Impact of Collective Affect on Employee Voice at Onset of Crisis: A Social Identity Perspective

Abstract

Employee voice behaviors—the discretionary provision of ideas and suggestions to improve organizational processes—have significant benefits to organizations, particularly in times of crisis. Yet, we know less about how external crises affect employees’ voice behaviors within organizations. In this research, we examine the effect of crisis onset on employee voice behaviors and investigate how and when employees will engage in this important type of behavior during crisis. Integrating insights from social identity theory and research on crises and threat rigidity, we examine how collective positive affect during crisis and perceived opportunity for organizations from the crisis jointly influence employees’ perceptions of self-worth and their voice behaviors during crisis. We test our hypotheses using a seven-wave longitudinal study spanning before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic on 548 working professionals across a wide range of organizations in the UK, and using piecewise latent growth curve modelling. Our findings enable a better understanding of temporal dynamics of voice in organizations, situates employee voice within the broader socio-emotional organizational context during a crisis, and extends social identity theory through the consideration of emotional (in addition to cognitive) cues as guides to employees’ proactive behavior.