Empowering Change: Unlocking Keys To Effective and Well-Received Employee Voice In Organizations

Authors:

Abstract: Frontline employees convey insights to organizational decision-makers through "employee voice," voluntary expression of constructive work ideas or concerns. Past research distinguishes promotive voice (offering innovative suggestions to improve organizational performance) from prohibitive voice (raising current or impending problems that harms organizational performance). While promotive voice generally receives higher managerial ratings, we disentangle the effects of three factors underlying the two types of voice: time orientation, suggestion presence, and message framing. Across three preregistered experiments, we show that offering a new suggestion is the most important determinant for favorable evaluations of promotive voice. Additionally, we disentangle the employee-level and organization-level consequences of voice by showing a paradox: prohibitive voice that elicits less managerial appreciation evokes more managerial action for organizational improvement. We clarify theoretically what makes employee voice promotive versus prohibitive in nature. We also prescribe practically that employees should include explicit suggestions when raising work problems for managerial attention.

Track: ORG

Keywords: employee voice; conflict management; organizational behavior