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Ethical leadership has been recognized as a critical factor in encouraging employees’ moral voices. This study offers a dual-route model to understand this process. The boundary conditions of these two routes are discussed herein.

The data originate from a multiwave, multisource survey study of 212 leader–subordinate dyads in Taiwan drawn from a variety of industry sectors.

The findings validate both the cognitive (moral efficacy) and affective (affective attachment) pathways from ethical leadership to moral voice, influenced by the organizational factor of political climate. While the moral efficacy pathway is more pronounced in a situation of weak political climate, the affective attachment pathway remains effective regardless of the climate’s strength.

Managers need to identify if their organization prioritizes rational professionalism or interpersonal affection. In the former case, they should focus on the learning effects of ethical leadership. Conversely, in the latter, the emphasis should be on the leader-subordinate relationship. Doing so optimizes the effectiveness of ethical leadership in growing moral voices.

Considering both cognitive and affective routes from ethical leadership to moral voice could integrate social learning theory (SLT) and social exchange theory (SET). Identifying factors influencing these two routes resonates with the leader–situation interaction perspective. This research deepens the understanding of ethical leadership's effects on encouraging and protecting employee moral voice.

The purpose of this study was to examine the underlying mechanism as well as the boundary effect between employees' perceived ethical human resource management (HRM) and ethical voice based on social cognitive theory. The authors expect that employees who perceive ethical HRM could develop their moral reasoning and conduct through one of the cognitive processes (i.e. vicarious experience).

Based on structural equation modelling and hierarchical regression analysis, the authors conducted a questionnaire survey on 265 employees and their immediate supervisors from a manufacturing company in China.

Employees' perceived ethical HRM was positively related to ethical voice, and moral efficacy mediated this relationship. Moral task complexity not only moderated the relationship between employees' perceived ethical HRM and moral efficacy but also moderated the indirect effect of employees' perceived ethical HRM on ethical voice such that the impact was stronger when the moral task complexity level is higher and weaker when low.

This research model provides a framework through which organisations can diagnose potential ethical issues with the implementation of ethical HRM, as well as increase employee awareness of ethical values and then enhance their moral efficacy. Moreover, organisations can benefit from combining interventions and practices that influence the task design.

This study fills research gap by examining the mechanisms that shape employees' ethical voice from the perspective of HRM through moral efficacy and demonstrates that higher levels of moral task complexity contribute to higher levels of moral efficacy and ethical voice.

The study of ethical leadership has emerged as an important topic for understanding the effects of leadership in organizations. Theoretically, there is a relationship between ethical leadership and followers’ ethical behaviors but empirically, little attention has been given. The purpose of this paper is to examine how ethical leadership relates to employee’s moral voice through trust in the leader, leader−follower value congruence and moral efficacy.

The authors used a time-lagged research design, collecting multi-source data from 364 employees and their immediate supervisors, working in construction companies in Pakistan.

On the basis of an interactional approach, this study found that there was an interaction between ethical leadership, trust in the leader and leader−follower value congruence that affected moral voice, such that ethical leadership had the strongest positive relationship with moral voice when both trust and leader−follower value congruence were higher; and moral efficacy mediated the effect that this three-way interaction between ethical leadership, trust in the leader and leader−follower value congruence had on moral voice.

This is one of the first studies to examine the role of ethical leadership in promoting employees’ voice behavior using a time-lagged research design, particularly in construction industry.

With the spread of information communication technologies (ICTs) at work, online voice has become an emerging form of employee voice. Online voice is a double-edged behavior for organizations and employees. The purpose of this paper is to examine a model in which online voice is positively correlated with workplace cyberbullying and to examine the moderating role of chronic job strain and moral efficacy on that correlation.

A total of 760 cases from 152 full-time Chinese workers in public sector employment were collected through the experience sampling method.

The results showed that online voice is positively correlated with workplace cyberbullying on a daily basis. Chronic job strain amplifies this relationship, while moral efficacy buffers it. Furthermore, the amplifying effect of chronic job strain is mediated by a lack of moral efficacy.

This research has implications for understanding the boundary conditions of the relationship between online voice and workplace cyberbullying.

This study aims to examine the moderated-mediation effects of employees’ Islamic work ethic (IWE) on their promotive and prohibitive forms of constructive voice behaviors through the integrated frameworks of social identity theory and self-consistency theory.

Using two-source data collection from employees and supervisors, data were collected from 217 participants working in various companies in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. After initial data screening, a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to test for the factorial validity of the used measures with AMOS. The hypothesized relationships were tested in the PROCESS macro for SPSS.

The results of this study supported the integration of social identity theory with self-consistency theory in explaining the indirect effects of employees’ IWE on their promotive and prohibitive forms of constructive voice behaviors through the mediation of moral identity. Furthermore, this study also indicated that the indirect effect was conditional on the employees’ perceptions of perceived voice opportunity, which significantly moderated the relationship between their moral identity and their prohibitive voice. However, no such effect was recorded for promotive voice.

This study is the first that explains how and when employees’ IWE leads them to exhibit promotive and prohibitive voice behaviors through the mediation of moral identity and the moderation of perceived voice opportunity. Thus, this study contributes to the IWE, moral identity and employee voice literature by addressing questions with useful theoretical and managerial implications for employees’ promotive and prohibitive forms of constructive voice behaviors in the workplace.

Drawing upon social learning theory (SLT), the study examines the consequences of ethical leadership on followers' voice behavior facets (promotive and prohibitive). The study tests hypotheses about the processing mechanism (moral identity) and the boundary condition (proactive personality) to understand these relationships.

The study collected time-lagged survey data through an online structured questionnaire from 182 respondents. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to ensure the validity and reliability of the data. Moreover, structural equation modeling was run to test the hypotheses using AMOS.

Ethical leadership positively affects followers' promotive and prohibitive voice behavior via the psychological mechanism of moral identity. Proactive personality moderates the moral identity – promotive and moral identity – prohibitive voice relationships, such that these relations are stronger when the individuals are high on proactive personality.

Robust evidence of a genuine cause-and-effect relationship may not be yielded owing to cross-sectional and self-reported data at the follower level of analysis. Future researchers can use dyadic, longitudinal and experimental designs to overcome these limitations. Organizations targeting to increase voice behavior can benefit from maintaining ethical leaders and proactive followers at the workplace.

The study significantly contributes to the ethical leadership and voice behavior literature. Ethical leadership enhances followers' promotive/prohibitive voice behaviors through their moral identity enhancement. The paper also confirmed that a proactive personality is a critical boundary condition in these relationships. Empirical evidence from the Eastern context has been added, and research directions have also been provided.

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.

The present study examines how virtuous leadership influences moral voice in organisations through moral courage as a mediating variable.

The data were collected using a questionnaire survey of 376 employees and their immediate supervisors (289 employees and 87 supervisors), working in 11 firms of medical suppliers. The data were collected from employees and their immediate supervisors at two different phases and on separate questionnaires.

The results revealed that virtuous leadership has a positive and significant relationship with moral voice. Furthermore, the results showed that moral courage fully mediates the indirect relationship between virtuous leadership and moral voice.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to address the relationship between virtuous leadership and moral voice. In addition, it is the first to explore the mediating mechanism in the relationship between virtuous leadership and moral voice through moral courage as a mediating variable.

Despite the number of studies on employee voice much remains unknown regarding the mediating role of employee voice in the link between entrepreneur’s paternalistic leadership style and creativity. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of authoritarian, benevolent and moral leadership on creativity via employee voice.

The study utilized structured equation modeling to evaluate the data from 387 highly skilled employees in Republic of Korea.

The findings suggested that authoritarian leadership style reduces employee voice which in turn impacts on creativity and moral leadership facilitates creativity via employee voice.

The study is the first to discover the mediating role of employee voice on the association between authoritarian, moral leadership and creativity.

Drawn upon the perspective of implicit voice theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore the underlying mechanism as well as the boundary effect in the relationship between paternalistic leadership and voice behavior.

Multiple-wave survey data from a sample of 368 employees in China were used to test the hypothesized moderated mediation model.

The findings show that both benevolent leadership and moral leadership related positively to voice behavior, whereas authoritative leadership played a negative role in influencing voice behavior. Employees’ implicit voice belief played a partial mediating role between paternalistic leadership and voice behavior. Furthermore, perceived HRM strength weakens both the mediation relationship among benevolent leadership, implicit voice belief and voice behavior, and the mediation relationship among moral leadership, implicit voice belief and voice behavior. However, the moderated mediation effect of implicit voice belief on the relationship between authoritative leadership and voice behavior is not significant.

Leaders are encouraged to behave benevolently and morally whereas to avoid excessive authoritative style at work, so that employees can be encouraged to speak out. Organizations are advised to introduce management practices like training and development sessions and to improve employees’ perceived HRM strength so that the implicit voice belief can be reduced, and the voice behavior can be stimulated.

The research provided a fresh theoretical perspective on the underlying mechanism between paternalistic leadership and employees’ voice behavior by unveiling employee implicit voice belief’s partial mediating role between paternalistic leadership and employee voice behavior. Furthermore, the study contributed to the literature of voice by adopting a more integrative perspective and exploring the role of the implementation of the organization’s system, i.e., perceived HRM strength that provided a boundary condition in the above mediation model.