ANTECEDENTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF EMPLOYEE VOICE BEHAVIOR

Abstract

Organizations periodically scan through their products, processes, and services to facilitate business growth and attain a competitive advantage. Organizations keenly look for any available opportunity they could clutch and make an alignment, improvement, or positive change, leading to their competitive advantage. The opinions, ideas, and feedbacks that could enlighten the management on these opportunities are best sourced from the employees who deal directly with those processes, products, or services. Employees’ input and ideas form the essence of an organization’s competitive advantage and enable continued business growth. This expression of ideas and suggestions that could constructively change the organization is termed as Employee Voice. Organizations encourage employees’ input and feedback through well-devised programs like open-door policy and anonymous voice boxes. But these voice mechanisms are not always helpful as employees are sometimes reluctant to express their opinions, ideas, and suggestions. One possible reason for this reluctance is that voice is not a part of the job requirement. It is an extra-role behavior and cannot be mandated by the leaders. This reasoning has offered a new perspective for voice researchers to view voice from the lens of organizational behavior. This OB perspective of voice which views it as a discretionary behavior, has gained increased attention among researchers in the last two decades. The literature on voice abounds with studies that point to the various factors and conditions that promote and inhibit employees’ voice behavior. Voice is a risky behavior as it is intended to change the status quo. So some scholars contended the positive outcomes of voice behavior considering its risky nature. To clarify the specific consequences of voice, some researchers started exploring the individual and organizational outcomes of voice. Concurrently, another sect of researchers noted that voice could take different forms and offered different conceptualizations and classifications. Accordingly, some scholars studied promotive and prohibitive voice behaviors. Promotive voice points to the future-oriented improvement ideas while prohibitive voice refers to the current problem areas. The two voice types vary in nature and characteristics, which can differentially impact their antecedents and consequences. Thus the literature on voice is hoarded with various antecedents, outcomes, and conceptualizations of voice behavior. Yet, there are limited studies that simultaneously examined the antecedents and consequences of different voice types. Besides, most of these empirical studies were conducted in Western cultures. Voice is a proactive behavior, and culture plays a vital role in shaping employees’ voice behavior. Notably, in Asian cultures that are collectivistic in nature, the antecedents and outcomes of voice could be different from that of employees in individualistic cultures. Considering these gaps in the literature, this study aims to validate a research framework that involves leader-member exchange (LMX), voice self-efficacy, affective commitment, and perceived influence as antecedents of promotive and prohibitive voice. Additionally, this study investigates whether affective commitment and perceived influence are pathways through which leader-member exchange and voice self-efficacy influence the two forms of voice. Within the same framework, the study also examines psychosocial prosperity, work alienation, and creative performance as the outcomes of promotive and prohibitive voice. Thus, this study investigates the antecedents and consequences of promotive and prohibitive voice, addressing the gaps in the literature. The proposed relationships between the different study variables in the research framework were drawn from established theories and past research. Eleven hypotheses, each with two sub-hypotheses, were formulated to validate the proposed relationships. The data for testing the hypotheses were collected using structured questionnaires that had 46 items to measure the nine constructs of the study apart from the respondents’ demographic details. With its market size, employability, and dynamic nature, the Indian information technology (IT) sector is highly knowledge-intensive and offers a perfect context for studying voice behavior. Therefore, the data for this study were collected from 285 employees working with different IT companies located in India. The collected data were analyzed using structural equation modeling, a multivariate data analysis technique using SPSS 22 and AMOS 22. As hypothesized, LMX and affective commitment showed a positive relationship with both promotive and prohibitive voice behavior. However, voice self-efficacy and perceived influence had a positive influence only on promotive voice. Also, affective commitment mediated the positive effect of LMX and voice self-efficacy on both promotive and prohibitive voice behaviors. However, perceived influence only mediated the path from voice self-efficacy to promotive voice. The results of other mediating pathways were insignificant. Regarding the outcomes, the impact of the promotive form of voice on psychosocial prosperity, work alienation, and creative performance was significant. In contrast, the prohibitive voice behavior did not show a significant relationship with any outcome. These findings suggest that the specific outcomes could vary based on the type of voice. Thus the findings of this study offer critical implications for theorists and practitioners. Overall, by validating the proposed relationships in the Indian context, this study significantly contributes to the literature on voice behavior. Yet, there are a few limitations in this study that have been acknowledged along with the directions for future researchers.