Direct and Indirect Employee Voice and Firm Innovation in Small and Medium Firms

Edoardo Della Torre,Meysam Salimi,Alessia Gritti

doi:10.1111/1467-8551.12504

Edoardo Della Torre, Meysam Salimi + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12504

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Abstract

AbstractThis study adopts an integrated approach to employee voice (EV) and analyses the impacts of direct and indirect EV mechanisms on firm innovation in small and medium‐sized firms separately. It also proposes a new categorization for direct EV, by distinguishing between verbal and written mechanisms, allowing us to take the level of formality of different EV mechanisms into account. The analysis of 17,890 European firms shows that verbal, written and indirect EV mechanisms are all positively related to a higher propensity of firm innovation in both small and medium firms. However, for verbal EV mechanisms the relationship is significantly stronger for small firms than medium firms. The results also reveal that medium firms derive higher benefit than small firms while combining and balancing EV mechanisms with different levels of formalization (i.e. verbal and indirect voice). However, the former also suffers from excessive formalization of employees’ involvement in the innovation process (e.g. through written and indirect voice). Overall, this study supports recent calls for the need to adopt an integrated, pluralistic approach to EV and has important implications for EV research in small and medium firms.

Highlights

Over the last few decades, scholars’ and practitioners’ interest in employee voice (EV) has grown enormously (Morrison, 2014; Mowbray, Wilkinson and Tse, 2019; Wilkinson, Barry and Morrison, 2020)
Contribution and implications Drawing on human resource management (HRM), organizational behaviour (OB) and industrial relations (IR) literature, this study contributes to a better understanding of direct and indirect EV mechanisms, and their relationship with firm innovation in small firms compared to medium firms
We found a significant relationship between the adoption of the three EV mechanisms investigated and a higher level of firm innovation in both small and medium firms

Summary

Introduction

Over the last few decades, scholars’ and practitioners’ interest in employee voice (EV) has grown enormously (Morrison, 2014; Mowbray, Wilkinson and Tse, 2019; Wilkinson, Barry and Morrison, 2020). Two trends have accompanied this tendency: (1) the rise of the high-performance work systems model as the dominant approach to analyse the impact of HRM on organizational performance (Harley, 2014); and (2) a (supposed) general decline in union membership in Western economies This has led scholars and practitioners to focus more on direct, individual forms of employee in-. The authors argued that a return to a pluralistic approach in HRM research will allow a better understanding of how HRM works outside the dominant context of neoliberal, Anglo-Saxon economies This is relevant in the case of the EV literature due to the strong influence of the institutional and cultural context in shaping voice systems at the organizational level (Wilkinson et al, 2018a)

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