Upward Voice Research Articles

Efficacy- and Safety-Based Voice Topography and Their Impacts on Team Performance

We propose a new concept called voice topography, referring to how upward voice behavior is distributed among team members. Building on “efficacy-safety” view of voice antecedents, we argue for two...

Why didn’t you say something? Effects of after-event reviews on voice behaviour and hierarchy beliefs in multi-professional action teams

ABSTRACTTeam decision-making can go wrong when individuals fear to voice suggestions or concerns to higher status team members. We investigate how after-event reviews (AERs) can be used to promote voice behaviour and hierarchy-attenuating beliefs in multi-professional action teams. We hypothesized that (1) lower status team members will speak up more following an assertiveness-specific AER (ASAER) as compared to a teamwork-generic AER (TGAER) and (2) that an ASAER leads to stronger endorsement of hierarchy-attenuating beliefs than the TGAER. To test these hypotheses, we implemented simulations of medical emergencies with 20 healthcare teams consisting of low (i.e., nurses) and high-status (i.e., physicians) professions. After participating in one of the two AERs, teams managed a simulation in which a higher status confederate engaged in potentially harmful actions. Behavioural coding of the videotaped simulations and assessment of team members’ hierarchy beliefs supported both hypotheses: nurses spoke up more following the ASAER than following the TGAER and both professional groups reported significantly higher levels of hierarchy-attenuating beliefs following the ASAER as compared to the TGAER. We discuss how AERs can affect upward voice and increase awareness for the potential downsides of status hierarchies in multi-professional teams.

"LMX (Dis)Similarity, Leader Group Prototypicality and Upward Voice"

Integrating the social identity theory of leadership with LMX theory, the present study investigated the moderating effect of leader group prototypicality on the relation between followers’ self-co...

Why and When Leaders’ Affective States Influence Employee Upward Voice

Although researchers have argued that employees often carefully examine social contexts before speaking up to leaders, the role of leaders’ affective states has received little attention. The curre...

Employee Voice and Silence

When employees voluntarily communicate suggestions, concerns, information about problems, or work-related opinions to someone in a higher organizational position, they are engaging in upward voice. When they withhold such input, they are displaying silence and depriving their organization of potentially useful information. In this article, I review the current state of knowledge about the factors and motivational processes that affect whether employees engage in upward voice or remain silent when they have concerns or relevant information to share. I also review the research findings on the organizational and individual effects of employee voice and silence. After presenting an integrated model of antecedents and outcomes, I offer some potentially fruitful questions for future research.

"When Upward Voicing Becomes “Upward Nagging”: Employee Voice, LMX and Managers’ Reactions"

Breaking away from previous theoretical and empirical works on the consequences of upward voice, we theorize that an increase in the frequency of upward voice is more likely to alert managers’ attention to the voice and to project a competent image of the voicing employees to the managers. After the frequency of voicing passes an optimal point, a further increase in the frequency of voicing will however generate negative managers’ reactions. In Study 1, using time-lagged data collected from 219 supervisor-subordinate dyads, we found that, for employees with low rather than high LMXs with their managers, there was an inverted U-shaped relationship between the frequency of voicing, and managerial attention as well as their perceived credibility of the voicing employees. In Study 2, using time-lagged data collected from 131 supervisor-subordinate dyads, we found similar quadratic-by-linear interactive effect of prohibitive voice and LMX on managers’ attention, and on their evaluations of employees’ credibility, task performance, and promotability. Yet, our results show that the frequency of promotive voice was not related these outcomes.

Obliged to Speak: An Accountability Model of Upward Constructive Voice in Face Cultures

I take an accountability lens to upward constructive voice in face cultures to both explicate employees’ accountability to face-related rules for self-censorship (face implicit voice theories), and...

Speaking Up vs. Being Heard: The Disagreement Around and Outcomes of Employee Voice

This paper contributes to research on the outcomes of employee prosocial voice to managers by focusing on the relationships between voice and two managerially controlled outcomes: managerial performance ratings and involuntary turnover. Past research has considered voice from either the managerial or subordinate perspective individually and found that it can lead to positive outcomes because of its improvement-oriented nature. However, others have argued that voice can lead to unfavorable outcomes for employees. To begin resolving these competing perspectives, we examine agreement and disagreement between employees and their managers on the extent to which employees provide upward voice, proposing and demonstrating that considering either perspective alone does not fully capture how voice is related to employee outcomes. Findings from a study of 7,578 subordinates and their 335 general managers within a national restaurant chain indicate that agreement between employees and managers that employees display a high level of voice leads to favorable outcomes for employees. Our findings then extend existing research by showing that supervisor–subordinate disagreement around voice also helps explain employee outcomes—namely, how negative outcomes arise as a result of employees overestimating their voice relative to their managers' perspective and how positive outcomes result when employees underestimate their upward voice.

The relational antecedents of voice targeted at different leaders.

We investigated how employees can, simultaneously, speak up to leaders at different levels of the organizational hierarchy. In particular, we examined 2 targets of employees' upward voice on work-related issues: the direct leader (i.e., the supervisor) and the skip-level leader (i.e., supervisor's boss). Drawing on emerging research on the socially embedded nature of leader-member exchanges and using data from 237 employees and their direct and skip-level leaders, we found that the choice of a particular leader as a target was affected by the quality of the dyadic relationship between that leader and the employee. Further, the association between voice to the direct leader and the quality of the employee's relationship with the direct leader was more positive when the relationship between the direct leader and the skip-level leader was stronger. By contrast, the association between voice to the skip-level leader and the quality of the employee's relationship with the skip-level leader was more positive when the relationship between the direct leader and the skip-level leader was weaker. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Why are employees afraid of speaking up? A multi-level study of upward prohibitive voice

Upward prohibitive voice refers to expression of concerns about dysfunctional work practices to superiors. Adopting an interpersonal risk perspective of conflict avoidance, we propose a multi-level...

ASK AND YOU SHALL HEAR (BUT NOT ALWAYS): EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MANAGER CONSULTATION AND EMPLOYEE VOICE

The literature on employees’ voice is characterized by 2 influential perspectives on its antecedents—1 that focuses on the importance of managerial behaviors and the other that emphasizes the role of employees’ internal motivational states. In this study, we integrate these perspectives and examine the proposition that (a key managerial behavior) consultation—that is, the extent to which the manager is seen to solicit and listen to suggestions on work issues from the employees, enhances employees’ upward voice by increasing their perceived influence at work (an important motivational state). Using multisource survey data from 640 nurses and their managers, we found that managers’ consultation was positively related to employees’ upward voice, with employees’ perceived influence acting as the mediator. We further delineate key moderators of this mediated relationship and discuss implications for theory and practice.