Power Distance Orientation, and LMX Quality on Workplace Voice in China

Abstract

Employee voice behavior has been recognized as beneficial to organization. Moreover, in the ever-changing competitive business environment, the willingness of employees to offer useful information and ideas plays a critical role to business innovation and process improvement. However, employee voice is likely to involve a conflicting decision-making process since speaking up may put individual at risk while beneficial for organizational improvement. Therefore, voice research has attended much to the issue of how to facilitate employees to engage in workplace voice. Recently, contextual and cultural factors are found to affect significantly an employee’s beliefs about whether speaking up will be safe. From the social and cognitive perspective, these negative beliefs on voice are not easily eliminated due to the long-term experiences and socialization. Considering the tremendous influence of cultural and social factors on management, the voice phenomenon also need to reflect the differences between employees from various cultural backgrounds. Furthermore, the research domain of organizational studies is becoming more international and the country like China has been still undergoing profound transitions in institutional rules, values, and social norms. Even though achieving significant economic development, Chinese traditional value system as well as the socialist legacy present an institutional environment that is much different from what a typical Western organization would encounter. It is, therefore, unclear whether voice behavior researches done in the West have the similar effect on the organization in China Corporate culture grows out of the values held by organizational members which are shaped by national culture and societal ideology. Since the traditional Chinese culture stemming from Confucianism has been emphasizing hierarchical or status differences as well as harmonious interpersonal relationships, voice behavior is likely to be perceived as inappropriate and insecure. In countries like China with strong self-protective motives and a hierarchical culture along with the communist-influenced ideology, people tend to refrain from their voice behavior because of various concerns and fears related to psychological safety, such as not wanting to be viewed as challenging authority or avoiding embarrassing others. The main interest of this study is to investigate how Chinese traditional cultural values are related to employees’ concerns about voice behavior. As culturally dictated thinking style rooted in Confucian philosophy, Zhong-Yong, or ‘middle-way’ thinking emphasizes “equilibrium” and “harmony” as the rule of thumb to deal with and get along with other people. Power distance is also an important theoretical factor in terms of cultural values. As many Asian countries have been found to show high power distance culture, Chinese people especially influenced by Confucianism, greatly value the importance of the group and hierarchical relationships within an organization. Along with this reason, this study hypothesized the possible inhibiting effects of Chinese traditional cultural values, Zhong-Yong thinking and power distance orientation, on voice behavior. Since one of central issues in voice behavior research is how to facilitate an employee to engage in workplace voice, we also postulate LMX quality as a moderator in expectation of improving employees’ concerns about voicing. Employees may calculate the cost of speaking up by assessing favorability of social context such as supportive relationships with their supervisors. Leadership behavior such as LMX might have a positive impact on voice behavior in China where relationship orientation is highly advocated as compared with other countries. The potential benefits of the close relationship with the supervisor may give employees a reciprocal sense of obligation such as the active voice behavior for their organization. Therefore, LMX is expected to mitigate the negative impacts of the Chinese core values such as Zhong-Yong thinking and power distance orientation, on employees’ voice behaviors. In addition, recent literature of voice has stressed that there are different types of voice behavior, suggesting the definition of voice including speaking up with constructive ideas as well as concerns. Specifically, our study employed the two forms of voice. Promotive voice is defined as the voice behavior whose intended aim is to propose ways of changing the status quo while prohibitive voice represents the voice behavior whose intended aim is to express concerns that help stop or prevent problems. To test the hypotheses, the survey questionnaires were sent to 337 subordinate-supervisor dyadic samples employed in 14 companies of various sectors in China and 306 valid questionnaires remained for further analyses after screening out the incomplete responses. The results revealed that Zhong-Yong thinking and power distance orientation had significant negative effects on employees’ two forms of voice, promotive and prohibitive voice. Also, LMX quality was found to mitigate the negative effect of Zhong-Yong thinking and power distance orientation on both promotive and prohibitive voice. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.