &
Green, 1996). We therefore controlled for the
(dis)similarity in these variables in our analyses. In
line with past research, dissimilarity in age and
years of education was operationalized as an abso-
lute difference score (Bauer & Green, 1996). In the
case of gender similarity, we used a dummy vari-
able (0 ⫽ “different gender” and 1 ⫽ “same gen-
der”). In addition, we controlled for the dyadic
tenure of each leader and follower to partial out the
potential familiarity effect (Green, Anderson, &
Shivers, 1996).
Analysis
Cross-level polynomial regressions. To test the
congruence and asymmetrical incongruence effects
(Hypotheses 1–3), we used cross-level polynomial
117
regressions (Jansen & Kristof-Brown, 2005) and re-
sponse surface modeling (Edwards & Parry, 1993).
Edwards and his colleagues have advocated using
polynomial regressions to generate three-dimen-
sional response surfaces to examine congruence
effects on outcome variables (Edwards & Harrison,
1993; Edwards & Parry, 1993). Jansen and Kristof-
Brown (2005) extended this method to multilevel
settings by using cross-level polynomial regres-
sions to account for nonindependence among em-
ployees working for the same leader. We followed
this procedure in the current analysis. Specifically,
the dependent variable (e.g., LMX) was regressed
on control variables as well as five polynomial
terms, that is, follower proactive personality
squared (F), leader proactive personality (L), fol-
lower proactive personality squared (F2), follower
proactive personality times leader proactive per-
sonality (F ⫻ L), and leader proactive personality
squared (L2). To reduce multicollinearity and facil-
itate interpretation of the results, we centered F and
L around the pooled grand mean before calculating
the second-order terms.
After polynomial regressions were performed,
additional tests were conducted to examine the
slopes and curvatures along two critical lines of
interest—that is, the congruence line (F ⫽ L) and
the incongruence line (F ⫽ ⫺L). The shape of the
surface along the incongruence line is obtained by
substituting the formula for this line (i.e., F ⫽ ⫺L)
into the polynomial regression equation. Similarly,
the shape of the surface along the congruence line
is obtained by substituting the formula for this line
(i.e., F ⫽ L) into the polynomial regression equa-
tion. According to Edwards and Parry (1993), a
significant congruence effect (i.e., Hypothesis 1)
exists when the coefficients for the three second-
order polynomial terms (i.e., F2, F ⫻ L, and L2) are
jointly significant and the curvature along the in-
congruence line is significantly different from zero.
Moreover, when the slope along the congruence
line is significant and positive, we can conclude
that congruence at high levels of proactive person-
ality results in higher outcomes than congruence at
low levels (i.e., Hypothesis 2).
To test the asymmetry of the incongruence effect
(i.e., Hypothesis 3), we examined the lateral shift of
the response surface along the incongruence
(F ⫽ ⫺L) line. Specifically, applying Edwards and
Harrison’s (1993) approach to the multilevel set-
ting, we calculated the quantity that determines the
magnitude and direction of the lateral shift. For
convex surfaces, a positive value indicates a lateral
shift toward the region where follower proactive
personality is greater than leader proactive person-
ality (F ⬎ L). This shows that decrease in the sur-
118
face is sharper in the F ⬍ L region than in the F ⬎ L
region and thus supports the asymmetrical incon-
gruence hypotheses. We used SAS “proc mixed” to
analyze the data and utilized response surface
graphs to visually present the polynomial regres-
sion results.
Mediation test using the block variable ap-
proach. To test the indirect effects of proactive
personality congruence/incongruence on the out-
come variables via LMX (Hypotheses 4a– 4c), we
used the block variable approach recommended by
Edwards and Cable (2009). Specifically, to obtain a
single coefficient representing the joint effect (i.e.,
congruence and incongruence effect) of the five
polynomial terms (F, L, F2, F ⫻ L, and L2) we
combined the five terms into a block variable,
which is a weighted linear composite. The respec-
tive weights are the estimated regression coeffi-
cients in the polynomial regression. After con-
structing the block variable, we reran the cross-
level polynomial regression and obtained the
standardized regression coefficient for the block
variable as the path coefficient for mediation anal-
ysis. The indirect effect of personality congruence/
incongruence on an outcome variable via LMX can
be calculated as a product of the coefficient of the
block variable on LMX and the coefficient of LMX
predicting the outcome variable when the direct
effect of personality (in)congruence is included in
the regression. We tested the significance of the
indirect effects by using bootstrapping (Efron &
Tibshirani, 1993). We estimated bias-corrected con-
fidence intervals for the indirect effects by boot-
strapping 20,000 samples. As Edwards and Cable
(2009) contended, using a block variable can
greatly facilitate the assessment of the direct and
indirect effects of a congruence/incongruence ef-
Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations among Variablesa
Variable Mean
1. Age dissimilarity, time 1 3.85
2. Gender similarity, time 1 0.21
3. Education dissimilarity, time 1 1.55
4. Dyadic tenure, time 1 0.95
5. Follower proactive personality, time 1 5.26
6. LMX, time 1 5.50
7. Job satisfaction, time 2 2.09
8. Affective commitment, time 2 5.07
9. Follower job performance, time 2 4.44
10. Leader proactive personality, time 1 4.99
a
n ⫽ 165. Reliability coefficients are reported along the diagonal. In calculating the correlations, we disaggregated the value of leader
proactive personality to the followers who worked for the same leader.
* p ⬍ .05
** p ⬍ .01
*** p ⬍ .001
Academy of Management Journal February
fect for a mediation model. It is important to note
that using the block variable does not change the
estimated coefficients for other variables in the
equation, nor the total explained variance (Heise,
1972; Igra, 1979).
RESULTS
Table 1 shows the means, standard deviations,
intercorrelations, and reliability coefficients of the
variables. Age dissimilarity, education dissimilar-
ity, and gender similarity are not significantly cor-
related with either LMX or the outcome variables.
Follower proactive personality is correlated with
LMX (r ⫽ .28, p ⬍ .001), job satisfaction (r ⫽ .19, p
⬍ .05), and job performance (r ⫽ .37, p ⬍ .001).
Follower-reported attitudinal variables are only
moderately correlated, providing preliminary evi-
dence that they are empirically distinct from
each other.
We conducted confirmatory factor analyses
(CFAs) to examine the distinctiveness of the four
follower self-reported variables (i.e., proactive per-
sonality, LMX, job satisfaction, and affective com-
mitment). To achieve an optimal ratio of sample
size to number of estimated parameters, we fol-
lowed previous research (e.g., Cattell & Burdsal,
1975; Chin, 1998; Sass & Smith, 2006) and ran-
domly combined the scale items into parcels for
each variable. Each variable had three parcels as
indicators. The hypothesized four-factor model
(model 1 in Table 2) with distinct but correlated
factors for the four variables was compared with a
series of alternative models. In models 2 through 5,
parcels for two or three latent variables loaded on
a common factor, and the other variables loaded
on their own respective factors. Model 6 is a
TABLE 1
s.d. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
4.60
0.41 .01
1.45 ⫺.10 ⫺.04
0.52 ⫺.08 .15 .13
0.84 .05 .00 ⫺.05 .06 (.90)
1.20 .08 ⫺.04 .00 .10 .28*** (.92)
0.78 .03 .01 .00 ⫺.01 .19* .39*** (.88)
1.08 .08 ⫺.11 ⫺.04 ⫺.11 .10 .28*** .37*** (.85)
0.60 .04 .02 .00 ⫺.13 .37*** .34*** .23** .34*** (.88)
0.74 .20* .19* .11 .00 .10 .08 ⫺.02 ⫺.07 .06 (.87)
2012 Zhang, Wang, and Shi 119

TABLE 2
Model Fit Results for Confirmatory Factor Analysesa
Models ␹2 df ⌬␹2(⌬df) CFI TLI SRMR RMSEA

1. Hypothesized four-factor model 60.39 48 — .99 .99 .03 .04

2. Three-factor model (job satisfaction and affective commitment are 234.08 51 173.69 (3) .86 .82 .10 .15
combined)
3. Three-factor model (LMX and job satisfaction are combined) 292.53 51 232.14 (3) .81 .76 .12 .17
4. Three-factor model (LMX and affective commitment are combined) 268.67 51 208.28 (3) .83 .78 .12 .16
5. Two-factor model (LMX, job satisfaction, and affective commitment 483.87 53 423.48 (5) .66 .58 .16 .22
are combined)
6. Single-factor model 745.55 54 685.16 (6) .46 .34 .20 .28

a
n ⫽ 165. All alternative models were compared with the hypothesized four-factor model. All ⌬␹2’s are significant at p ⬍ .001.
Abbreviations: CFI is the comparative fit index. RMSEA is the root-mean-square error of approximation. SRMR is the standardized
root-mean-square residual. TLI is the Tucker-Lewis index.

single-factor model in which all parcels loaded
on a general factor. Table 2 shows the results of
model fit comparisons. The hypothesized four-
factor model shows satisfactory fit (␹2 ⫽ 60.39, df
⫽ 48, p ⬎ .10, CFI ⫽ .99, TLI ⫽ .99, SRMR ⫽ .03,
and RMSEA ⫽ .04) and has significantly better fit
than all of the alternative models. Further, in the
four-factor model, all parcels had significant
loadings on their respective factors. Given these
CFA results, we continued to examine these vari-
ables as distinct constructs.
Hypothesis 1 suggests a congruence effect of
leader and follower proactive personality on LMX.
The first column in Table 3 presents the estimated
coefficients as well as the slopes and curvatures
along congruence and incongruence lines for the
cross-level polynomial regressions in predicting
LMX. Figure 1 illustrates the response surface

TABLE 3
Cross-Level Polynomial Regressions of LMX and Work Outcomes on Proactive Personality Congruence/Incongruencea
Job Satisfaction Affective Commitment Job Performance

Variables LMX Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2

Constant 5.28*** 2.11*** 1.14*** 5.06*** 4.15*** 4.60*** 4.08***

Age dissimilarity 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.00
Gender similarity 0.02 0.13 0.14 ⫺0.18 ⫺0.15 0.14 0.14
Education dissimilarity ⫺0.02 0.02 0.02 ⫺0.02 ⫺0.07 0.03 0.03
Dyadic tenure 0.14 ⫺0.08 ⫺0.11 ⫺0.06 ⫺0.17 ⫺0.16† ⫺0.19*
Follower proactive personality (F) 0.33** 0.15* 0.09 0.15 0.12 0.22*** 0.19***
Leader proactive personality (L) 0.15 ⫺0.02 ⫺0.05 ⫺0.18 ⫺0.22 ⫺0.02 ⫺0.04
F2 ⫺0.04 ⫺0.10† ⫺0.09† 0.06 0.07 ⫺0.10** ⫺0.10*
F⫻L 0.73*** 0.40*** 0.27* 0.40** 0.27† 0.24*** 0.17*
L2 0.16 0.06 0.03 ⫺0.04 ⫺0.08 ⫺0.06 ⫺0.08
LMX 0.18*** 0.18* 0.10*
R2 .17 .09 .16 .05 .07 .20 .24
⌬R2 .07 .02 .04
Congruence (F ⫽ L) line
Slope .48* .13 .04 ⫺.03 ⫺.10 .20* .15
Curvature .85*** .36* .21 .42† .25 .08 ⫺.01
Incongruence (F ⫽ ⫺L) line
Slope .18 .17 .14 .33 .34 .24* .23*
Curvature ⫺.61** ⫺.44** ⫺.33* ⫺.38† ⫺.28 ⫺.40*** ⫺.35**
F for the 3 quadratic terms 9.40*** 7.12*** 3.31* 3.12* 1.54 6.87*** 4.46**

a
n ⫽ 165. Unstandardized regression coefficients are reported. R2 was calculated according to Snijders and Bosker (1999: 102). ⌬R2
refers to the change in explained variance attributable to the inclusion of LMX.
†
p ⬍ .10
* p ⬍ .05
** p ⬍ .01
*** p ⬍ .001
Two-tailed tests.
120 Academy of Management Journal
FIGURE 1
Congruence Effect and Asymmetrical Incongruence Effect of Leader and Follower
Proactive Personality on LMX
based on these coefficients. Note that in order to
show the whole surface, we have changed the ori-
entation in the graph from what Edwards and
colleagues used. As shown in Table 3, the three
second-order polynomial terms were jointly signif-
icant (F ⫽ 9.40, p ⬍ .001), and the surface along the
incongruence line curved downward (curva-
ture ⫽ ⫺.61, p ⬍ .01). Examining the surface in
Figure 1 indicates that it is an inverted U-shaped
one along the incongruence line. The congruence
line (F ⫽ L) is from the left corner (where
F ⫽ L ⫽ 1.5) to the right corner (where
F ⫽ L ⫽ ⫺1.5), whereas the incongruence line is
from the front corner to the rear corner. The con-
cave curvature along the F ⫽ ⫺L line indicates that
LMX is higher when a follower’s proactive person-
ality is aligned with his/her leader’s, and any devi-
ation from the congruence line (i.e., moving to its
right or left) decreases LMX, thus supporting Hy-
pothesis 1.
Hypothesis 2 suggests that LMX quality is higher
when follower and leader are aligned at a high level
of proactive personality as opposed to when they
are aligned at a low level. As shown in Table 3, the
slope along the congruence line is significant and
positive (.48, p ⬍ .05), indicating that the high-high
congruence condition has higher LMX quality than
the low-low congruence condition. The response
February
surface in Figure 1 also indicates that LMX is
higher at the left corner (high/high congruence)
than at the right corner (low/low congruence), thus
supporting Hypothesis 2.
Regarding the asymmetrical incongruence effect
(Hypothesis 3), the quantity representing the lateral
shift is positive (.18), indicating a shift toward the
region where F is greater than L. Thus, when a
follower’s proactive personality is higher than his/
her leader’s, LMX decreases less sharply than it
does when the follower’s proactive personality is
lower than the leader’s, supporting Hypothesis 3.
This asymmetrical effect is also shown in Figure 1,
in which LMX is lower at the front corner (F ⫽ ⫺1.5
and L ⫽ 1.5) than at the rear corner (F ⫽ 1.5 and
L ⫽ ⫺1.5).
To test the mediating effect of LMX on the rela-
tionship between personality congruence/incon-
gruence and the various work outcomes, we ran
two models for each outcome variable (see Table 3).
In model 1, we used the five polynomial terms to
predict the dependent variable, after controlling for
various control variables. In model 2, we added
LMX to the regression to examine the effect of LMX
after controlling for the congruence/incongruence
effects. Regarding the first path linking personality
congruence and LMX (see Figure 2), on the basis of
the polynomial regressions predicting LMX, we
2012 Zhang, Wang, and Shi 121

FIGURE 2
Hypothesized Model for the Current Study and Estimated Standardized Coefficients

used the block variable approach to obtain a single
coefficient representing the combined effect of
leader-follower proactive personality on LMX. The
standardized path coefficient of this combined ef-
fect on LMX is .46 (p ⬍ .001; also see Table 4). This
coefficient represents the path linking the indepen-
dent block variable to the mediator and was used
in calculating the indirect effects in mediation
analysis.
Hypotheses 4a– 4c suggest that LMX partially
mediates the congruence/incongruence effect of
proactive personality on the outcome variables.
The model 2s in Table 3 report the cross-level poly-
nomial regression results after LMX was entered.
We used the estimated coefficients for the five
polynomial terms reported in these model 2s to
generate the block variables for the combined ef-
fects of leader-follower proactive personality on the
three outcomes. We summarize our conceptual
model and estimated coefficients in Figure 2. In
both Table 4, and Figure 2, we report the standard-
ized regression coefficients of the block variables as

TABLE 4
Results from Tests of Direct and Indirect Effects of Congruence/Incongruence in
Proactive Personality on Work Outcomesa
Job Affective Job
Variables LMX Satisfaction Commitment Performance

Coefficient of the block variable (i.e., direct effect of congruence) .46*** .28*** .18* .41***
Coefficient of LMX (␥LMX) — .28*** .21** .20**
Indirect effect of congruence via LMX (⫽ .46 ⫻ ␥LMX) — .13** .10** .09**
95% bootstrapped confidence intervals for the indirect effect — (.06, .22) (.03, .18) (.03, .17)

a
Standardized coefficients are reported.
* p ⬍ .05
** p ⬍ .01
*** p ⬍ .001
122 Academy of Management Journal February

well as the coefficients of LMX when they were
used to predict outcome variables. We calculated
the indirect effects transmitted via LMX by multi-
plying the coefficient .46 and the coefficient of
LMX for predicting a particular outcome variable.
As shown in Table 4, the direct effects of congru-
ence/incongruence in proactive personality on the
outcome variables are all significant. The indirect
effects of congruence/incongruence, via LMX, are
significant for job satisfaction (.13, p ⬍ .01, 95% CI
⫽ [.06 .22]), affective commitment (.10, p ⬍ .01,
95% CI ⫽ [.03. 18]), and job performance (.09, p ⬍
.01, 95% CI ⫽ [.03 .17]). Taking both the direct and
indirect effects into consideration, these results
show that LMX partially mediated the combined
effects of leader and follower proactive personality
on followers’ job satisfaction (supporting Hypothe-
sis 4a), affective commitment (supporting Hypoth-
esis 4b), and job performance (supporting Hypoth-
esis 4c).
As post hoc analyses, response surface graphs
based on the model 1 results in Table 3 were cre-
ated for the three outcome variables. We visually
depict the shapes of these response surfaces in Fig-
ures 3, 4, and 5. For job satisfaction, Figure 3 shows
a congruence effect in which the surface along the
incongruence line is curved downward (curva-
ture ⫽ ⫺.44, p ⬍ .01). Job satisfaction for the high/
high congruence condition is not significantly
higher than that for the low/low congruence con-
dition (as shown in Table 3 by the nonsignificant
slope along the congruence line [.13, n.s.]). Figure 3
also shows an asymmetrical incongruence effect in
which job satisfaction is lower at the front corner
(F ⫽ ⫺1.5 and L ⫽ 1.5) than at the rear corner (F ⫽
1.5 and L ⫽ ⫺1.5). The quantity of lateral shift is
.19, indicating a shift toward the region where F is
greater than L. Thus, when a follower’s proactive
personality is higher than his/her leader’s, job sat-
isfaction decreases less sharply than when the fol-
lower’s proactive personality is lower than the
leader’s.
Similarly, for affective commitment, the surface
along the incongruence line is curved downward
(curvature ⫽ ⫺.38, p ⬍ .10, two-tailed test; see
Figure 4). Affective commitment for the high/high
congruence condition is not significantly higher
than that for the low/low congruence condition (as
shown in Table 3 by the nonsignificant slope along
the congruence line for affective commitment

FIGURE 3
Congruence Effect and Asymmetrical Incongruence Effect of Leader and Follower
Proactive Personality on Job Satisfaction
2012 Zhang, Wang, and Shi
FIGURE 4
Congruence Effect and Asymmetrical Incongruence Effect of Leader and Follower
Proactive Personality on Affective Commitment
[⫺.03, n.s.]). The quantity of lateral shift is .43,
indicating a shift toward the region where F is
greater than L. Thus, when a follower’s proactive
personality is higher than his/her leader’s, affective
commitment decreases less sharply than the re-
versed situation. With regard to job performance
(Figure 5), the curvature along the incongruence
line was negative and significant (⫺.40, p ⬍ .001).
Job performance is significantly higher when fol-
lower and leader are aligned at high levels of pro-
active personality rather than when they are
aligned at low levels (as shown by the positive
slope along the congruence line for job perfor-
mance [. 20, p ⬍ .05]). The quantity of lateral shift
is .30, indicating a shift toward the region where F
is greater than L. When the follower’s proactive
personality is higher than the leader’s, job perfor-
mance decreases less sharply than when the re-
verse is true. Overall, the patterns of congruence/
incongruence effects on employee work outcomes
are similar to the patterns of those effects on LMX
quality.
DISCUSSION
Despite the various career-related benefits of em-
ployee proactive personality (e.g., Fuller & Marler,
123
2009), researchers have not yet examined the
match/congruence between follower and leader
proactive personality in affecting follower work
outcomes. In the present study, we extended theory
and research on proactive personality and person-
environment fit by integrating both lines of re-
search and found a beneficial effect of leader-
follower congruence in proactive personality on
LMX and employees work outcomes. We also
found that these effects of congruence on work
outcomes were partially mediated by LMX quality
in such a way that congruence was related to high-
er-quality LMX, which was in turn associated with
higher levels of job satisfaction, affective commit-
ment, and performance. Moreover, different pat-
terns of leader-member (in)congruence in proactive
personality led to different levels of positive and
negative effects on LMX quality. Specifically, dy-
ads that are congruent at high levels of proactive
personality had higher LMX quality than those con-
gruent at low levels. Regarding incongruence,
when the leader had higher level of proactive per-
sonality than the follower, the incongruence effect
was more detrimental to LMX quality than when
the follower had higher level of proactive person-
ality than the leader.
124 Academy of Management Journal
FIGURE 5
Congruence Effect and Asymmetrical Incongruence Effect of Leader and Follower
Proactive Personality on Job Performance
Theoretical Implications
The findings of this study have several important
theoretical implications. First, by integrating leader
characteristics as well as the person-environment
fit framework into the study of proactive personal-
ity and the associated employee outcomes in work-
places, we extended proactive personality research
by revealing that leader proactive personality influ-
ences the likelihood for follower proactive person-
ality to translate into positive work outcomes. Pre-
vious theoretical and empirical studies (e.g., Fuller
& Marler, 2009; Li et al., 2010; Parker et al., 2010)
have suggested that employees’ proactive personal-
ities are beneficial for cultivating positive attitudes
toward their jobs and organizations, as well as for
achieving higher levels of job performance. How-
ever, these studies have overlooked the leaders’
role and thus precluded the possibility of examin-
ing leaders’ proactive personalities as a contextual
factor that influences the effect of followers’ proac-
tive personality. Our results show that the real pic-
ture is far more complex and that the resulting
work outcomes depend on the fit and misfit at
various levels of proactive personality between the
follower and the leader. Specifically, the findings
suggest that depending on a leader’s proactive per-
February
sonality level, a follower’s high-level proactive per-
sonality may not always be beneficial to his/her job
attitudes, commitment to the organization, and job
performance. A counterintuitive, yet interesting,
finding is that when leaders themselves were not
proactive, followers who also had low-level proac-
tive personality might still enjoy good LMX quality
with their leaders and subsequently experience
somewhat positive work outcomes. These findings
urge us to incorporate the characteristics of leaders
into the theoretical framework for understanding
the outcomes of employee proactive personality.
Second, contributing to the LMX literature, this
study drew upon goal congruence research and
demonstrates that dyadic congruence at high ver-
sus low levels of proactive personality led to dif-
fering LMX quality. Our findings also demonstrate
asymmetrical incongruence effects in leader-
follower proactive personality, suggesting the im-
portance of follower proactivity in mitigating the
potential negative effects of incongruence in proac-
tive personality. We showed that the mismatch be-
tween a proactive leader and a less proactive fol-
lower appeared to be more detrimental than the
mismatch between a proactive follower and a less
proactive leader. Overall, this complex pattern of
2012 Zhang, Wang, and Shi
effects suggests that both dyadic goal congruence
and personal initiatives are predictive of LMX de-
velopment. Given that previous studies have typi-
cally emphasized that the beneficial effects of high
proactive personality are due to heightened levels
of proactive behaviors (e.g., Fuller & Marler, 2009),
the establishment of this goal congruence mecha-
nism enriches existing theories for better under-
standing how the beneficial effects of proactive
personality are carried through leader-follower re-
lationships and then work outcomes.
Third, in the current study we demonstrate the
partial mediating role of LMX in linking leader-
follower congruence/incongruence in proactive
personality to important outcomes for employees.
By doing so, we posit dyadic exchange quality as
one of the explanatory mechanisms for reaping the
beneficial effects of person-supervisor fit. This in-
tegration of the LMX and person-environment fit
literatures offers additional insights into why dif-
ferent levels of fit and different patterns of nonfit
are associated with employee job attitude, affective
commitment, and job performance. Specifically, it
shows a complex set of scenarios in which the
supplementary fit (or lack of fit) in a dyad’s proac-
tive personality may facilitate (or prevent) the dy-
ad’s members’ reaching a better exchange relation-
ship, which in turn results in varied levels of work-
related outcomes. Further, this study extended the
person-supervisor fit literature by showing that
simply comparing the effects of person-supervisor
congruence and incongruence may overlook the
more nuanced effects of congruence levels and
asymmetrical incongruence effects. Finer-grained
examinations of the different (in)congruence effects
can offer more theoretical insights into the nature
of person-environment fit.
Practical Implications
Our findings suggest that if leaders themselves
are not proactive, they may hinder proactive em-
ployees from benefiting from this personality char-
acteristic. Therefore, it is crucial for the members of
a dyad to be aware of both parties’ proactive per-
sonality levels for favorable outcomes to be har-
vested. This could help avoid the potential “initia-
tive paradox” for leaders who themselves are low
in proactive personality (Campbell, 2000). Given
that being proactive has become a desired quality
for many jobs (Parker et al., 2010), these leaders
may often overtly encourage proactivity. However,
when proactive followers do take initiatives, the
personality incongruence effect we identified in
the current study is likely to lead a leader of this
type to perceive the follower’s proactivity as dis-
125
tracting from the leader’s goals, as a threat to core
missions, or even as driven by “impression man-
agement” motives (Chan, 2006; Lam, Huang, &
Snape, 2007). Therefore, it is critical for these lead-
ers to become aware of their own standing on pro-
active personality and to learn how to avoid their
potential bias toward proactive behaviors. Organi-
zations can also provide training to educate these
leaders on the importance of seeking ongoing im-
provement, as well as the fact that personality dif-
ferences between them and their subordinates
could hinder their leadership effectiveness.
Our findings also suggest that, interestingly, less
proactive employees may not always have lower-
quality exchange relationships with their leaders or
poorer work outcomes than their more proactive
peers. In fact, the congruence effect we found sug-
gests that in a situation in which both leader and
follower have low levels of proactive personality,
relatively high-quality relationships and positive
outcomes may still be obtained as long as the levels
of proactive personality in a dyad are compatible.
Therefore, organizations may face unexpected re-
duction in productivity by too rapidly embracing
policies to encourage proactivity when either the
managers or the employees are not yet comfortable
with other proactivity. It is thus important for or-
ganizations to ensure dyad-level congruence in
proactivity to promote positive outcomes in their
workplace.
Admittedly, in organizations leaders typically
do not have the luxury of selecting followers who
match with their proactive personality levels.
Rather, they are often assigned to lead an intact
work team or group. When proactive leaders are
leading less proactive employees (i.e., the worst
case scenario shown in this study), we suggest
these leaders can improve dyadic goal congruence
by using goal-setting procedures and frequent feed-
back giving and by providing developmental sup-
port and coaching to gradually cultivate high-qual-
ity exchange relationships with the less proactive
employees. In this scenario, an organization can
also provide training specifically focusing on align-
ing leaders’ and followers’ goals to achieve better
dyadic exchange relationships.
Limitations and Future Research
Several limitations are associated with the cur-
rent study. First, the data were collected from em-
ployees working in China. Specific Chinese cul-
tural characteristics (e.g., high “power distance”
[Carl, Gupta, & Javidan, 2004]) may limit the gen-
eralizability of the results. In such a culture, em-
ployees may more closely monitor and frequently
126 Academy of Management Journal
evaluate leaders’ characteristics when they assess
their work environment. Consequently, one might
expect to find a stronger congruence effect in this
culture than in cultures low on power distance.
Nevertheless, recent research employing samples
from both China and the United States did not
show significant country differences on the influ-
ence of power distance on work outcomes (e.g.,
Kirkman, Chen, Farh, Chen, & Lowe, 2009; Schau-
broeck, Lam, & Cha, 2007). Future research could
address this limitation by comparing findings
based on samples from both high and low power
distance cultures.
Second, the current study was not conducted with
an experimental design, and conclusions about cau-
sality are constrained. In addition, although we as-
sessed key variables from a variety of information
sources (i.e., leaders and followers reported their own
proactive personality; leaders rated followers’ perfor-
mance) and utilized a time-lagged design (i.e., work
outcomes were measured three months after the pre-
dictors and the mediator were measured), the follow-
er-reported measures of job satisfaction, affective
commitment, and LMX may still suffer from common
method biases. Our CFA results could to some extent
alleviate this concern, but future studies might use
both follower- and leader-rated LMX to further
strengthen the conclusion of the current study. Spe-
cifically, leader-reported LMX quality may be more
closely linked to the benefits (e.g., resources, oppor-
tunities to develop and to be recognized, protection)
that a follower will enjoy via a better exchange rela-
tionship with a leader; thus, leader-reported LMX
quality may have stronger ties to employee work out-
comes than follower-reported LMX. Further, given
that Sin, Nahrgang, and Morgeson (2009) docu-
mented the lack of agreement between leaders and
members on LMX ratings, it will also be interesting to
examine whether incongruence in proactive person-
ality is related to lack of agreement on LMX quality
ratings.
Third, our use of preexisting work teams may
raise concerns about the restriction of range. It may
be possible that followers who did not fit with their
leaders on proactive personality quit the job before
we conducted the research. However, the dyadic
tenure of the current sample is relatively short
(mean ⫽ 0.95 years), suggesting that followers on
average had spent just about one year with their
leaders. This period is long enough for both parties
to fully interact with each other, but also short
enough so that those who did not fit with their
leader might have not yet quit the organization.
Nevertheless, future research could track new em-
ployees’ organizational entry processes and inves-
tigate longitudinally how followers react to congru-
February
ence or incongruence with their leaders’ levels of
proactive personality.
Finally, our study focused on leader and fol-
lower proactive personalities rather than on be-
havioral manifestations of their proactive person-
alities (i.e., proactive behaviors, which may
include taking charge, engaging in “voice,” pre-
venting problems, and using feedback inquiry
[Parker & Collins, 2010]). An individual’s proac-
tive personality represents his/her enduring be-
havioral tendency, and this tendency can be
translated into proactive behaviors over time, but
we acknowledge that personality is a relatively
distal predictor of work outcomes in comparison
with actual behaviors. Future research could uti-
lize a recently developed taxonomy of proactive
behaviors at work (Parker & Collins, 2010) and
directly assess the dyadic congruence/incongru-
ence effects of various types of proactive behav-
iors (e.g., using followers’ and leaders’ ratings of
each others’ proactivity) to further strengthen the
conclusions of the current study. The congruence
effects may be stronger when each party agrees
that the other party’s proactivity matches
their own.
Conclusions
Employees’ proactive personality has been com-
monly believed to be beneficial to their work out-
comes. In the current study, we identified an impor-
tant contingency for the work outcomes of employee
proactive personality—namely, leader proactive per-
sonality. Our findings suggest that it is critical to
examine the congruence between leader and follower
proactive personality, rather than the personality of
either party alone, in predicting high-quality dyadic
exchange relationships and positive work outcomes.
Organizations could benefit more from employee pro-
activity by matching leaders with followers on proac-
tive personality, a disposition that many organiza-
tions deem pivotal for innovation and sustainable
competitive advantage.
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130 Academy of Management Journal
Zhen Zhang (zhen.zhang@asu.edu) is an assistant profes-
sor of management in the W. P. Carey School of Business
at Arizona State University. He received his Ph.D. in
human resources and industrial relations from the Uni-
versity of Minnesota. His research interests include lead-
ership process and development, biological basis of
organizational behavior, intersections between organiza-
tional behavior and entrepreneurship, and research
methods.
Mo Wang (mo.wang@warrington.ufl.edu) is an associate
professor in the Department of Management at the Uni-
versity of Florida. He received his Ph.D. in industrial-or-
February
ganizational psychology and developmental psychology
from Bowling Green State University. His research inter-
ests include dyadic work relationship adjustment, emo-
tional labor and maladaptive coping at workplace, older
worker employment and retirement, expatriate manage-
ment, and advanced quantitative research methods.
Junqi Shi (junqi_shi@pku.edu.cn) is an associate profes-
sor in the Psychology Department at Peking University.
He received his Ph.D. in industrial-organizational psy-
chology from Peking University. His current research
interests include work stress, occupational health, and
emotional labor.