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This paper aims to build a new bridge between the literature in organizational behavior and the micro-foundations of strategy. The authors elaborate the concept of strategic voice, studying the extent to which employees express their strategic recommendations.

The authors gathered data from employees and supervisors of three distinct organizations, measuring determinants and outcomes of strategic voice, as compared to promotive voice.

Strategic voice is empirically distinct from promotive voice and predicted by opportunity/threat recognition, perceived organizational support and strategic voice opportunity. It has, surprisingly, either positive or negative effects on performance, through the mediation of supervisors' perceptions of strategic voice and the moderation of employee satisfaction with pay and career.

Unlike traditionally assumed by strategy research, employees at any level engage in strategic voice with considerable frequency. Yet, paradoxically, under certain conditions, strategic voice could harm individual performance, although potentially benefiting organizations. Managers could either value employees' strategic voice or perceive it negatively, raising the salience to fully comprehend this behavior.

Organizations should embrace practices that encourage employees to express their strategic opinions, give them access to resources to properly form their strategic opinions and ensure management considers employees' recommendations.

While scholars in the micro-foundations of strategy have theorized that strategy can emerge from the contribution of individuals, there has been no evidence, to date, on how each employee can contribute to strategy formulation. This paper is original as it fills this gap.

This article aims to (1) increase the knowledge of how coworkers experience voicing the organization on external social media and (2) deepen and nuance the knowledge of the sources of voice control involved in such communication processes. The study helps understand coworker voicing on social media as situated identity expressions through which coworkers negotiate and contest the organizational identity, thereby co-constituting a polyphonic organization.

The study draws upon a constitutive perspective on communication and a communication-centered perspective on identity and organizational identification to investigate the voicing of organizational members of the Swedish Police Force on social media. The article is based on a qualitative study where interviews with police officers and communication professionals at the Swedish Police Authority constitute the main empirical material. A content analysis of selected social media accounts provided important background information to the interviews and enriched the understanding of coworker voice.

This analysis shows that coworkers voice the organization differently. Furthermore, the study of how coworkers experience this voicing indicates that these variations in how coworkers voice the organization depend on how strongly they identify or disidentify with organizational identity and image expressions voiced by significant others. Based on the analysis, this study presents four voice positions highlighting coworkers' varying degrees of identification/disidentification when voicing their organization on social media and reflecting upon their experiences of voicing. Furthermore, the analysis also demonstrates four sources of voice control: (1) management, (2) colleagues, (3) significant non-members and (4) the status and position of the coworker's voice. These four sources of voice control influence coworkers' voices on social media.

This study also contributes with practical implications, for example that the traditional idea of monophonic organizations must be revised and also embrace a polyphonic, bottom-up approach to strengthening internal trust and organizational identity. This comes naturally with the price of less control and predictability by management but with the benefits of increased coworker engagement and pride.

This study contributes new knowledge and a nuanced understanding of coworker voice on social media and the sources of control that influence coworkers' voices.

Highlights the main features of qualitative research conducted with 32 successful women consultants in organization development. The format is multifaceted, including tables, poems, and text, to reflect the commitment to the deep feminine in the research process and results. Part One discusses the conceptualization of the study, grounded in the women′s voices perspective and four research questions, the findings and a case example. In‐depth interviews explored the women′s responses to the changes they experienced, the challenges they encountered, the contributions they made, and the lessons they learned over the past 15 to 20 years as second‐generation women OD consultants. The data analysis revealed four overarching themes contained in the distillation of the study: women doing the work of consulting as part of their inner journey in the context of oppression, helped and hindered with their relationships with both men and women. Part Two examines implications in terms of two voices in OD, problems with women′s invisibility, a fuller understanding of authenticity, and healing for women and the field.

The Voice of the Clinician project commenced during an era when practitioner burnout, dissatisfaction, and turnover became an increasingly global health workforce concern. One key problem is clinical staff not being empowered to voice their concerns to decision-makers, as was found in this case study of an Australian public health organization. The following research question informed the present study: What is a better committee system for clinician engagement in decision-making processes? The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The Mid North Coast Local Health District in New South Wales aspired to improve engagement between frontline clinicians and decision-makers. Social network analysis methods and mathematical modeling were used in the discovery of how committees are connected to each other and subsequently to other committee members.

This effort uncovered a hidden organizational architecture of 323 committees of 926 members which overall cost 84,729 person hours and AUD$2.923 million per annum. Furthermore, frontline clinicians were located far from centers of influence, just 37 percent of committees had terms of reference, and clinicians reported that meeting agendas were not being met.

In response to the findings, a technological platform was created so that the board of directors could visually see all the committees and the connections between them, thus creating ways to further improve communication, transparency of process, and – ultimately – clinician engagement.

The breakthrough idea is that all organizational meetings can be seen as a system of engagement and should be analyzed to determine and describe the points and pathways where clinician voice is blocked.

The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of sound branding by developing a new conceptual framework and providing an overview of the research literature on non-musical sound.

Using four mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive types of non-musical sound, the paper assesses and synthesizes 99 significant studies across various scholarly fields.

The overview reveals two areas in which more research may be warranted, that is, non-musical atmospherics and non-musical sonic logos. Moreover, future sound-branding research should examine in further detail the potentials of developed versus annexed object sounds, and mediated versus unmediated brand sounds.

The paper provides important insights into critical issues that suggest directions for further research on non-musical sound branding.

The paper identifies an unexploited terrain of possibilities for the use of sound in marketing and branding.

The paper identifies a subfield within sound-branding research that has received little attention despite its inevitability and potential significance.

Traditional purchasing practices typically play a supportive role to production, but recently the purchasing function has been recognised as being capable of making significant contributions to a firm's corporate objectives through the development of strategic supplier alliances or relationships between manufacturers and their supplier networks. This study focuses on the nature and progress of strategic supplier relationships in the automotive industry. It examines the progress made towards partnership relationships by the Australian subsidiary of a major Japanese motor vehicle manufacturer. These relationships are examined using Helper's 1991 framework which classifies relationships as ‘voice’ or ‘exit’ according to the method used to resolve problems between the parties. Voice relationships arise from joint problem resolution, exit relationships arise from the threat of withdrawal by the customer. Previous research in Japan, Europe and the United States suggests that voice relationships lead to better performance than non‐voice relationships. This research was carried out at an organisational rather than an industry level, surveying the suppliers to one major motor vehicle manufacturer. It examined the extent of information exchange and commitment from the suppliers' perspective. The suppliers were classified along a continuum from voice to transitional to exit relationships on the basis of information exchange and commitment. The results indicated that from a supplier perspective fewer voice or true strategic alliances existed than the manufacturer would like, with limited progress made towards them to date. There was evidence of supplier mistrust towards the manufacturer and perceptions of unfair treatment by the manufacturer. Future development of supplier relationships will depend on the manufacturer's ability to recognise and address the current of mistrust which remains as a legacy of past practices.

By adopting a managerial perspective, this study aims to deepen how the strategic role of brand voice is conceived in the design of in-car name-brand voice assistants (NBVAs), how the brand experience based on NBVAs is designed and how the NBVA brand experience might influence customer brand engagement (CBE). The ultimate aim is to develop an interpretative theoretical framework for developing voice-based branding through NBVAs.

A qualitative research approach with the analysis of a single in-depth case study is followed: the NBVA developed in-house by Mercedes, which was the first NBVA launched in the automotive market.

In the design of the NBVA, a key role was assigned to the brand voice in developing the brand’s anthropomorphic profile. Driving safety, consistency with the corporate identity, human-like interaction, dynamic personalisation and connectivity emerged as the strategic criteria for designing the NBVA brand experience, which was oriented towards the pursuit of multiple CBE dimensions.

Although the qualitative empirical contribution of this study differs from statistical generalisations, the research insights are analytically generalisable. The insights emerging from the study could guide future research on voice-based branding.

The results may be a useful conceptual reference for managers involved in designing brand voice and brand experience based on NBVAs.

This study is the first empirical contribution to the marketing literature about voice-based branding in an innovative experiential field, a topic that, thus, far has been poorly analysed.

This study aims to provide more insight into how customer voice is captured and used in managerial decision-making at the marketing-finance interface. This study’s focus is on understanding how the customer voice, often communicated through online and social media platforms, is used in high-performing hotels.

This research is based on a case study of four high-performing Irish hotels. For each case, multiple informants, including marketing managers, general managers and finance managers, were interviewed and shadowed. Twenty seven decisions across the four cases were analysed to assess the use of customer voice in managerial decision-making.

Social media provides a stage that has empowered the customer voice because of the public nature of the interaction and the network effect. Customer voice is incorporated in managerial decision-making in three distinct ways – symbolically as part of an early warning system, for action-oriented operational decisions and to some extent in the knowledge-enhancing role for tactical decisions. While there is a greater appreciation among senior managers and the finance and accounting managers of the importance of customer voice, this study finds clear limits in its utilisation and more reliance on traditional finance and accounting data, especially in strategic decision-making.

The cases belong to a highly visible open environment of hotels in an industry where customer voice has immediate and strong effects. The findings may not directly apply to industries characterised by a relatively more closed context such as banking or insurance. Moreover, the findings reflect the practices of high-performing hotels and do not necessarily capture the practices used in less successfully operating hotels.

While marketers need to enhance their ability to create a narrative that links the customer voice to revenue generation, finance managers also need to develop a skillset and adopt a mindset that appropriately reflects the influential role for customer voice in managerial decision-making.

Despite the linkage of marketing performance to business performance, there is limited research on the impact of customer information on managerial decision-making. This research provides insight into how customer voice is considered at the critical marketing-finance interface.

Employee voice has emerged as a strong predictor of positive organizational outcomes. Grounding the theoretical model in resource-based theory; this study conceptualizes how high-performance work system (HPWS) can enhance organizational innovation of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) through voice behaviors. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to empirically test if employee voice mediates the relationship between HPWS and organizational innovation.

This study used a quantitative strategy and cross-sectional survey method for the collection of data from SMEs operating in Pakistan. A list of SMEs was obtained from the federal government organization responsible for the development of SMEs in Pakistan. A self-administered structured questionnaire was distributed and 239 randomly selected SMEs responded to the survey.

Findings confirmed the conceptualized model and revealed that HPWS was significantly and positively related to employee voice and organizational innovation. Employee voice was found as a significant predictor of organizational innovation and mediating factor in the relationship between HPWS and organizational innovation.

This study is limited in terms of variables included in the conceptual model and relatively small size of the sample that was derived from a single federal organization. More variables and SMEs can be included in future studies to get broader results and, potentially, better findings.

SME managers/owners can design HR function in such a way that employees will be encouraged to raise their voice and participate more in the organization. Scholars should study voice behaviors distinct from citizenship behaviors.

This study is the first of its kind to conceptualize the relationship between HPWS, employee voice, and organizational innovation in SMEs of Pakistan.

The paper aims to explore the role of union strategic influence on the adoption of High Performance Work Systems (HPWS) in organisations and examines how the effects of job security and then in turn the industrial relations climate, mediate this relationship in a serial manner.

The research analyses an original quantitative survey of union negotiators and representatives in 382 workplaces in England. The analysis employs structural equation modelling techniques to examine the relationships between union influence, job security, industrial relations climate and HPWS.

Union strategic influence has a positive effect on the take up of HPWS in unionised workplaces. Job security and the industrial relations climate demonstrate a serial mediation effect between union strategic influence and the take up of HPWS: union strategic influence has a positive effect on job security, which in turn positively impacts the industrial relations climate, thereby increasing the likelihood of the adoption of HPWS. The findings for the industrial relations climate are particularly strong.

Findings suggest that organisations will benefit from focussing on the development of positive industrial relations, where unions have genuine strategic influence, because this maximises the likelihood that HPWS can be adopted and sustained.

The paper provides a novel focus on the take up of HPWS within unionised workplaces. It focusses on the role of union strategic influence and the mediating effects of job security and the industrial relations climate, which are contextual factors that have been underexplored in the HPWS literature to date.