Research On The Multi-level Model Of The Effects Of Voice Behavior On Individual And Team Performance

As the economic globalization goes deeper and the knowledge economy begins,Chinese organizations have lost the advantage in labor.Employees' intelligence and wisdom have been the key to the organization's sustainable development.Voice behavior,which is defined as constructive change-oriented communication intended to improve the situation,is crucial to employee effectiveness and team effectiveness.Given that how to improve employee performance and team performance has been the focus of managers,it deserves a deep investigation in the role of voice behavior on team and employee performance.The performance outcomes(i.e.,employee performance and team performance)of voice behavior also have drawn much attention from scholars.Specifically,at the employee level,several researches have examined the relationship between voice behavior and employee performance.However,empirical findings on how voice behavior affects employee performance are inconclusive,with some studies revealing positive effects and others revealing negative effects.An oversight on the importance of potential boundary conditions and the types of voice behavior may account for these inconsistent results.Voice behavior is not only an individual concept,but also can be aggregated to the team level,which has an influence in team performance.Voice at the team level reflects the extent of which members of a team make constructive suggestions for improvement,share new ideas,and speak up about problems or potential problems.To examine the effect of voice behavior at the team level is meaningful,as suggestions and concerns that are proposed by team members are more likely to be taken seriously than by a single employee.Therefore,exploring the relationship between voice and team performance at the team level seems critical for the improvement of organization.Empirical studies have demonstrated that voice has a positive effect on team performance.There have been calls for research that examines intervening processes(e.g.,learning process)through which voice influences team performance;however,surprisingly few have paid attention to how voice influences team performance.Taken together,this study aims to solve the following issues.First,do boundary conditions,such as workplace stressors,influence the effect of voice behavior on employee performance?Second,does the type of voice behavior matter in the relationship between voice behavior and employee performance?Does cultural factor,such as power distance orientation,moderate the above relationships?Third,at the team level,how does voice behavior influence team performance through team learning?Does leadership,such as contingent reward transactional leadership,moderate the effect of voice at the team level?From the above,this study proposes a multi-level framework to examine the effects of voice behavior on employee performance and team performance,taking contextual factors,culture and leadership into account.This study is consisted of three sub-studies.The first one is about the influence mechanism of employee voice on employee performance.Based on ego-depletion theory,this study attempts to establish boundary conditions of employee voice and employee performance by introducing challenge stressors and hindrance stressors as moderators.By conducting hierarchical regression analysis,results from the analysis of a sample comprised of 781 employees show that employee voice has significant positive effect on employee performance.The positive relationship between voice behavior and employee performance is stronger for employees with low challenge stressors as well as for employees with high hindrance stressors.The second one is about the influencing mechanism of promotive voice,prohibitive voice,and employee performance.This study proposes a model that specifies the relationships between two types of employee voice(i.e.,promotive and prohibitive)and employee performance along with the moderating role of power distance orientation.By conducting hierarchical regression analysis,results from the analysis of a sample comprised of 80 leaders and 431 employees show an inverted U-shaped relationship between promotive voice and performance and a positive linear relationship between prohibitive voice and performance.Power distance orientation is found to significantly moderate the nonlinear and linear relationships.Specifically,the inverted U-shaped relationship is stronger,and the positive linear relationship is weaker among employees with high power distance orientation rather than low.The third one is about the influencing mechanism of voice on team performance at the team level.Based on social information processing theory,this study identifies team learning as a mediator and introduces contingent reward transactional leadership as a moderator.By conducting hierarchical regression analysis and bias-corrected bootstrapping procedure,based on a sample of 441 team employees and their immediate supervisors from 78 teams,our results indicate that voice is positively related to team performance via team learning.Additionally,contingent reward transactional leadership positively moderates the effect of voice on team learning.This study makes several theoretical contributions as follows.First,our findings may provide two possible explanations for the inconsistent and apparently paradoxical findings on the relationships linking voice behavior and employee performance,thereby contributing to the knowledge of the relationship between voice behavior and employee performance.Second,our research sheds light on the specific team process—team learning,through which voice relates to team performance and contributes to our understanding how voice at the team level leads to an increase in team performance.Third,our study enriches prior research on boundary conditions of the effects of voice behavior by taking contextual factors(i.e.,challenge stressors and hindrance stressors),culture(i.e.,power distance orientation)and leadership(i.e.,contingent reward transactional leadership)as moderators.Fourth,by investigating the differentiated effect of promotive voice and prohibitive voice on employee performance,our findings lead to a more comprehensive understanding of their effect of these two types of voice.This study also offers several managerial guidance as follows.First,organizations should guide employees to take voice behavior,thereby contributing employee and team performance.Second,when encouraging employees to voice,organizations should also focus more on its quality and content.Third,organizations should treat challenge and hindrance stressors differently,and keep them within a reasonable range,thereby building a good work climate for voice.Fourth,managers should pay attention to individuals' cultural values,in this case,power distance orientation,when implementing management practices,develop suitable followers,thereby improving the role of voice behavior in performance improvement.Fifth,organizations should select persons who emphasize rewards and punishments for managerial position,and train team leaders to adopt contingent reward transactional behaviors.