Employee Voice Behavior Research Articles

Understanding mindfulness outcomes: a moderated mediation analysis of high-performance work systems

The purpose of the study was to explain the possible outcomes of mindfulness. The research studied the relationship between mindfulness and employee voice behaviour, affective commitment, job satisfaction, and burnout. The research added one contextual variable, high-performance work system, as a moderator. The sample of the study was faculty members of higher education (management) schools. The sample size was 1092 faculty members. Moderated mediation analysis was used to analyse the data and understand the positive as well as the negative relationship of high-performance work system. Findings indicated the significant positive relationship of mindfulness with employee voice behaviour, affective commitment, and job satisfaction. The research found a negative relationship between mindfulness and burnout. The moderated mediation analysis revealed the significant interaction effect of high-performance work system and mindfulness on consequence variables. To conclude the author found that the mindfulness practice is important for faculty members of higher education. Further the research concluded that mindfulness may enhance employee voice behaviour, which in turn increases satisfaction and commitment and reduces burnout. Such relationship is possible under high performance work system context.

Motivating employees to speak up: Linking job autonomy, P-O fit, and employee voice behaviors through work engagement

Employee voice behaviors are critical to enhanced organizational success. The current study applies self-determination theory (SDT) and the job demands-resources model (JD-R) to examine the relationships among job autonomy, work engagement, and voice behaviors and investigates the moderating role of person–organization fit (P-O fit) on these relationships. A total of 262 full-time employees from various industries (e.g., manufacturing, construction, financial, service, and education industries) in Taiwan completed questionnaires across two time points. The results demonstrated that job autonomy was positively related to promotive voice behavior through work engagement. Additionally, P-O fit strengthened the direct effect of work engagement on promotive voice behavior and the indirect effect of job autonomy on promotive voice behavior through work engagement. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Examining the Effect of Leader–Member Exchange Social Comparison on Employee Voice Behavior: The Role of Employee–Organization and Supervisors Organizational Embodiment

Drawing on social comparison theory (SCT), this research aims to explore the moderated path by testing the interaction effect of a supervisor's organizational embodiment between leader–member exchange social comparison and employee voice behavior (EVB), as well as the mediating role of the employee–organization relationship (EOR). The hypothesis was tested based on the moderated mediation model using a sample of 788 employees through a structured questionnaire from public sector organizations in Fiji. The findings of the study showed that leader–member exchange social comparison (LMXSC) are positively related to employee voice behavior. Furthermore, the mediating role of the employee–organization relationship quality had significantly strengthened the relationship. In addition, supervisors’ organizational embodiment (SOE) also positively moderated the influence of LMXSC on EVB, and LMXSC on EOR quality. This research delineates the brighter side of social comparison, suggesting that employee voice behavior can be enhanced through fair distribution of the leaders’ resources among the employees, communication training, two-way interactive communication, and employee empowerment in improving work ethics and creating a sustainable organization. Finally, to lead an organization ethically, managers need to encourage voicing behavior of subordinates. Employees need to stand up against unethical issues to enhance the social responsibility of the corporation. The limitations and directions for the future are also presented.

Effects of Empowering Leadership on Employee Voice Behavior: The Mediating Role of Psychological Empowerment

Over the past two decades many organizations are moving towards decentralization approach and hence putting in much effort to ensure that employees acquire the necessary leadership skills. Many organizations have adopted managerial attempts that aim to strengthen and empower leaders to boost organizational performance. Several educational researchers have exploited the relationship that exist between empowering leadership, psychological empowerment. The purpose of this research was to analyze the effects that empowering leadership can have on employee voice behavior, with the mediating role of psychological empowerment. The technique used to gather responses from 151 respondents was mainly quantitative research approach with questionnaires as a tool. The study employed random sampling to involve respondents in the study. Multiple operations such as correlation matrix, regression analysis and bootstrap approach were conducted to analyze data collected from the questionnaire. The findings showed a positive correlation between the variables measured. All hypotheses tested revealed a significant positive relationship between empowering leadership and voice behavior, psychological empowerment and voice behavior, and the mediating role of psychological empowerment. This study is useful in the academic, industrial and organizational sector. Organizations can use it to employ empowering leadership and measure the change in the behavior of employees, attitude, motivation, and empowerment. In terms of academia, this research opens more doors to further investigate the relationship between these variables. The limitations of the study include purely quantitative means of analysis and the use of random sampling. Future researchers can get more insights by employing a qualitative technique and adding more variables to further define the relationship and get better insights.

Voice More and Be Happier: How Employee Voice Influences Psychological Well-Being in the Workplace

The recently recognized core construct of employee voice has been demonstrated to be related to various outcomes. However, to date, the impact of employee voice over time and on important employee well-being has been rarely tested. In the present research, we studied in particular how employee voice behavior is related to psychological well-being. Employing the theory of self-determination, we developed three hypotheses pertinent to this relationship, including the mediating role of authentic self-expression and the moderating role of collectivist orientation. We tested our hypotheses using data from 217 employees in Mainland China over two time periods. As we hypothesized, we found positive relationships between the employee voice and psychological well-being. Our results also verified that these relationships are fully mediated by authentic self-expression and partially moderated by collectivist orientation.

Toxic leadership and collective organizational engagement: Does employee voice mediate the effect?

Drawing upon the theory of planned behavior, this study aims to observe the role of employee voice in abating the impact of toxic leadership on collective organizational engagement. The performance of the firm is highly dependent on employee engagement and leadership plays a vital role in engaging employees towards collective goals. This study used the snowball sampling technique to collect data from the Pakistan service sector. A self-reported questionnaire was used to collect data from the said sector, the sample size was 223 employees working in telecommunication, banks, and insurance companies. Thus, literature proposes that the phenomenon of toxic leadership exists at every workplace and has negative effects on the organization. Previously toxic leadership has been studied only as a predictor of negative outcomes only. Therefore current study argues that even though toxic leadership decreases the collective organizational engagement, however, this relationship can be transformed via employee proactive voice behavior. Results obtained through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) show that although leaders’ toxicity disengages employees at the workplace they look engaged. Structural relation of toxic leadership with employee voice has proved significant which indicates that employee raises voice against the leader’s bad behavior; it keeps them engaged as they perceive organization cares their voice. Thus, this study recommends that employee voice behavior should be promoted at the organization to neutralize the toxic leadership effect on collective organizational engagement. Present study where advances the literature on toxic leadership has practical implications for the managers as well. As toxic leadership overshadows the effects of positive leadership thus to avoid the negative effects of toxic leadership; top management should promote collective engagement through employee voice behavior to accomplish firm performance. Presently this study attempts to enrich the literature by empirically testing the proposed relationship and also provided future insights on toxic leadership to the researchers.

Effect of perceived support on employee's voice behaviour through the work engagement: a moderator role of locus of control

Effect of perceived support on employee's voice behaviour through the work engagement: a moderator role of locus of control

Encouraging employee voice behaviour through organisational support and felt obligation for constructive change

Encouraging employee voice behaviour through organisational support and felt obligation for constructive change

임파워링 리더십이 촉진적 발언 행동에 미치는 영향: 심리적 안전감의 매개효과와 동료침묵의 조절된 매개효과

Voice behaviors have been received considerable interests both from scholars and practitioners due to its expected benefit to promote continuing organizational innovation. However, few studies have been conducted concurrently considered all factors influencing voice behavior - supervisors, colleagues, and self - to put in to the research model. Thus, this study suggested that follower’s voice behaviors are influenced by leaders’ empowering leadership, individual’s psychological safety, and coworkers’ acquiescent. silence. Specifically, a leader’s empowering leadership is expected to promote subordinates’ psychological safety, subsequently leads to encourage their voice behaviors. Coworkers’ acquiescent silence is expected to negatively moderate the relationship between empowering leadership on subordinates’ promotive voice behaviors which is mediated by subordinates’ psychological safety. To test the research problem, we collected survey data from 171 leader-subordinate pairs and conducted regression analysis. The result supported our research hypotheses, showing the mediation effect of psychological safety and moderated mediation effect of acquiescent silence. From this study, we tried to expand the scope of concepts relating to voice literatures, by examining the process and conditions inducing positive and constructive voice behaviors of organizational member. Also, based on the theoretical model, we suggested practical implications to promote constructive employee voice behaviors.

The Mediating Role of Employee Voice Behaviour in the Relation between Despotic Leadership and Employee Outcomes

Leaders play an essential role in the success and failure of the organization. In the past, studies examined positive leadership characteristics and behavior and their impacts on employee outcomes. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of despotic leadership on employee creativity and turnover intention with the mediating role of employee voice behavior. The sample consisted of 344 faculty members of Teacher Training Institutions in Pakistan. SPSS-25 software was used to evaluate the collected data. The results demonstrated that despotic leadership hurts employee voice behavior and creativity and has a positive impact on turnover intention. Further, the results also revealed that the voice behavior of employees has no mediation effect in the relationship between despotic leadership and employee outcomes (creativity and turnover intention). The study highlighted the importance of the topic and explored the research gap by focusing on the dark side of leadership and examined how despotic leadership harms the creativity and turnover intention of employees.

Psychological Safety and Employee Voice in IT Sector: Parallel Mediation Effect of Affective Commitment and Intrinsic Motivation

The study is an attempt to explain the relationship ofpsychological safety on employee voice behaviour byexamining the mediating role of affective commitmentand intrinsic motivation. A questionnaire was distributedamongst 161 IT professionals through conveniencesampling. Mediation Analysis was used to find the effectof the mediators in influencing the relationship betweenpsychological safety and prosocial voice. The resultsuggested psychological safety is parallelly mediated byboth affective commitment and intrinsic motivation,leading to employee prosocial voice. Intrinsic motivationwas found to have a greater mediating effect thanaffective commitment.

Employee voice mechanisms, transformational leadership, group prototypicality, and voice behaviour: a comparison of portfolio career workers in Japan, Korea and China

ABSTRACT This study analyses the relationship between two kinds of employee voice mechanisms and voice behaviour among portfolio career workers in Japan, Korea and China. Using the conservation of resources theory, we focus on the role of managerial leadership. Under similar sampling procedures, data on 400 managers in each country were collected via web-based surveys conducted for Japan and Korea in 2017 and for China 2018. The findings are as follows: First, the number of team voice mechanisms is positively and directly related to voice behaviour in each country. Second, the number of representative voice mechanisms is positively and indirectly related to voice behaviour in Japan and China. Third, the number of team voice mechanisms is positively and directly related to transformational leadership in each country. Fourth, the number of representative voice mechanisms is positively and indirectly related to the level of transformational leadership in Japan and China. Fifth, transformational leadership is positively related to leader group prototypicality in Japan and China. Finally, leader group prototypicality is positively related to voice behaviour in Japan and China.

Influence of relationship conflicts with leaders and coworkers on employees' voice

Building on self-determination theory and relational attribution theory, in this study we examined how relationship conflicts with leaders and coworkers simultaneously affect employee voice behaviors. We expanded relational attribution theory by developing two new constructs we labeled leader-relational attribution orientation and coworker-relational attribution orientation to describe employees' different responses to relationship conflicts with leaders and coworkers via psychological needs satisfaction. We surveyed 328 employee–leader dyads who were employed at a semiconductor manufacturer to test our hypotheses. We found that leader-relational attribution orientation can strengthen the influences of relationship conflicts with leaders on psychological needs satisfaction and its indirect effects on employee voice behaviors. Coworker-relational attribution orientation can strengthen the influences of relationship conflicts with coworkers on psychological needs satisfaction and its indirect effects on employee voice behaviors. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Workplace fun and voice behavior: The mediating role of psychological safety

We proposed a theoretical model explaining why workplace fun might enhance the proactive behavior of employee voice, and explored the mediating role of psychological safety in this relationship. Data were collected from a sample of 223 part-time students at three universities located in China, who were taking a Master of Business Administration course. The results of structural equation modeling show that workplace fun had a direct, significantly positive relationship with employee voice behavior, and that there was also an indirect effect through the mediator of psychological safety. These findings shed light on the ways in which workplace fun helps to increase employee voice behavior. Managers of organizations should consider ways to create a work environment that is fun to promote employees' psychological safety and voice behavior. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed.

High-performance work systems and employee voice behaviour: an integrated model and research agenda

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model drawing together and integrating research from employment relations (ER), human resource management (HRM) and organizational behaviour (OB) to identify how high-performance work systems (HPWS) encourage voice behaviour.Design/methodology/approachThe authors identify shortcomings in research on the relationship between HPWS practices and employee voice behaviour, attributable to the disparate conceptualization of voice across management disciplines. The authors then present a conceptual model using the ability, motivation and opportunity (AMO) framework to theorize how the ER climate influences the design of the HPWS and subsequently how the HPWS encourages voice behaviour. Practical implications and recommendations for future studies are provided.FindingsThe mutual gains ER climate will influence the design of the HPWS; in turn the HPWS' practices will influence line manager AMO to manage voice and the employees' AMO to engage in voice behaviour, resulting in the encouragement of both employer and employee interest forms of voice.Practical implicationsThe HPWS-voice behaviour interaction model sheds light on the types of HR practices organisations can implement to optimize employee voice behaviour.Originality/valueThe conceptual model demonstrates how ER, HRM and OB factors influence voice behaviour within a HPWS, which has not previously been considered by voice scholars. The integrated conceptual model encourages a multidisciplinary approach to studying employee voice in future research.

Inclusive leadership and employees’ voice behavior: A moderated mediation model

The number of studies dedicated to organizational inclusion is rapidly growing. Using relational leadership theory (RLT) as the overarching framework, the current study aimed to examine how inclusive leadership indirectly influences the voices of Chinese employees via leader-member exchange (LMX). The boundary conditions of these relationships were also explored by using employee achievement values as a potential moderator. A total of 814 full-time Chinese employees were recruited. The results showed that LMX mediated the positive effect of inclusive leadership on employee voice behaviors. Specifically, inclusive leadership enhanced LMX, and employees were then more likely to express ideas in front of supervisors. Moreover, achievement values moderated the positive linkage of LMX–voice. When building the high quality LMX relationships, employees with higher achievement values were more willing to speak up compared to their counterparts holding lower achievement values. We further found that the magnitude of the mediating effect of LMX on the relationship between inclusive leadership and voice also relied on employee achievement values (i.e., a second-stage moderated mediation model). This indicates that the indirect effect was stronger when the employees had higher achievement values. The conceptual and applied implications of our findings are also discussed.

Employee voice in the Asia Pacific

This introduction introduces the special issue on employee voice in the Asia Pacific. Whilst there is an extensive literature on employee voice in western countries in regions such as Europe and the United States, we know less about the state of employee voice in the Asia Pacific regions. One of these gaps relates to how the institutional factors as well as national cultural factors influence the employee voice arrangements and mechanisms. While we have some understanding of how national contextual factors can influence employee voice behaviour, such as through leadership behaviour and supervisor‐subordinate relationships, there is still much to be understood with regard to how the different Asia Pacific cultural characteristics will influence voice. With governance and representative structures of voice embedded in particular institutional contexts there are significant differences not only between Asia Pacific economies and the rest of the world, but also between and within the Asia Pacific economies themselves.

The Impact of Paradoxical Leadership on Employee Voice Behavior: A Moderated Mediation Model.

Paradoxical leadership is associated with positive behavioral outcomes. However, the link between paradoxical leadership and voice behavior is not comprehensively studied in extant literature. This paper builds a theoretical model to reveal how paradoxical leadership facilitates promotive and prohibitive voice behavior of employees, drawing upon social cognitive theory and regulatory focus theory. We proposed a moderated mediation model that employees’ voice behavior is related to paradoxical leadership through self-efficacy and psychological safety. With data from 268 leader – employee pairs of questionnaires, this study conducted a structural equation model to test the conceptual framework. The results show that (a) leader’s paradoxical leadership related to employee’s promotive and prohibitive voice behaviors positively; (b) employee’s self-efficacy and psychological safety mediate the extent of effect the superior’s paradoxical leadership has on subordinate’s voice behavior; (c) the more obvious the subordinate’s promotion focus orientation, the stronger the mediating effect of self-efficacy; and (d) the more obvious the subordinate’s prevention focus orientation, the weaker the mediating effect of psychological safety. These conclusions reveal the influencing mechanism of a superior’s paradoxical leadership on a subordinate’s voice behavior. It expands paradoxical leadership-related studies, enriches studies related to the field of “leader – employee voice behavior,” and highlights the relationship between the duality of paradoxical leadership behavior on employees with different regulatory focus orientation with a new perspective.

The relationship between psychological contract and voice behavior—a social exchange perspective

Our study explores the relationship between psychological contract (fulfillment/violations) and voice behavior (promotive/prohibitive). The study encourages promoting the development of positive voice behavior since the promotive voice behavior of employees would help the organization to grow and improve as per industry standards especially during the upcoming hi-tech era. If the knowledge workers do not show positive voice behavior, it is difficult for organizations to compete and sustain in such an era of digitalization. A cross-sectional survey was conducted for the assessment/validation of the model. Data was collected through a single self-reported questionnaire, filled out by the 89 employees of two private banks, working in 8 different branches. Further, the relationships among variables have been analyzed using structure equation modeling. Results show a strong and positive relationship between psychological contract fulfillment and promotive voice behavior whereas a negative relationship is indicated upon the violations and breach of psychological contract. Job satisfaction/dissatisfaction was also tested as mediators between these variables. Future researchers may test the same in different geographical locations and demographic conditions, whereas various personality traits may also be tested since voice behavior is an individual decision. The study represents the first of its kind on the said topic especially in the Pakistani context.

Employee voice behavior as a critical factor for organizational sustainability in the telecommunications industry.

Organizational effectiveness is contingent upon employees’ contributions; however, the role of employee voice behavior as a critical component of employees’ contribution to the organization has not been sufficiently acknowledged. Based on proactive behavior theory, we present a model to investigate employee voice behavior as an underlying mechanism in the relationship between supervisor delegation and perceived workplace inclusion. Using the SEM (structural equation modeling) method, we test our model’s hypotheses with data from 271 employee-supervisor questionnaires administered in state-owned enterprises in the telecommunications industry. The results show that supervisor delegation is positively related to employees’ promotive and prohibitive voice behavior. Promotive voice significantly influences perceived workplace inclusion, but prohibitive voice behavior was not found to have any impact on perceived workplace inclusion. Moreover, both dimensions of voice behavior, i.e., promotive and prohibitive voice behavior, significantly mediate the relationship between supervisor delegation and perceived workplace inclusion.