Abstract
Promotive voice is an essential behavior in today’s organizations to facilitate improvements and make constructive changes in the way that work is conducted. Expanding previous research on the individual drivers of voice behavior in organizations, and drawing on theory about emotion regulation, I propose that speaking out with ideas at work is a function of employee emotion regulation and positive affect. Accordingly, results of a weekly diary study, conducted with professionals from diverse organizations and industries, showed that employees using emotion regulation strategies to improve their feelings increase the experience of positive affect at work, while behaviors oriented to worsen their own feelings were negatively related to the same outcome. Positive affect, in turn, increases the likelihood of promotive voice behavior. These results contribute to the voice behavior literature by showing that emotion regulation is an individual factor that participates in the construction of positive affective experiences, which is in turn conducive to speaking out with ideas for improvements and changes at work. Furthermore, these findings inform organizational practitioners about the value of training emotion regulation strategies to improve organizational effectiveness.
Highlights
In the contemporary organization, employee behaviors such as actively proposing ideas to improve working methodologies, taking advantage of new opportunities in the environment, or preventing problems before they escalate are essential for organizational effectiveness
The results of this study showed that promotive voice behavior at work is a function of employee emotion regulation and positive affect
Employees who frequently use affect-improving emotion regulation strategies tend to experience enhanced positive feelings, such as enthusiasm, joy, and inspiration, increasing the likelihood of speaking out with ideas for improvements and changes. These effects are possible because cognitive reappraisal and distraction behaviors embedded in affect-improving emotion regulation facilitate the transformation of adverse experiences into a positive perspective, and they direct the attentional focus to possible rewards available in the environment (Brans et al, 2013; Quoidbach et al, 2015; Brockman et al, 2017; Katana et al, 2019)
Summary
Employee behaviors such as actively proposing ideas to improve working methodologies, taking advantage of new opportunities in the environment, or preventing problems before they escalate are essential for organizational effectiveness. Positive feelings are related to flexible thinking and approach motivation (Watson, 2000; Fredrickson, 2001), which provides individuals with a broader perspective of their environment, a sense of safety in the given context, and willingness to pursue anticipated rewards in the environment (Higgins, 1997; Watson, 2000; Carver et al, 2008) This psychological configuration may be functional to the expression of promotive voice behavior because speaking out with ideas for change requires that employees have a comprehensive understanding of the work situation, a sense of safety to take the risk of defying the status quo, and readiness to manage resistance to change from coworkers (Morrison and Milliken, 2000; Madrid et al, 2015). I expect that affect-improving and -worsening emotion regulation behaviors exert incremental influences on positive affect, and thereby on voice behavior, relative to the increasing and lessening effects of extraversion and neuroticism, respectively
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