The Impact Mechanism Of Career Growth On Employees’ Voice Behavior

Voice behavior as a form of employees engaged in management, it is often the first step in the innovation process, is also an indispensable role in constructing suggestion program and accepting employees’ wisdom and talent. However, the employees often choose to hide their real thoughts in many organizations and they tend to keep quiet in the face of the important problems. So how to promote employees’voice behavior has received wide attention and discussion in the academic and industry field. But research on exploring the impact mechanism of career growth on employees’ voice behavior is relatively rare. As the traditional lifetime employment in the same organization gradually disappearing and the labor market keep opening, job mobility, career change and unemployment are becoming increasingly more common. This career environment promotes the individuals to care their own careers more. In assuming greater control over their careers, however, workers need to develop skills that will ensure their employability, in effect, requiring them to be lifelong learners. Similarly, organizations also hope the employees can contribute to the development of the organizations more. When employees require the organizations to provide better career growth environment and more support, the employers have to ask, what can they get from organization promoting employee career growth? This research tried to answer the question from the perspective of voice behavior. Therefore, it has significant theoretical value and practical meaning that we put the issues which both organizations and employees concerned in a framework and discuss the relationship between them in order to make clear whether the organizations and employees can achieve a double-win situation.This research built a integrated conceptual model that illustrate the impact mechanism of career growth (career goal progress, professional ability development, organizational reward growth) on employees’voice behavior based on social comparison theory. We first analyzed the possible direct reasons that career growth would promote employees’ career growth, and then analyzed the indirect effects of organizational commitment (affective commitment, continuous commitment, normative commitment), job engagement and perceived of supervisor support. We also considered the moderating role of gender on the relationship between organizational career growth and voice behavior based on gender role theory. In order to test the theoretical hypotheses, we adopted a longitudinal research design with six months span over three time periods. And we did our empirical analysis based on378samples at last. The main research conclusions are as follows:(1) We confirmed that employees’ organizational career growth is a predictor of voice behavior. And career goal progress had the greatest effect on voice behavior, followed by professional ability development and organizational reward growth. Our findings suggest that meeting employees’career goal progress, prompting their professional ability development and increasing their organizational reward growth makes employees more likely to share creative ideas with, to give warnings to, or to encourage constructive changes to the organization.(2) Our finding of a partial mediating role for affective commitment on the relationship between organizational career growth and voice behavior, suggests that, in terms of voice behavior, providing opportunities for organizational career growth are more important for employees who exhibit lower levels of affective commitment. Highly committed individuals are more likely to engage in voice behaviors anyway.(3) Our finding of a partial mediating role for normative organizational commitment on the relationship between career goal progress, professional ability development and voice behavior, suggests that, in terms of voice behavior, providing opportunities for career goal progress and professional ability development are more important for employees who exhibit lower levels of normative commitment. Highly committed individuals are more likely to engage in voice behaviors anyway. It is noted that organizational reward growth can’t affect normative commitment.(4) Our finding of a partial mediating role for job engagement on the relationship between organizational career growth and voice behavior, suggests that, in terms of voice behavior, providing opportunities for organizational career growth are more important for employees who exhibit lower levels of job engagement. Highly engaged individuals are more likely to engage in voice behaviors anyway.(5) Our finding of a partial mediating role for perceived of supervisor support on the relationship between organizational career growth and voice behavior, suggests that, in terms of voice behavior, providing opportunities for organizational career growth are more important for employees who perceive lower levels of supervisor support. Highly perceived of supervisor support individuals are more likely to engage in voice behaviors anyway.(6) We found that gender can partially moderate the relationship between career growth and voice behavior. Our results show that career goal progress is more important to men as a determinant of voice behavior, professional ability development is more important to women as a determinant of voice behavior. But organization reward growth wouldn’t be the moderating role for the relationship.(7) Through the exploration of the direct relationship, mediating relationship and moderating relationship between career growth and voice behavior, we thought the impact mechanism is that career growth would directly promote employee’s voice behavior and also would cause the change of employee’s attitude and perceived support of organization, job and supervisor which would promote voice behavior indirectly, and also the gender would moderate the direct relationship.Originality of the study is that:First, we proposed a new concept framework of the influence of career growth on employees’ voice behavior. Second, we considered the moderating role of gender on the relationship between organizational career growth and voice behavior based on gender role theory. Third, we adopted a time span of the longitudinal research design.The practical implication of this research is that:organizations should care about the matching of employees’ career goal and organization’s goal since the time of recruitment; should value the management of employees’ career; should pay attention to provide the platform and task for employees to develop the professional ability; should prefect the organizational remuneration system and promotion channels; should respect the need of career growth from different employees and let them take what they need, thus to ensure the development both of organizations and employees. Meanwhile, organizations can take measures to improve the employees’ organizational commitment, job engagement and the perceived of supervisor support, in order to promote their willingness to make additional efforts for organizations.