Managing the Uncertainties Inherent in Prohibitive Voice: How Leadership Interacts With Employee Political Skill.

Xiaoxuan Wang,Fan Zhou

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.702964

Abstract

Drawing from the uncertainty management theory, we examine how authoritarian leadership and humble leadership interact with employee political skill to predict prohibitive voice. We conducted a two-wave survey study of 43 managers and 176 subordinates in a power company in China. Our findings indicate that authoritarian leadership has a minimal negative effect on the psychological safety of employees with higher political skill, which in turn leads to a minimal negative effect on their prohibitive voice. Moreover, humble leadership is positively associated with prohibitive voice for employees with lower political skill. For employees with higher political skill, no type of leadership behavior has a significant influence on their prohibitive voice. We outline the implications of these findings for both theoretical and managerial practices.

Highlights

Organizations are becoming increasingly reliant on employee voice, the expression of constructive opinions or concerns about work-related issues (Van Dyne and LePine, 1998), to ward off failures and achieve a continuous improvement (Detert and Burris, 2007)
The results showed that the indirect effect of authoritarian leadership on prohibitive voice through psychological safety was significant among employees with higher political skill [indirect effect = 0.06, 95% CI = (0.00, 0.12)], whereas it was not significant among those with lower political skill [indirect effect = –0.10, 95% CI = (–0.20, 0.00)]
We found that authoritarian leadership was negatively related to prohibitive voice among employees with lower political skill, whereas humble leadership was positively related to prohibitive voice for such employees; in contrast, employees with higher political skill were likely to engage in more prohibitive voice behavior compared to their counterparts, regardless of to either humble leadership or authoritarian leadership

Summary

Introduction

Organizations are becoming increasingly reliant on employee voice, the expression of constructive opinions or concerns about work-related issues (Van Dyne and LePine, 1998), to ward off failures and achieve a continuous improvement (Detert and Burris, 2007). Employees’ opinions may contain promotive (e.g., new ideas intended to improve the status quo) or prohibitive (e.g., opinions about existing problematic practices at work) aspects (Liang et al, 2012). Though some voicers may receive positive outcomes, such as higher performance evaluations (Thomas et al, 2010; Ng and Feldman, 2012; Burris et al, 2013), managers’ recognition and rewards (Burris, 2012), or more promotion opportunities (Dutton and Ashford, 1993), sometimes they may receive dislike or negative performance evaluations from managers when expressing explicit or implicit criticisms to status quo (De Dreu and Weingart, 2003; Bendersky and Hays, 2012; Burris, 2012). Considering the irreplaceable function of prohibitive voice, it is critical for organizations to help employees in effectively managing the uncertainties they may experience when deciding whether to use that voice

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Discussion

Conclusion