How do tangible and intangible rewards encourage employee voice? The perspective of dual proactive motivational pathways

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Finding ways to motivate employees to speak up with suggestions and concerns is an important organizational concern. Drawing on the proactive motivation model, this research examines how organizational reward practices can encourage employee voice. We investigate whether tangible rewards (e.g. bonuses, pay increases, promotion) and intangible rewards (e.g. recognition, praise, positive feedback) can facilitate employee voice through the respective effects on employee psychological safety and organizational identification. Using three experiments across three different organizational and cultural contexts, we find consistent results supporting our hypotheses. Our three studies included working adults from the following regions: China (278 participants), United Kingdom (282 participants) and United States (272 participants). We conclude that employees make attributions about organizational reward practices whereby rewards signal to employees it is safe to voice and employees are valued. Our research demonstrates that both tangible and intangible rewards have indirect effects on employee voice by enhancing psychological safety, activating the ‘can do’ motivation process to voice, and by increasing their organizational identification that triggers the ‘reason to’ motivation process. We provide practical recommendations for organizations concerning how to use reward practices to best optimise psychological safety and organizational identification to encourage voice and suggest future research directions.