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The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of organizational cynicism on prosocial voice and defensive silence and to verify the mediating role of workplace bullying in these relationships.

A cross-sectional survey design with a sample of 205 individuals was used in this study.

The hypotheses were confirmed as organizational cynicism plays a significant and negative influence on prosocial voice and a significant and positive influence on defensive silence. In addition, workplace bullying partially mediates both relationships.

This study contributes to a deeper understanding of organizational cynicism and workplace bullying influences on prosocial voice and defensive silence. It investigates a relationship that, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, has not been studied yet. It also contributes to the discussion regarding the close relationship between prosocial voice and defensive silence.

It is ironic that in stressful economic times, when new ideas and positive behaviors could be most valuable, employees may not speak up, leading to reduced employee participation, less organizational learning, less innovation and less receptiveness to change. The supervisor is the organization's first line of defense against a culture of silence and towards a culture of openness. The purpose of this paper is to ask what helps supervisors to hear prosocial voice and notice defensive silence.

The authors conducted a cross‐sectional field study of 142 supervisors.

The results indicate that prosocial voice is increased by supervisor tension and trust in employees, while defensive silence is increased by supervisor tension but reduced by unionization of employees and trust in employees. This indicates that, as hypothesized by others, voice and silence are orthogonal and not opposites of the same construct.

The data are measured at one point in time, and further longitudinal study would be helpful to further understand the phenomena.

This research highlights the potential for supervisors in stressful situations to selectively hear voice and silence from employees.

This research also has implications for supervisors who work in a unionized environment. Although seemingly counter‐intuitive, there is a value to employee unionization in terms of either reducing the level of actual defensive silence, or at least reducing supervisors’ perceptions of defensive silence.

The paper adds to our knowledge of prosocial voice and defensive silence by testing supervisors’ perceptions of these constructs during difficult times. It provides valuable empirical insights to a literature dominated by conceptual non‐empirical papers. Limited research on silence might reflect how difficult it is to study such an ambiguous and passive construct as silence (often simply viewed as a lack of speech). The paper contributes also to trust literature by identifying its role in increasing supervisor's perceptions of prosocial voice and reducing perceptions of defensive silence.

This study aims to analyze the relationship between toxic leadership and exit, prosocial voice, neglect and defensive silence. Second, this study investigates the mediating role of loyalty in these relationships.

A cross-sectional survey design with a sample of 544 individuals was used in this study.

The results suggested that toxic leadership positively influences exit, defensive silence and neglect and negatively influences prosocial voice. In addition, loyalty was found to be a partial mediator of the studied relationships.

This study addresses different theoretical debates, namely, loyalty as an attitude or behavior and its role in individuals’ responses and the relationship between silence and voice.

Neste estudo, pretendeu-se analisar a relação entre a liderança tóxica e a saída, voz prosocial, negligência e silêncio defensivo. Foi também investigado o papel mediador da lealdade nestas relações.

Foi realizado um estudo transversal com uma amostra de 544 participantes.

Os resultados sugerem que a liderança tóxica influência positivamente a saída, o silêncio defensivo e a negligência. Sugerem também uma influência negativa da liderança tóxica na voz prosocial. Adicionalmente, verificou-se que a lealdade é uma mediadora parcial nestas relações.

Este estudo aborda diferentes debates teóricos, nomeadamente a lealdade como atitude ou comportamento, o seu papel nas respostas dos indivíduos e a relação entre silêncio e voz.

En este estudio, nos proponemos analizar la relación entre el liderazgo tóxico y la salida, la voz prosocial, la negligencia y el silencio defensivo. En segundo lugar, investigamos el papel mediador de la lealtad en estas relaciones.

En este estudio se utilizó un diseño de encuesta transversal con una muestra de 544 individuos.

Los resultados sugirieron que el liderazgo tóxico influye positivamente en la salida, el silencio defensivo y la negligencia e influye negativamente en la voz prosocial. Además, la lealtad resultó ser un mediador parcial de las relaciones estudiadas.

Este estudio aborda diferentes debates teóricos, a saber, la lealtad como actitud o comportamiento y su papel en las respuestas de los individuos y la relación entre silencio y voz.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model of the processes through which approach and avoidance motivation influence constructive and defensive voice behavior, with the moderating role of workplace ostracism and contingent self-esteem.

The paper is conceptual and quantitative study should be conducted to explore the propositions proposed in this paper.

This paper proposes that approach motivation is positively related to constructive voice while avoidance motivation is positively related to defensive voice. In addition, workplace ostracism and contingent self-esteem/importance of performance to self-esteem (IPSE) are examined as two moderators of the motivation-voice behavior relationship.

By understanding employees’ different motives underpinning the voice behavior explained in this paper, it may be easier for management to take measures to facilitate constructive voice and abate defensive voice. Organizations may wish to formulate policies and regulations and to foster a climate to prevent ostracism from happening. Programs designed to develop employees with high IPSE may be implemented.

Most of empirical work on voice has focussed on employee voice behaviors with positive attributes. This paper adopts approach and avoidance motivation as two antecedents, and grounded in self-regulation theory, exploring both positive and negative types of voice behavior. This paper also examines how negative interpersonal behavior such as ostracism affects voice behavior, and provide insights on upside of contingent self-esteem.

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.

Drawing from conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study aims to explain why certain voice types prevail while other voice types are inhibited in the presence of abusive supervision.

This paper surveys extant literature on abusive supervision, employee voice and COR theory and provides propositions linking abusive supervision and types of voice behaviours.

The paper develops a conceptual model linking abusive supervision and three types of subordinate voice behaviours – prosocial, defensive and acquiescent voices. It identifies psychological distress as a mediator and locus of control as a moderator to this relationship.

This paper deepens our present understanding of abusive supervision and voice relationship by explaining why only certain voice types prevail with abusive supervision while others do not. While extant literature concluded abusive supervision only as an inhibitor of voice behaviours, the present study identifies how abusive supervision could both inhibit and motivate different voice behaviours. Further, it links abusive supervision to multiple voice types, diverting from extant literature linking abusive supervision to only constructive voice. Lastly, this study contributes to resource acquisition strategies within COR theory.

Supporting and nurturing effective communication between healthcare professionals is vital to protect patients from harm. However, not all forms of employee voice are effective. Fear can lead to defensive voice, while the role of other emotions to drive voice behaviour is less well understood. This paper aims to understand what role the broader range of emotions, including compassion and shame, experienced by healthcare professionals following patient safety incidents (PSI) play in the subsequent enactment of prosocial voice, a positive and other-oriented form of communication.

This study is based on data from a single English NHS hospital: interviews with healthcare professionals involved in PSIs (N = 40), observations at quality and risk committees and meetings (N = 26 h) and review of investigative documents (N = 33). Three recent PSIs were selected for cross-case analysis based upon organisational theory related to professional hierarchy, employee voice and literature on emotions.

Among three cases, the authors found variance in context, emotional experience and voice behaviour. Where professionals feared blame and repercussion, voice was defensive. Meanwhile where they experienced shame and compassion, prosocial voice was enacted to protect patients.

Healthcare organisations seeking to foster prosocial voice should: (1) be more considerate of professionals' emotional experiences post-PSI and ensure adequate support for recovery (2) establish norms for professionals to share their struggles with others (3) reward professionals who demonstrate caring behaviour (4) buffer professionals from workplace pressures.

The authors’ study highlights how emotional experiences, such as shame and compassion, can mediate blame and defensiveness and lead to the enactment of prosocial voice in the professional hierarchy.

One of the strongest and most important outcomes of trait social courage is employee voice, but researchers have only studied this relationship with unidimensional conceptualizations of voice. The purpose of this paper is to apply Van Dyne et al.’s (2003) three-dimensional conceptualization of voice, which also distinguishes three dimensions of silence, to provide a nuanced understanding of the relationship of social courage with voice and silence. The authors also test for the moderating effect of three contextual influences: top management attitudes toward voice and silence, supervisor attitudes toward voice and silence, as well as communication opportunities.

The authors conducted a four-timepoint survey with each measurement occasion separated by one week. A total of 134 participants completed all four timepoints.

The results support that social courage positively relates to prosocial voice and silence, whereas it negatively relates to defensive voice and silence as well as acquiescent voice and silence. In other words, social courage positively relates to beneficial voice and silence as well as negatively relates to detrimental voice and silence. The results also failed to support any moderating effects, suggesting that the relationships of social courage are very resilient to outside forces.

These findings both test prior results and discover new relationships of social courage, which can further stress the importance of courage. The authors also draw direct connections between the influence of social courage on the surrounding workplace environment – as well as the influences of the environment on social courage. While the current paper provides insights into social courage, it also directs future researchers toward new insights of their own.

Courage is an emergent research topic within organizations. While many authors have assumed that courage is important to work, the current paper is among the few to empirically support this notion.

An important part of the effectiveness of a company is related to the stimuli of the organizational voice, which provides the context for participation and the emergence of moral courage in performing organizational tasks. Although individual voice stimulation cannot be easily generalized because of the wide range of criteria affecting it, but in a general category, individual voice stimuli can be separated into internal and external criteria. Therefore, this research first aims to examine internal and external stimuli on individual voice and then examines the effect of individual voice on internal auditors’ moral courage and effectiveness.

The target population in this study were internal auditors of capital market companies that were examined in the period of 2020. The research tool was a questionnaire and partial least squares analysis was used to fit the model and test the research hypotheses.

The results of testing the hypotheses show that self-efficacy (hope and resilience) as internal drivers and independence of internal audit performance and perceived supervisor support (external drivers) have a positive effect on moral courage and effectiveness of the internal auditor.

These conclusions suggest that if behavioral incentives are considered, auditors’ level of behavioral audacity in more realistically disclosing the financial performance of their companies can be expected to increase. It should also be noted that the results of this study can increase the level of effectiveness of internal auditors’ functions and their behavioral knowledge in the direction of professional functions.

Analysis of employee voice has focused on the reasons and managerial issues regarding the available environment to speak up. The purpose of this paper is to understand the effect of management attitude on employee voice with the mediating effect of individual’s perceived psychological safety (PPS). Besides, the role of job satisfaction (JS) and being individualist/collectivist as moderators over the effect of psychological safety on employee voice are analyzed.

The authors constructed a framework based on Maynes and Podsakoff’s (2014) view that identifies four different types of voice behavior (supportive, constructive, defensive and destructive). In total, 286 questionnaires were collected from employees working in telecommunication industry.

Based on analysis, positive management attitude facilitates supportive and constructive voice (CV) and reduces destructive voice (DESV). PPS mediates the relationship with management attitude and DESV. JS level facilitates supportive CV and reduces DESV. Collectivism level of employees moderates PPS and DESV. Path analysis results showed a similar model for mediation effect of safety, and showed a better model fit and explanation for trust mediation between LMX and supportive, constructive and DESV. Supported assumptions would be discussed-based social exchange theory and signaling theory.

The sample is relatively small which limits the external validity of the findings.

Results revealed the managerial attitude over employee voice through perceived work environment (psychological safety) and trust.

This study is one of the first that integrates not only constructive but also DESV into the model.