Search results

In this chapter, we present two examples of research projects aimed at amplifying voices that are often silenced in research: those of children and/or youth from refugee backgrounds. Refugees are often excluded from research for both ethical and practical reasons: because of their assumed vulnerability as well as the challenges related to language or access. In the research projects presented, we aimed to employ methods that suited these groups of children and youth to understand their experiences in ways that they wanted to express them, and in situ. We argue that starting from, and finishing with, the point of view of the knowledge holders illustrates one means (although not exclusively so) by which to amplify their voices and knowledge to counter epistemic injustice in educational research.

Sustainable development is a central issue for the world economy today. The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are associated with both responsible business practices and strategic orientation for competitive advantages. While most multinational enterprises (MNEs) want to ensure that their businesses will maintain or even enhance sustainability across borders, they face enormous challenges, often due to a lack of capabilities and inefficient institutions in host countries. In the nexus between the SDGs and international business (IB) research, the contexts of emerging markets and developing countries have particular significance, because they impose complex constraints on the achievement of the SDGs. At the same time, there is a high potential for MNEs to have positive effects internationally through their sustainable practices. This chapter discusses the recent trend in IB research on sustainability by showcasing current issues addressing several interrelated SDGs. The exemplary topics touch upon child labor, innovation for social sustainability, challenges in the green transition, MNE activities associated with the pollution haven, and health and safety concerns in global supply chains. The discussion cuts across various contextual settings and calls for actions by all stakeholders, including business entities, governments, and scholars.

In a complex, ever-changing, and turbulent business world, encouraging employees to express their improvement-oriented novel ideas through voice behavior is crucial for organizations to survive and thrive. Understanding how to foster employee promotive voice at work is a significant issue for both researchers and managers. This study explores how to foster employee promotive voice through specific HRM practices and positive employee attitudes. It also examines the effect of employee promotive voice on perceived organizational performance.

This study employed a time-lagged multisource survey design. Data were collected from 215 executives, 790 supervisors, and 1,004 employees in 113 firms, and analyzed utilizing a multilevel moderated serial mediation model.

The findings of this study revealed that promotive voice was significantly related to perceived organizational performance. Innovation-enhancing HRM was positively associated with employee promotive voice. The HRM-voice relationship was partially mediated by employee job satisfaction. Power distance orientation was found to significantly moderate the relationship between innovation-enhancing HRM and employee job satisfaction at the firm level. Our findings showed that innovation-enhancing HRM policies may fail to foster promotive voice if they do not enhance employee job satisfaction.

This study challenges some taken-for-granted assumptions in the literature such as any high performance HRM bundles (e.g. HPWS) can foster employee promotive voice, and the effects of HRM are direct and even unconditional on organizational outcomes. It emphasizes the need to avoid potential unintended effects of HRM on employee voice and the importance of contextualizing voice research.

This paper examines the circumstantial state of mediated work to develop a conceptual framework exemplifying the determinants of voice of workers in triangular employment relationships. These workers are in work context involving two or more firms – agency/platform and clients/client firms.

Paralleling employee voice research in the triangular employment relationship context, the authors theorised the influencing forces at four levels to propose 12 distinct antecedents of triangular workers' voice. External level (2) – legal employer ambiguity and legal regulation and protection; employment context level (3) – availability and presence, assignment duration and autonomy; firm level (3) – institutional complexity, cost and control and governance structure conflicts; individual level (4) – perceived relative equity, voice skill, self-identity and transition opportunity.

The triangular workers' voice determinants framework provides a comprehensive outlook on how the external, employment context, firm and individual forces influence voice of workers in triangular employment relationships.

Emanating from the framework are propositions that can be empirically tested for validation. Hence, as with conceptual papers, this paper is limited by non-empirical testing.

Managers of workers in these employment relationships should be cognizant of the different levels of forces that can influence their voice.

This paper contributes to the employee voice literature by presenting a four-level framework that demonstrate a holistic view of how triangular workers' voice is influenced.

This study examines the yin (promotive) and yang (prohibitive) of employee voice based on employee preference for voice channel attributes. Employee inputs may be disregarded, requiring employees to maneuver for unheeded voice and adopt alternate voice tactics. The authors emphasize the ubiquity of lurking employee silence and its affective effects on subsequent cycles of voice or silence.

Qualitative design involving semi-structured interviews of employees from service sector firms in India assisted the inquiry.

Employees prefer voice channel attributes that ensure visibility and data substance for promotive voice and anonymity and confidentiality for prohibitive voice. Voice target switching and message reframing were common employee strategies. Silence on both sharing views/opinions (promotive) and voicing issues/concerns (prohibitive) weakens employee future voice incidents, besides suppressing the affect. Post-silence cognitive reappraisal increases voice incidences.

Findings may have limited generalizability given the qualitative design of the study. Moving beyond extant episodic voice research, the authors demonstrate the recurrent nature of employee voice and silence. The study broadens perspectives on how varied voice types necessitate nuanced voice channel attributes.

Present work brings together organizational behavior (OB) perspective on discretionary voice through human resource (HR)-based channels, helping bridge the gap between previously disparate stands.

Despite the documented benefits of voice behavior for projects, little is known about antecedents of voice behavior in the project context, especially construction projects. Against this background, adopting a multi-team system perspective, this study attempts to investigate antecedents of team voice behavior from a contextual view.

This study identifies and examines six factors that influence team voice behavior. Specifically, project urgency, project temporality, and project complexity are identified from the project nature perspective. Satisfaction, trust, and commitment are generated from the relationship quality approach. Then, data from completed construction projects in China was collected to verify the effectiveness of these factors. Besides, the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique was used in this study.

All six factors are found to be significant predictors of promotive team voice behavior. For prohibitive team voice behavior, only project complexity and project commitment make significant effects. Further, the differential effects of these factors on two types of voice behavior are revealed.

This study contributes to the literature on voice behavior in the project context, especially construction projects consisting of multiple teams. Also, this research enriches our knowledge on antecedents of team voice behavior in construction projects and thus affords practical implications to foster voice behavior.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to suggest that the growing sociocultural theorisation of risk calls for a more robust research focus on the role that information and in particular, information literacy, plays in mediating hazards and danger.

Starting by tracing how information has been conceptualised in relation to risk through technoscientific, cognitive and sociocultural lenses, the paper then focuses on emerging sociocultural understandings of risk to present a research agenda for a renewed sociocultural exploration of how risk is shaped through the enactment of information literacy.

The paper identifies and examines how information literacy shapes four key aspects of risk, including risk perception, risk management, risk-taking and “at-risk” populations. These four aspects are further connected through broader themes of learning, identity, work and power, which form the basis of the sociocultural risk research agenda.

This paper is the first study bringing together the many understandings related to how risk is informed and establishes risk as a key area of interest within information literacy research.

The paper is built upon the conceptual framework of ability, motivation and opportunity (AMO) to identify the effect of the high performance work system (HPWS) on the voice behaviour of the organisation.

The human resource department of the steel plants was approached to facilitate the data collection. A standardised questionnaire was used to collect responses from 169 full-time employees working at different levels and departments in the steel plant in India. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to validate and examine the model identifying the relationship of AMO enhancing practices with the voice behaviour in the organisation.

AMO was found to affect voice behaviour in the organisation. The positive and significant effect of ability enhancement practices was examined on the acquiescent voice and the opportunity enhancing practices on the acquiescent and defensive voice in the organisation.

Even though the organisation has tried to improve the employee's ability through proper training and development efforts, the organisation still fails to develop confidence in the employee for giving the suggestion or opinions without hesitation. The research papers try to provide valuable suggestions to the human resource management (HRM) and other managers for improving the voice behaviour of the employees based on the current study that identifies the effect of AMO practices on the voice behaviour of the employees.

Factors affecting voice behaviour are not yet extensively studied in the Indian context. The researcher examined the effect of HPWS, considering the AMO framework on the organisation's acquiescent voice, defensive voice, and prosocial voice behaviour.