Abstract. As the research on the relationship between leadership behavior and employee voice behavior has generally been viewed from Western context (e.g., transformational leadership), few existing studies is rooted in Chinese culture. We investigated how the three components of paternalistic leadership, namely benevolence, moral and authoritarianism, influenced employee voice behavior through their impacts on organization-based self-esteem (OBSE). Using a sample of 347 employees, our results showed that three components of paternalistic leadership were most strongly related to o OBSE and subsequent voice. Benevolent leadership and moral leadership have significant positive influences on OBSE and employee voice behavior, while authoritarian leadership has a negative one. Also, OBSE was positively related to employee voice. Further, OBSE mediates the positive relationship between paternalistic leadership and subordinate voice.