Power, Voice, and Hierarchy: Exploring the Antecedents of Speaking Up in Groups.

This study examined the effects of interpersonal power and social dominance orientation on individuals’ propensities to voice opinions in a group task. It was proposed that individuals high in power would tend to voice their opinions to a greater extent than individuals with less power and that this effect would increase with higher levels of social dominance orientation, that is, the degree to which individuals believe that social hierarchies are justified. This relationship was tested using moderated multiple regression. Significant results were found for the interactive relationship between power and social dominance orientation on voice. Implications and future directions are discussed. The implications of allowing group members to participate in group decision-making contexts have been a major topic in organizational behavior (e.g., Locke & Schweiger, 1979). Participation has been linked to satisfaction (Locke & Schweiger, 1979), goal commitment (Locke, Shaw, Saari, & Latham, 1981), superior customer service (Kizilos, Thomas, & Strickstein, 1994), and ultimately, job performance (Cotton, Vollrath, Froggatt, Lengnick-Hall, & Jennings, 1988; for a dissenting view, see Wagner, 1994). However, the formal right to participation is often not enough to secure effective, democratic group decisions. Several theories of group behavior, from Janis’s (1972) groupthink to threat rigidity (Staw, Sandelands, & Dutton, 1981), have shown that forces come into play that often limit the amount of input that is displayed in group situations. According to Bedeian (2002), leaders are often isolated from the day-to-day realities of their organization owing to employees’ unwillingness to speak candidly. What is at stake in these situations is the expression of voice, the behavioral corollary of the formal right to participate. The driving question behind the expression (or nonexpression) of voice amounts to the following: When people have the ability to voice their opinions and have something to gain from voicing their opinions, why do we so often see that they refrain from doing so?

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