Conceptualising employee voice in the majority world: Using multiple intellectual traditions inspired by the work of Mick Marchington

Abstract

AbstractConceptualisation of voice in the majority world (developing and emerging economies) should avoid simply using the lens of the minority world (advanced economies). Yet, both can benefit from taking a multidisciplinary approach. Marchington was one of the early pioneers of multidisciplinary work on voice in advanced economies. While being fundamentally an industrial relations (IR) scholar who was alert to the influence of power and context, he took a pluralist approach in applying IR ideas to Human Resource Management, exploring empirically why and how workers use voice. This paper is inspired by Marchington's multidisciplinary approach but considers voice within different institutional contexts. Our key research question is, ‘How can majority world conceptions of employee voice enrich our understanding of what voice is for, its outcomes and whom it serves?’ Through interrogating how different intellectual traditions have underpinned work in the majority world (exemplified by South Africa and China) we highlight the need for further theoretical development of the concept of lateral voice and argue that voice should be more closely linked to forms of resistance. Our concluding section uses this analysis to start the re‐imagining of voice in minority and majority world contexts.