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.

[1]  L. V. Dyne,et al.  Helping and Voice Extra-Role Behaviors: Evidence of Construct and Predictive Validity , 1998 .

[2]  J. Suls,et al.  Flawed Self-Assessment , 2004, Psychological science in the public interest : a journal of the American Psychological Society.

[3]  A. Hirschman,et al.  Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States , 1970 .

[4]  D. Funder,et al.  Overly positive self-evaluations and personality: negative implications for mental health. , 1995, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[5]  Ethan R. Burris,et al.  Leadership Behavior and Employee Voice: Is the Door Really Open? , 2007 .

[6]  Donald A. Schön,et al.  Organizational Learning: A Theory Of Action Perspective , 1978 .

[7]  R. Kahn,et al.  The Social Psychology of Organizations , 1966 .

[8]  J. Sprague,et al.  Boat-Rocking in the High-Technology Culture , 1988 .

[9]  Dan S. Chiaburu,et al.  Quitting before leaving: the mediating effects of psychological attachment and detachment on voice. , 2008, The Journal of applied psychology.

[10]  R. Arvey,et al.  Performance evaluation in work settings. , 1998, Annual review of psychology.

[11]  M. Taylor,et al.  Due Process in Performance Appraisal: A Quasi-Experiment in Procedural Justice , 1995 .

[12]  Paul R. Sackett,et al.  Citizenship and Counterproductive Behavior: Clarifying Relations Between the Two Domains , 2006 .

[13]  Francis J. Yammarino,et al.  DOES SELF‐OTHER AGREEMENT ON LEADERSHIP PERCEPTIONS MODERATE THE VALIDITY OF LEADERSHIP AND PERFORMANCE PREDICTIONS? , 1992 .

[14]  A. Cohen.  Organizational Commitment and Turnover: A Met A-Analysis. , 1993 .

[15]  D. Schweiger,et al.  Building Commitment, Attachment, and Trust in Strategic Decision-Making Teams: The Role of Procedural Justice , 1995 .

[16]  Jon M. Werner.  Dimensions that make a difference: examining the impact of in-role and extrarole behaviors on supervisory ratings , 1994 .

[17]  Frances J. Milliken,et al.  Organizational Silence: A Barrier to Change and Development in a Pluralistic World , 2000 .

[18]  Jeffrey R. Edwards,et al.  On the Use of Polynomial Regression Equations As An Alternative to Difference Scores in Organizational Research , 1993 .

[19]  Charlotte R. Gerstner,et al.  Meta-Analytic Review of Leader-Member Exchange Theory: Correlates and Construct Issues , 1997 .

[20]  Elizabeth Wolfe Morrison,et al.  Role Definitions and Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Importance of the Employee's Perspective , 1994 .

[21]  J. A. Lepine,et al.  Voice and cooperative behavior as contrasting forms of contextual performance: evidence of differential relationships with big five personality characteristics and cognitive ability. , 2001, The Journal of applied psychology.

[22]  Scott B. MacKenzie,et al.  Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Its Nature, Antecedents, and Consequences , 2005 .

[23]  Michael M. Lombardo,et al.  Off the Track: Why and How Successful Executives Get Derailed , 1983 .

[24]  M. Withey,et al.  Predicting Exit, Voice, Loyalty, and Neglect. , 1989 .

[25]  K. M. Kacmar,et al.  P=f(M X A): Cognitive Ability as a Moderator of the Relationship Between Personality and Job Performance , 1995 .

[26]  J. George,et al.  When Job Dissatisfaction Leads to Creativity: Encouraging the Expression of Voice , 2001 .

[27]  R. Liden,et al.  Perceived Organizational Support And Leader-Member Exchange: A Social Exchange Perspective , 1997 .

[28]  Kevin Barksdale,et al.  Managerial Perceptions of Employee Commitment to the Organization , 1995 .

[29]  Robin M. Kowalski,et al.  Complaints and complaining: functions, antecedents, and consequences. , 1996, Psychological bulletin.

[30]  P. Hom.  Employee Turnover , 1994 .

[31]  R. Bies,et al.  Two Faces of the Powerless: Coping with Tyranny in Organizations , 1998 .

[32]  Derek R. Avery,et al.  Disentangling the effects of voice: the incremental roles of opportunity, behavior, and instrumentality in predicting procedural fairness. , 2002, The Journal of applied psychology.

[33]  Henry Mintzberg.  The Nature of Managerial Work , 1974, Operational Research Quarterly (1970-1977).

[34]  M. Snyder.  Self-monitoring processes , 1979 .

[35]  Terence R. Mitchell,et al.  The Effects of Job Embeddedness on Organizational Citizenship, Job Performance, Volitional Absences, and Voluntary Turnover , 2004 .

[36]  Wayne F. Cascio,et al.  Do good or poor performers leave? A meta-analysis of the relationship between performance and turnover. , 1987 .

[37]  Maria L. Kraimer,et al.  WHAT DO PROACTIVE PEOPLE DO? A LONGITUDINAL MODEL LINKING PROACTIVE PERSONALITY AND CAREER SUCCESS , 2001 .

[38]  D. Paulhus.  Interpersonal and intrapsychic adaptiveness of trait self-enhancement: a mixed blessing? , 1998, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[39]  John L. Cotton,et al.  Employee Turnover: A Meta-Analysis and Review with Implications for Research , 1986 .

[40]  Arthur G. Bedeian,et al.  Breaking the Silence: The Moderating Effects of Self‐Monitoring in Predicting Speaking Up in the Workplace , 2003 .

[41]  J. Farh,et al.  Psychological Antecedents of Promotive and Prohibitive Voice: A Two-Wave Examination , 2012 .

[42]  Francis J. Yammarino,et al.  SELF‐OTHER AGREEMENT: DOES IT REALLY MATTER? , 1998 .

[43]  Debra L. Shapiro,et al.  Voice and justification: Their influence on procedural fairness judgments. , 1988 .

[44]  Francis J. Yammarino,et al.  Do managers see themselves as other see them? Implications of self-other rating agreement for human resources management , 1997 .

[45]  Steven W. Whiting,et al.  Effects of task performance, helping, voice, and organizational loyalty on performance appraisal ratings. , 2008, The Journal of applied psychology.

[46]  F. Yammarino,et al.  Congruence of Self and Others' Leadership Ratings of Naval Officers for Understanding Successful Performance , 1991 .

[47]  A. Panter,et al.  Writing about structural equation models. , 1995 .

[48]  M. Sobel.  Asymptotic Confidence Intervals for Indirect Effects in Structural Equation Models , 1982 .

[49]  L. Argote,et al.  KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER: A BASIS FOR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IN FIRMS , 2000 .

[50]  C. Rusbult,et al.  IMPACT OF EXCHANGE VARIABLES ON EXIT, VOICE, LOYALTY, AND NEGLECT: AN INTEGRATIVE MODEL OF RESPONSES TO DECLINING JOB STATUS SATISFACTION. , 1988 .

[51]  Debra L. Shapiro,et al.  Explanations: What Factors Enhance Their Perceived Adequacy , 1994 .

[52]  Chester A. Schriesheim,et al.  Leader-Member Exchange and Supervisor Career Mentoring as Complementary Constructs in Leadership Research , 1994 .

[53]  J. Edwards.  The Study of Congruence in Organizational Behavior Research: Critique and a Proposed Alternative , 1994 .

[54]  Frances J. Milliken,et al.  An Exploratory Study of Employee Silence: Issues that Employees Don’t Communicate Upward and Why* , 2003 .

[55]  J. Heckman.  Sample selection bias as a specification error , 1979 .

[56]  R. Hoyle.  Structural equation modeling: concepts, issues, and applications , 1997 .

[57]  S. Zedeck,et al.  Shift Work Schedules and Their Relationship to Health, Adaptation, Satisfaction, and Turnover Intention , 1983 .

[58]  Jacqueline A-M. Coyle-Shapiro,et al.  The employment relationship : examining psychological and contextual perspectives , 2004 .

[59]  P. Salovey,et al.  Emotional intelligence: new ability or eclectic traits? , 2008, The American psychologist.

[60]  M. Rotundo.  The relative importance of task, citizenship, and counterproductive performance to global ratings of job performance: a policy-capturing approach. , 2002, The Journal of applied psychology.

[61]  M. Frese,et al.  4. Personal initiative: An active performance concept for work in the 21st century , 2001 .

[62]  J. Edwards.  Alternatives to difference scores: Polynomial regression analysis and response surface methodology. , 2002 .

[63]  James R. Van Scotter,et al.  Interpersonal facilitation and job dedication as separate facets of contextual performance. , 1996 .

[64]  M. Browne,et al.  Alternative Ways of Assessing Model Fit , 1992 .

[65]  D. A. Kenny,et al.  The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. , 1986, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[66]  V. Vroom.  Work and motivation , 1964 .

[67]  T. Judge,et al.  The job satisfaction-job performance relationship: a qualitative and quantitative review. , 2001, Psychological bulletin.

[68]  F. Shipper,et al.  A study of impending derailment and recovery of middle managers across career stages , 2000 .

[69]  T. Cook,et al.  Quasi-experimentation: Design & analysis issues for field settings , 1979 .

[70]  L. V. Dyne,et al.  Conceptualizing Employee Silence and Employee Voice as Multidimensional Constructs , 2003 .

[71]  Stephen A. Stumpf,et al.  Predicting Voluntary and Involuntary Turnover Using Absenteeism and Performance Indices , 1981 .

[72]  Anthony S. Bryk,et al.  Hierarchical Linear Models: Applications and Data Analysis Methods , 1992 .

[73]  K. Aquino,et al.  Self-defeating behaviors in organizations: the relationship between thwarted belonging and interpersonal work behaviors. , 2007, The Journal of applied psychology.

[74]  S. Ashford.  Championing Charged Issues: The Case of Gender Equity within Organizations , 1998 .

[75]  Michael C. Sturman,et al.  Searching for the Inverted U-Shaped Relationship Between Time and Performance: Meta-Analyses of the Experience/Performance, Tenure/Performance, and Age/Performance Relationships , 2003 .