Implicit Voice Research Articles

Unpacking leader critical thinking in employee voice quality and silence frequency

AbstractPrevious research has predominantly examined either voice quantity or quality. We know little about the potential tradeoff between voice quantity and quality and the role of leaders in this tradeoff. This study focused on the dual aspects of voice, examining how and when the same leader attribute facilitates (inhibits) one aspect of voice, but does not facilitate (inhibit) or even hamper (facilitate) the other aspect. Specifically, we proposed that leader critical thinking stimulates the formation of employees' implicit voice theory of the need for solid data or solutions (IVT‐SDS) before one speaks up. This belief boosts the quality of employee voice especially when voice efficacy is high, but increases the frequency of employee silence especially when voice efficacy is low. In Study 1a, we experimentally tested the relationship between leader critical thinking and employees' IVT‐SDS. In Study 1b, we experimentally examined the interactive effect of employees' IVT‐SDS and their voice efficacy on both their voice quality and silence frequency. In Study 2, a multilevel, multi‐wave and multi‐source field study, we tested the entire research model. The results supported our hypotheses. We extend the research on leadership and voice by revealing a potential tradeoff between voice quality and quantity.

Can Playing a Game Improve Children's Speech Recognition? A Preliminary Study of Implicit Talker Familiarity Effects.

The goal was to evaluate whether implicit talker familiarization via an interactive computer game, designed for this study, could improve children's word recognition in classroom noise. It was hypothesized that, regardless of age, children would perform better when recognizing words spoken by the talker who was heard during the game they played. Using a one-group pretest-posttest experimental design, this study examined the impact of short-term implicit voice exposure on children's word recognition in classroom noise. Implicit voice familiarization occurred via an interactive computer game, played at home for 10 min a day for 5 days. In the game, children (8-12 years) heard one voice, intended to become the "familiar talker." Pre- and postfamiliarization, children identified words in prerecorded classroom noise. Four conditions were tested to evaluate talker familiarity and generalization effects. Results demonstrated an 11% improvement when recognizing words spoken by the voice heard in the game ("familiar talker"). This was observed only for words that were heard in the game and did not generalize to unfamiliarized words. Before familiarization, younger children had poorer recognition than older children in all conditions; however, after familiarization, there was no effect of age on performance for familiarized stimuli. Implicit short-term exposure to a talker has the potential to improve children's speech recognition. Therefore, leveraging talker familiarity through gameplay shows promise as a viable method for improving children's speech-in-noise recognition. However, given that improvements did not generalize to unfamiliarized words, careful consideration of exposure stimuli is necessary to optimize this approach.

Let's talk about it: the impact of nurses' implicit voice theories on individual agility and quality of care

PurposeThe complexity and uncertainty of healthcare operations increasingly require agility to safeguard a high quality of care. Using a microfoundations of dynamic capabilities perspective, this study investigates the effects of nurses' implicit voice theories (IVTs) on the behaviors that influence their individual agility.Design/methodology/approachThis research uses quantitative survey data collected from 2,552 Canadian nurses during the fourth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in the fall of 2021. Structural equation modeling is used to test a conceptual model that hypothesizes the effects of three different IVTs on nurses' creativity, spontaneity, agility and the quality of care they deliver to patients.FindingsThe results reveal that voice-inhibiting cognitions (like “suggestions are criticisms for higher-ups”, “I first need a solution or solid data”, and “speaking up has negative repercussions”) negatively impact nurses' creativity and spontaneity in crafting solutions to problems they face daily. In turn, this affects nurses' individual agility as they attempt to adapt to changing circumstances and, ultimately, the quality of care they provide to their patients.Practical implicationsEven if organizations have little control over employees' pre-held beliefs regarding voice, they can still reverse them by developing and nurturing a voice-welcoming culture to boost their workers' agility.Originality/valueThis study combines two theoretical frameworks, voice theory and dynamic capabilities theory, to study how individual-level factors (cognitions and behaviors) contribute to nurses' individual agility and the quality of care they provide to their patients. It answers the recent calls of scholars to study the mechanisms through which healthcare operations can develop and sustain dynamic capabilities, such as agility, and better face the “new normal”.

The effect of explicit and implicit voice training on speech-on-speech intelligibility and listening effort

Listening to familiar voices might improve intelligibility of target speech in multiple-talker situations. In addition to personally familiar voices, voice training—through implicit exposure or explicit learning of a previously unheard voice—can improve speech intelligibility. However, there is no consensus on which method is more effective. We investigated the effect of explicit and implicit voice training on speech-on-speech perception and listening effort (pupillometry), among normal hearing listeners. There was no significant difference in speech intelligibility performance between trained and untrained voices, with either voice training method. However, an interaction between voice training method and target-to-masker ratio (TMR) on accuracy scores showed that the benefit of increased TMR on accuracy scores was significantly larger when voice training was implicit compared to explicit. Pupillometry results showed that explicit voice training significantly reduced listening effort for most disadvantageous TMR (−6dB), but not for more advantageous TMRs (0 and + 6 dB), and not for implicitly trained voices. Our results may imply that explicit voice training is more effective than implicit voice training in reducing listening effort. Still, implicit voice training, perhaps via procedural learning, might be more beneficial on the performance level when TMR becomes more advantageous.

含蓄式建言对领导纳言的影响研究 – 领导地位威胁感知的中介作用和权威领导的调节作用 –

含蓄式建言对领导纳言的影响研究 – 领导地位威胁感知的中介作用和权威领导的调节作用 –

Short Implicit Voice Training Affects Listening Effort During a Voice Cue Sensitivity Task With Vocoder-Degraded Speech.

Understanding speech in real life can be challenging and effortful, such as in multiple-talker listening conditions. Fundamental frequency ( fo ) and vocal-tract length ( vtl ) voice cues can help listeners segregate between talkers, enhancing speech perception in adverse listening conditions. Previous research showed lower sensitivity to fo and vtl voice cues when speech signal was degraded, such as in cochlear implant hearing and vocoder-listening compared to normal hearing, likely contributing to difficulties in understanding speech in adverse listening. Nevertheless, when multiple talkers are present, familiarity with a talker's voice, via training or exposure, could provide a speech intelligibility benefit. In this study, the objective was to assess how an implicit short-term voice training could affect perceptual discrimination of voice cues ( fo+vtl ), measured in sensitivity and listening effort, with or without vocoder degradations. Voice training was provided via listening to a recording of a book segment for approximately 30 min, and answering text-related questions, to ensure engagement. Just-noticeable differences (JNDs) for fo+vtl were measured with an odd-one-out task implemented as a 3-alternative forced-choice adaptive paradigm, while simultaneously collecting pupil data. The reference voice either belonged to the trained voice or an untrained voice. Effects of voice training (trained and untrained voice), vocoding (non-vocoded and vocoded), and item variability (fixed or variable consonant-vowel triplets presented across three items) on voice cue sensitivity ( fo+vtl JNDs) and listening effort (pupillometry measurements) were analyzed. Results showed that voice training did not have a significant effect on voice cue discrimination. As expected, fo+vtl JNDs were significantly larger for vocoded conditions than for non-vocoded conditions and with variable item presentations than fixed item presentations. Generalized additive mixed models analysis of pupil dilation over the time course of stimulus presentation showed that pupil dilation was significantly larger during fo+vtl discrimination while listening to untrained voices compared to trained voices, but only for vocoder-degraded speech. Peak pupil dilation was significantly larger for vocoded conditions compared to non-vocoded conditions and variable items increased the pupil baseline relative to fixed items, which could suggest a higher anticipated task difficulty. In this study, even though short voice training did not lead to improved sensitivity to small fo+vtl voice cue differences at the discrimination threshold level, voice training still resulted in reduced listening effort for discrimination among vocoded voice cues.

Make your mark: How leaders’ Implicit Voice Theories Affect Team Voice Dynamics and Patient Safety

To date, researchers have largely examined the implicit voice theories of individual employees on their behaviors at work. But these implicit voice theories are generally acquired through life experiences and can be held by organizational leaders. The extent to which the implicit voice theories held by leaders influence their team’s voice dynamics is currently unknown. In this study, we examine a theoretical model detailing how leaders’ implicit voice theories interact with empowering leader behaviors to influence downstream emergent team states (psychological safety), team motivation (team potency), and team behaviors (team voice), as well as its impact on the end-user (patient falls in acute hospital settings). Using a sample of over 2,000 nurses and midwives working across 159 wards/teams in hospitals, we find that leaders’ implicit voice belief of negative career consequences together with low empowering leader behaviors increase patient falls by decreasing team psychological safety, team voice, and team potency. On the other hand, the implicit voice belief of needing solid evidence combined with high empowering leader behaviors to increase patient falls through these cascading downstream team dynamics. We conclude by discussing the theoretical advancements and practical implications of our findings.

How Leaders Inspire Voice: The Role of Voice Climate and Team Implicit Voice Theories

How Leaders Inspire Voice: The Role of Voice Climate and Team Implicit Voice Theories

Individuals' psychosocial voice barriers in lean problem-solving teams

PurposeVoice role identification and the psychosocial voice barriers represented by implicit voice theories (IVTs) affect lean team members' prosocial voice behavior and thereby lean team performance. This paper investigates how role definition and IVTs influence individual lean team-members' prosocial voice behavior during lean implementation.Design/methodology/approachThis research was conducted in four case readymade garment (RMG) factories in Bangladesh following a mixed-method research approach dominated by a qualitative research methodology. Under the mixed-method design, this research followed multiple research strategies, including intervention-based action research and case studies.FindingsThe findings suggest that voice role perception affects the voice behavior of the individual lean team members. The findings also demonstrate that voice role definition significantly influences individually held implicit voice beliefs in lean teams.Research limitations/implicationsThis research was conducted in four sewing lines in four RMG factories in Bangladesh. There is a need for a cross-sector and cross-country large-scale study that follows the quantitative research methods in different contexts.Practical implicationsThis research contributes to the operations management literature, especially in lean manufacturing, by presenting the difficulties of mobilizing employee voice in lean problem-solving teams. This work provides new knowledge to managers to address challenges and opportunities to ensure decent work and to improve productivity.Originality/valueThis research raises a key issue of employee voice and its influence on lean performance which addresses two critical areas of employee voice behavior in lean teams: team-members' voice role perception and implicit voice beliefs that influence their voice behavior in the workplace, thereby influencing team performance.

The impact of supervisor–employee self‐protective implicit voice theory alignment

Self‐protective implicit voice theories (IVTs) represent individuals’ deeply rooted schemas regarding the risks and appropriateness of speaking up at work. Drawing from the behavioural confirmation model and expectancy violation theory, we argue that alignment (or congruence) between supervisors’ and employees’ self‐protective IVTs will result in higher quality leader‐member exchange (LMX) relationships. We also argue that higher quality LMX will, in turn, result in higher performance evaluations from those supervisors. Results from cross‐level polynomial regression analyses of a sample of 900 governmental employees with matched responses from their supervisors partially supported our predictions. We found evidence of congruence effects on job performance evaluations through LMX, particularly when employees and their supervisors had weaker self‐protective IVTs. We also found a strong but unexpected effect for employees’ self‐protective IVTs that indicated that the more self‐protective the employees’ IVTs, the lower the quality of the LMX they developed with their supervisors. Our findings have implications for the nascent literature on self‐protective IVTs and suggest potential benefits for employees who have fewer reservations about speaking up at work.Practitioner points Employees’ implicit, unconscientious beliefs about the potential risks associated with speaking up are formed well in advance of their employment yet they are important drivers of whether they withhold their ideas and suggestions or speak up at work. Although strong implicit voice theories should help employees avoid negative outcomes, they can hinder the development of high‐quality relationships with their managers. Managers’ implicit beliefs about speaking up can influence the outcomes their employees experience as a result of their own implicit beliefs about the risks associated with speaking up. Some of the best employee outcomes result from manager and employee pairs that share weak implicit theories about speaking up and manager and employee pairs in which employees have weak implicit theories about speaking up and managers have moderate implicit theories about speaking up.

Implicit Voice Delivery: Its Antecedents, Consequences, and Boundary Conditions

ABSTRACTAlthough many organizations encourage employees to voice, employees may be reluctant to voice directly because they are afraid that their supervisors will perceive it as challenging their face (i.e., the positive image or social value of an individual). Alternatively, employees could deliver improvements or express concerns to their supervisors using indirect and implicit approaches, which we refer to as ‘implicit voice delivery’. Applying face theory, we examine the antecedents and outcomes as well as two boundary conditions of implicit voice delivery in organizations with two studies. In Study 1, we define the construct and develop a measure of implicit voice delivery. In Study 2, we test our proposed model with supervisor-subordinate dyadic data from a time-lagged survey. Results demonstrate that concern for other people's face drives employees to express their voices implicitly and that this relationship is stronger when supervisors’ concern for their own face is high rather than low. In addition, implicit voice delivery is associated with supervisors’ favorable response in terms of voice endorsement. Furthermore, the effect on voice endorsement is stronger when the supervisor is more able to infer meaning from implicit messages. Theoretical contribution and managerial implications are discussed.

Taking Your Team Behind the Curtain: The Effects of Leader Feedback-Sharing and Feedback-Seeking on Team Psychological Safety

Although scholars have highlighted the benefits of psychological safety, relatively few studies have examined how leaders establish it. Whereas existing research points to the importance of seeking feedback, we draw on theories of self-disclosure, trust, and implicit voice to propose that leaders can also promote psychological safety by sharing feedback—openly discussing criticisms and suggestions they have already received about their own performance. In Study 1, naturally-occurring feedback-seeking and feedback-sharing by CEOs independently predicted board member ratings of top management team psychological safety. In Study 2, a longitudinal field experiment, randomly assigning leaders to share feedback had a positive effect on team psychological safety one year later, whereas assigning leaders to seek feedback did not. In Study 3, to explore the processes through which feedback-sharing had an enduring effect but feedback-seeking did not, we conducted qualitative interviews with participating leaders and employees two years later. We found that leaders initiated vulnerability through seeking feedback, but it dissolved due to defensiveness and inaction. In contrast, sharing feedback normalized and crystallized vulnerability as leaders made a public commitment to keep sharing and employees reciprocated, which opened the door for more actionable feedback, greater accountability, and ongoing practices that allowed psychological safety to endure. Our research suggests that to achieve enduring improvements in psychological safety, it may be particularly effective for leaders to share criticism they have received—and that doing so does not jeopardize their reputations as effective and competent.

Effect of Implicit Voice Theories on Employee Constructive Voice and Defensive Silence: A Study in Education and Health Sector

Abstract Background and Purpose: Implicit voice theories are the beliefs that are related to employee silence. This study aims to examine the implicit voice theories (don’t embarrass the boss in public, negative career consequences of voice) as predictors of employee defensive silence and employee constructive voice. Methodology: This study is a cross-sectional and an analytical study. The sample of this study consisted of 494 participants working in the healthcare sector (n = 277) and education sector (n = 217) in Turkey. We performed linear regression analyses to test our hypotheses. Results: We found that power distance and negative career consequences of voice predicted employee defensive silence while proactive personality and the belief of “don’t embarrass the boss in public” predicted employee constructive voice. These results confirm the effect of implicit voice theories on employee silence and voice. Conclusions: Employees holding the belief of “don’t embarrass the boss in public” and “negative career consequences of voice” tend to remain silent or prefer to speak with their managers privately, which prevent sharing ideas in group interactions in organization. Therefore, managers must combat the belief that speaking up is risky. In order to change these beliefs in a positive way, they should make their subordinates feel that speaking up is a valuable behavior in organization.

The Effect of Talker Familiarity on Sentence Recognition Accuracy in Complex Noise.

The familiar talker advantage is the finding that a listener's ability to perceive and understand a talker is facilitated when the listener is familiar with the talker. However, it is unclear when the benefits of familiarity emerge and whether they strengthen over time. To better understand the time course of the familiar talker advantage, we assessed the effects of long-term, implicit voice learning on 89 young adults' sentence recognition accuracy in the presence of four-talker babble. A university professor served as the target talker in the experiment. Half the participants were students of the professor and familiar with her voice. The professor was a stranger to the remaining participants. We manipulated the listeners' degree of familiarity with the professor over the course of a semester. We used mixed effects modeling to test for the effects of the two independent variables: talker and hours of exposure. Analyses revealed a familiar talker advantage in the listeners after 16 weeks (∼32 h) of exposure to the target voice. These results imply that talker familiarity (outside of the confines of a long-term, familial relationship) seems to be a much quicker-to-emerge, reliable cue for bootstrapping spoken language perception than previous literature suggested.

Book Review: A Column of Cloud and a Column of Fire: Dimitris Lyacos’ Poena Damni

One of the most original and significant texts to have come out of Europe in the past generation is Dimitris Lyacos’ poetictrilogy, Poena Damni. I call it “poetic” because there is no word that quite describes a work that moves alternately betweenpoetry, prose, and drama, and that turns each like a prism in a quest for meaning that yields no final stability but only a“further horizon of pain” (The First Death, Section X).As the above suggests, the text offers us a shifting series of scenes and perspectives, somewhere between a journey and atravail. There is an implicit narrative voice, but no narrative, that shifts abruptly from first to third person, a thread ofconsciousness that weaves in and out of dream and waking, fantasy and vision, confronting us at every turn with that whichboth forces and repels our sight. You know there is a narrative, because something in the voice compels you to continue; yousimply do not know what is being told. You are simply within the framework of a temporality in its most radical sense.Dimitris Lyacos was born in Athens in 1966, and studied law and philosophy. It was conceived back to front, with its“last” part, The First Death, written and published first, and the other segments proceeding backwards toward an origin thatinstates the original wound of the poem’s birth. Lyacos has revised it extensively over the course of some thirty years,retracting an earlier version of what is now With the People From the Bridge that was originally published as Nyctivoe andheavily revising the text called Z213: EXIT. The suggestion, I think, is clear: the poem remains open, a circularity thatdeflects all progression, an ourobouros that never meets its own tail.

More Depletion, Less Voice? The Role of Implicit Voice Theories and Voice Efficacy

To reconcile prior mixed findings on the relationship between ego depletion and voice, this study introduces self-protective implicit voice beliefs as the key between-level boundary condition that determines whether ego depletion reduces voice. Based on the Quad process model, this study proposes a mediated moderation model and simultaneously considers the effect of implicit voice beliefs and ego depletion when predicting voice behavior. Data was collected from 128 employees across ten work days using an experience sampling methodology. The results indicated that self-protective implicit voice beliefs (SIVBs) moderated the relationship between daily ego depletion and daily voice such that the relationship was more negative when SIVBs were high, but turned insignificant when SIVBs were low. In addition, daily voice efficacy mediated the interaction effect of ego depletion and SIVBs on daily voice. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings were also provided.

The Effect of Cultural Value Orientation on the Relationship Between Psychological Safety and Voice

Although the important roles of psychological safety on voice behavior have been empirically supported, not much attention has been drawn on the critical question —a boundary condition for when psychological safety is particularly less helpful. Drawing on implicit voice theory (Detert & Edmondson, 2011), which explains about the voice-reluctant phenomenon in organizations as the “taken-for-granted rules of self-censorship”, this study suggests psychological safety is less important antecedent of voice behavior of employees culturally hardwired to be reticent. Using survey data from 342 full-time employees working at diverse organizations in South Korea, this study tests how cultural value orientation moderates the relationships between psychological safety and voice. Finally, the results suggest that the perception of psychological safety would not be sufficient to lead voice even more with employees high in power distance orientation, as the power distance orientation increases self-censorship. Study concludes with a discussion of the areas in need of future examination.

How Governance Paradigm Attachment Enacts a Spiral of Unsaid and Decision-Making in the Boardroom

How do board members of a board of directors decide what to say ‘in the moment’ during formal meetings and consequently decide on strategic issues? By implementing real-time tape-recorded data from 37 meetings of 17 boards and retrospective interviews with 119 board members, we explored the motives behind what board members say and do not say during board meetings. We compared individual level and group level similarities and paradigm differences, implicit voice theories and communicative interactions. We found that board members who consider their governance paradigm objective enact a spiral of unsaid when they try to manage silent performance conflicts through informal decision-making. Then when hot situations are enacted due to these conflict’s they manage the conflicts ultimately through scapegoating and ostracizing the board members with the minority paradigm.

A Multi‐Level Approach to Direct and Indirect Relationships between Organizational Voice Climate, Team Manager Openness, Implicit Voice Theories, and Silence

Employee silence impedes sustainable organizational development, and it can conceal harm for internal and external stakeholders. Established approaches to overcoming silence in organizations draw on the assumption that employees withhold their views based on deliberate elaborations on the effectiveness and risks they associate with voice. Our research aims at complementing these approaches. Applying an information processing approach to culture and using implicit voice theories (IVTs; i.e., taken‐for‐granted beliefs about when and why speaking up at work is risky or inappropriate) as an example, we introduce a model proposing ways through which shared implicit knowledge structures emerge in teams and organizations, and how they affect motives to remain silent. We examine parts of the model with a sample of 696 employees nested in 129 teams and 67 organizations. Our findings show that IVTs can be shared at the team and organizational level, that shared IVTs explain variance in silence motives above and beyond perceptions of organizational climate and manager openness at the team and organization level, and that IVTs function as a mediator between team manager openness and silence motives. In sum, our findings point at shared IVTs as a way to conceptualize underlying basic assumptions of cultures of silence.

Exploring the influence of paternalistic leadership on voice behavior

PurposeDrawn upon the perspective of implicit voice theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore the underlying mechanism as well as the boundary effect in the relationship between paternalistic leadership and voice behavior.Design/methodology/approachMultiple-wave survey data from a sample of 368 employees in China were used to test the hypothesized moderated mediation model.FindingsThe findings show that both benevolent leadership and moral leadership related positively to voice behavior, whereas authoritative leadership played a negative role in influencing voice behavior. Employees’ implicit voice belief played a partial mediating role between paternalistic leadership and voice behavior. Furthermore, perceived HRM strength weakens both the mediation relationship among benevolent leadership, implicit voice belief and voice behavior, and the mediation relationship among moral leadership, implicit voice belief and voice behavior. However, the moderated mediation effect of implicit voice belief on the relationship between authoritative leadership and voice behavior is not significant.Practical implicationsLeaders are encouraged to behave benevolently and morally whereas to avoid excessive authoritative style at work, so that employees can be encouraged to speak out. Organizations are advised to introduce management practices like training and development sessions and to improve employees’ perceived HRM strength so that the implicit voice belief can be reduced, and the voice behavior can be stimulated.Originality/valueThe research provided a fresh theoretical perspective on the underlying mechanism between paternalistic leadership and employees’ voice behavior by unveiling employee implicit voice belief’s partial mediating role between paternalistic leadership and employee voice behavior. Furthermore, the study contributed to the literature of voice by adopting a more integrative perspective and exploring the role of the implementation of the organization’s system, i.e., perceived HRM strength that provided a boundary condition in the above mediation model.