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The purpose of this paper is to understand better why employees voice. Drawing on social information processing theory and insights derived from the literature on power, the authors suggest that leader–member exchange (LMX) fosters voice by reducing the perceived risk of voicing. The authors further contend that high perceived leader power will strengthen this mediated relationship.

The authors relied on a sample of 265 employee-supervisor dyads collected from Chinese organizations to test the study hypotheses.

Results indicated that perceived risk of voicing significantly mediated the positive LMX–voice behavior relationship. In addition, perceived leader power strengthened the effect of LMX on voice behavior via perceived risk of voicing. The relationship of LMX to perceived risk of voicing was more negative, and the indirect effect of LMX on voice behavior was more positive when employees perceived that leader power was high.

Organizations seeking to promote voice behaviors should support leaders to develop high-quality relationships with employees. Organizations should also ensure that leaders are sufficiently empowered to fulfill their roles, and ensure that employees are aware of their leaders’ influence.

Findings suggest that, in the context of high quality leader–member relationships, employees’ perceptions of their leaders’ power may help to overcome barriers associated with speaking up. Thus, this study helps explain the conditions that encourage employees to voice.

As customers increasingly adopt social media as the primary channel to reach out to companies, voicing is becoming a public act. Adopting a social psychological perspective, this study aims to focus on the social dynamics that drive consumer voice on social media.

The research uses three studies. First, a list of metaperceptions about voicing behavior is compiled using the critical incident technique, and then the hypothesized effects are tested with two scenario-based experiments.

Metaperceptions mediate the relationship between social anxiety and the intention to voice on social media. Self-construal moderates the effect of metaperceptions, such that in the presence of a negative metaperception, the reluctance to post a direct complaint is attenuated under independent self-construal. Independent self-construal attenuates the positive effect of positive metaperception. An experimental comparison between social media and consumer review sites reveals that metaperceptions are only prevalent in social media and when the complainer construes him or herself as interdependent.

Since lodging a direct complaint to a service provider has been mainly conceived as a private behavior, the role of social dynamics in the context of voicing remains under-researched. Aiming to fill this gap, the present research empirically examines how the presence of a perceived audience affects voicing behavior.

This paper aims to examine the relationships between consumer advocacy and consumer complaining behaviors such as voicing and negative word‐of‐mouth in the context of dissatisfactory service experiences.

Using an experimental design embedded in a survey methodology, the authors examine the relationship between consumer advocacy and the likelihood for complaining about dissatisfactory service experiences among adult US consumers. Additionally, the authors examine the differences between likelihood for voicing and negative word‐of‐mouth (NWOM) in the context of dissatisfactory service experiences at varying levels of service encounter failure.

The authors find that consumer advocacy is positively related to consumer complaining (i.e. voicing and NWOM), and that likelihood of NWOM is consistently greater than likelihood of voicing.

This study uses a convenience sample of US adult consumers, which could compromise generalizability of the results to broader consumer populations.

Based on these results, the authors suggest that companies and consumer protection agencies appeal to consumers' advocacy tendencies to facilitate voicing so problems can be quickly identified and resolved, and the negative word‐of‐mouth can be minimized.

This study is the first attempt known to authors to link consumer advocacy to complaining behaviors in the marketplace.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating effects of organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) for the relationship between workplace ostracism with helping behavior, voicing behavior, in-role behavior, and deviant behavior. The workplace has now become a social context where ostracism occurs and the study emphasizes how ostracism can affect workplace behaviors.

The study was designed using a three-wave self-reported survey. Confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and bootstrapping for indirect effects were conducted to test the study’s hypotheses.

The study found OBSE to fully mediate the relationship between workplace ostracism and helping behavior, voicing behavior, and in-role behavior, while OBSE partially mediated workplace ostracism and deviant behavior as workplace ostracism was found to have a direct effect on deviant behavior.

The study explores and empirically tests the mediating effects of OBSE with helping behavior, voicing behavior, in-role behavior, and deviant behavior. Therefore, the study extends research on workplace ostracism by investigating beyond the direct effects of workplace ostracism on workplace behaviors.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between empowering leadership and employees’ constructive voice behavior in the present organizational dynamics. The authors propose a moderated mediation model to investigate the relationship between empowering leadership, employees’ core self-evaluation, psychological safety and constructive voice.

The authors collected survey data from a sample of 282 service executives across Indian organizations. This study uses SPSS Process macro (moderated mediation model) to analyze the data collected. Additionally, the authors have used moderation graph to elucidate the interaction effect.

The results suggest that empowering leadership positively affects employees’ constructive voice behavior. Supporting results were observed for the mediating impact of psychological safety between empowering leadership and constructive voice, and moderating role of core self-evaluation between empowering leadership and psychological safety.

The small sample size limits the study from drawing generalizations. Other potential limitations are discussed, too.

Significant impact of empowering leadership on voice behavior highlights the importance of style of leadership adopted; a 360-degree appraisal of leaders can be conducted to identify proper empowering leaders. The moderating role of core self-evaluation implies that employees who perceive themselves competent may only offer constructive suggestions even if they work in a psychologically safe environment.

This paper is the first to explore the relationship between a new form of leadership style, empowering leadership and employees’ constructive voice behavior, and is, thus, relevant for employers who expect their employees to contribute in the form of ideas, suggestions and concerns towards the growth of the company.

Employee voice is seen as a double-edged behavior in organizations. This study considers individuals’ evaluations of various features of their work situations. In particular, leader–member exchange (LMX) mediates the influence of voice behavior on workplace bullying and employee job satisfaction. The purpose of this paper is to examine a model in which employee voice positively affects workplace bullying and job satisfaction through LMX.

A total of 447 employer–employee dyads from a large manufacturing company and public organizations in Taiwan were surveyed. Two-wave data demonstrated a significant positive relationship between employee voice and its outcomes, mediated by LMX relationship.

The results reveal significant relationships between voice behavior and workplace bullying and between employee voice and job satisfaction. Additionally, LMX is an important mechanism in the relationships between employee voice and workplace bullying and employee voice and job satisfaction.

Although this study obtained data from employer–employee dyads, practical constraints prevented complete consideration of issues in the work domain, such as colleagues, which might influence employees’ job satisfaction and workplace bullying.

Employee voice refers to an employee providing challenging advice to contribute to the success of an organization. Voicing employees who speak up to change the status quo and challenge the current circumstances in an organization may become the target of bullying. Therefore, it is suggested that leaders should address the advice offered by employees and provide suitable support when employee voice benefits the company.

The findings have implications for the understanding of employees’ conditions and its associations with social issues in the workplace.

Employee voice behavior is an important source of corporate competitiveness but employees often face difficulties in voicing their opinions. This research analyzes how authentic leadership may increase psychological safety perceived by employees, consequently encouraging employees to actively share their ideas. In addition, the authors explore the unique concept of Zhongyong thinking, a way of thinking that is common in cultures rooted in Confucianism. The authors analyze how Zhongyong thinking may affect the relationship between psychological safety and employee voice behavior.

For the empirical analysis of authentic leadership and employee voice behavior in the Chinese context, the authors distributed surveys to employees working in various different industries in various provinces in China. The authors distributed 250 surveys in total and 213 surveys were used for analyses.

The authors' empirical analyzes illustrate that authentic leadership increases employee voice behavior, partially mediated by psychological safety. The authors also analyzed how psychological safety's effect on employee voice behavior could be moderated by Zhongyong thinking. The results demonstrate that the effect of psychological safety on voice behavior is weaker when employees are capable of exercising Zhongyong thinking.

Zhongyong thinking is still a relatively new concept that has not been studied thoroughly, and to the authors' knowledge, Zhongyong thinking has never been studied as a moderator in the relationship between psychological safety and employee voice behavior.

The purpose of this article is twofold. First, this article attempts to classify employee voice behavior using three distinct dimensions of voice message embedded in employee voice behavior: voice change beneficiary, voice change approach and voice change time orientation. Second, this article discusses the theoretical underpinning that can be used to best explain the antecedents of a certain form of employee voice behavior.

A theoretical analysis was performed.

This article proposes that employee voice behavior can be classified into self-centered vs other-centered, improvement-focused vs prevention-focused and present-oriented vs future-oriented. Moreover, this article discusses how social exchange, personality traits and cultural perspectives help explain the antecedents of each of these forms of employee voice behavior.

First, this article recommends that managers should evaluate employee voice behavior based upon contexts in which the behavior is exhibited. Second, this article recommends that managers not only need to establish an environment where employee voice behavior is strongly encouraged, but also pay attention to reducing psychological and physical symptoms caused by speaking up for others. Finally, this article provides further managerial implications by highlighting that high-quality social exchange relationships can not only trigger employees’ desire to voice for themselves, but also motivate employees to voice for others.

This article is one of the few studies that attempt to classify employee voice behavior.

The study empirically explores employees' motives for engaging in constructive voice behaviors.

The authors utilized qualitative research methods. The data were collected through individual semi-structured interviews with 26 workers in the renewable energy industry in Kenya. The data were analyzed using a phronetic iterative approach (Tracy, 2020).

The data revealed various motives that may drive constructive voice including, personal (e.g. material rewards and emotional gratification), relational (e.g. advocating for others and diluting opposition) and organizational motives (e.g. ensuring organizational survival and bolstering innovation). Additionally, the authors illustrated how these motives may evolve and/or jointly drive constructive voice.

Although voice scholars are beginning to recognize the existence of other motives besides prosocial, the knowledge of such motives has remained theoretical. This is one of the first studies to empirically examine motives for constructive voice. By unveiling the motives, the findings demonstrate different pathways through which a voice opportunity transforms into a constructive voice behavior.

The purpose of this study is to explore how and when an employee's belief in their voice self-efficacy leads to promotive and prohibitive voice behavior. By banking on social cognitive theory, this study examines perceived influence at work as a mediator and managerial openness as a moderator in the link between voice self-efficacy and the two forms of voice.

This study's data come from 285 Indian information technology (IT) employees by adopting a cross-sectional survey design. The effect of moderator and mediator is examined by employing structural equation modeling in AMOS 22.

The results reveal that perceived influence at work partially mediates the positive link between voice self-efficacy and the two forms of voice behaviors. The test of moderation also exposes that prohibitive voice is more contingent on managerial openness as compared to promotive voice.

This is one of the initial studies to explore perceived influence at work as a mediator in the association between voice self-efficacy and employee voice behavior. The treatment of voice as a bidimensional construct in this study discloses the difference between the two forms, contributing to the voice literature and inviting further research.