Objetivo: Sustainable development goals (SDGs) impose added challenges to companies. As key agents of such development pattern, they must incorporate environmental and social considerations, along economic ones, in their daily activities and business strategies. Despite getting companies onboard being essential for the success of 2030 agenda, the path to take is not always clear. Employees voice can be of paramount importance for companies transition for more sustainable business models. Their knowledge of companies’ practices, processes and primary stakeholders’ needs and wants puts them in a privileged position to identify improvement opportunities. However, voice behaviors can be risky as employees can be misinterpreted by superiors (Alves et al., 2023; Liang et al., 2012). For instance, expressing one’s opinion on how to improve a new work method can be seen as a critic to current management. Leaders’ behaviors are thus essential to stimulate employees to freely share they thoughts on how to improve, excel and contribute to the organization’s success. Within this context, this study sought to analyze how responsible leadership, a leadership style aligned d value for all (Pless & Maak, 2011), relates to employee voice behavior. This analysis with SDGs and focused on both balancing stakeholders’ expectations and creating addewas made within a theoretical model that includes leader-member value congruence (Ferh et al., 2019) and leader pro-voice behaviors (Subhakaran & Yulk, 2018) as mediating variables. By expressing their concerns with people and the environment, responsible leaders should foster increased perceived value congruence by their employees as well as be seen as open to ideas on how to improve businesses functioning, resulting in increased voice behaviors. Metodologia /Abordagem: For testing the research model, a correlacional study was conducted with 189 workers from different organizations. The respondents were invited to take a time-lag survey, with 3 weeks of interval between the two parts of the survey. The first part collected information regarding employee voice behavior (Maynes & Podsakoff, 2014) and manager pro-voice behavior (Subhakaran & Yulk, 2018), while the second part collected data on responsible leadership (Voegtlin, 2011) and leader- member values congruence (Cable et al., 2002). Although this data collection procedure limited the sample size, it increased data robustness to same source bias (Podsakoff et al., 2003). All variables revealed high levels of reliability. Conclusões / Resultados: Data were analyzed using multiple regression analysis using Process for SPSS. Model 6 allowed testing of the proposed sequential mediation model. Holding a managerial position was set as covariate because it was significantly related to respondents’ voice, i.e., respondents holding a managerial position expressed higher levels of voice than other without such position. Findings revealed, as hypothesized, a statistically significant positive relationship between responsible leadership and employees’ voice behaviors, which are both directly connected and indirectly linked through the two proposed psychosocial mechanisms. Implicações da investigação: The findings thus indicate that responsible leadership reinforces workers’ perceived congruence with leader’s values, thereby increasing their perceptions of leaders’ pro-voice behaviors and, subsequently, promoting workers’ disposition to express their ideas. Fostering sustainable leadership in organizations will help workers to feel safer to express their ideas and contribute to companies transition to more sustainable business practices. Originalidade: This study presents new and significant results since previous research as not focused on responsible leadership as an enabler of employee voice.

--

Responsible leadership,leader pro-voice behaviors,leader- member value congruence,voice behavior