The Effect Of Employee Status Seeking On Voice Behavior

Modern enterprises are in a dynamic and competitive environment.Organizations need to actively seek opportunities for constructive change.More and more organizations encourage employees to express their opinions by establishing various mechanisms and giving more attention and resource support.For employees,voice behavior in the workplace may be predicted by status-seeking.When employees want to achieve a position of influence,they are more likely to engage in voice behavior.At the same time,gender stereotypes in the workplace affect the cognition,emotion and behavior of men and women.Female employees often feel that their suggestions are easy to be ignored or worry about the higher risk of the voice,so they may use them less in status seeking.In addition,the question of whether there are other individual characteristic factors to alleviate the gender differences in voice behavior caused by gender stereotypes has not been fully explored.Therefore,this study will combine gender role theory and impression management theory to explore the gender differences in the effect of employee status seeking on voice behavior,and when the female employees will increase their voice behavior in the process of status seeking.Individuals with high status-seeking tendencies actively pay attention to status acquisition,pursue their own influence in the organization,and hope to gain recognition and respect from others.These individuals are more likely to create positive change in their environment,and engage in behavior at work that goes beyond normal role expectations or specific job requirements.Employee’s voice behavior itself can influence others to make assessments of advocator’s competence,self-confidence,etc.Therefore,this study believes that employee status seeking has a positive impact on the voice behavior.But according to the theory of gender roles,the stereotypes of gender roles may cause others to have different understandings of the abilities and characteristics of men and women in the workplace.Compared with women,it is easier for men to speak freely in the workplace,and bluntly expressing suggestions for organizational change does not meet the expectation that women should be "social".Even when women perform such behaviors,they are considered to violate gender expectations,and thus others make negative comments on women.Therefore,women use voice behaviors less frequently in status seeking.Based on this,this study believes that there are significant gender differences in the process of employee status seeking and make voice behaviors,that is,compared with men,the positive relationship between status-seeking and voice behaviors of female employees is weaker.In addition,according to previous research,individuals with strong acquisitive impression management motivation have positive emotions and pay more attention to opportunities to improve their own impressions.They pay more attention to the instrumental value of suggestions in their status seeking,and this prompts them to make more voice behaviors.As a result,the acquisitive impression management motivation positively moderates the relationship between employee status seeking and voice behavior.Furthermore,acquisitive impression management motivation can effectively help women cope with the threat of stereotypes.Status-seeking women try to show their abilities in a positive way,and they try to prove that they have sufficient importance and relevance in the certain field.Acquisitive impression management motivation may inspire women to adopt a strategic way of expressing self-confidence to help them establish an image.Therefore,based on the impression management theory,this study proposes that employees’ status seeking,acquisitive impression management motivation,and gender have significant three-way interaction on the voice behavior.That is,acquisitive impression management motivation can weaken the gender difference between status seeking and voice behavior.A three-way interaction model is further proposed.This study uses the academic maturity scale as a research tool to carry out questionnaire surveys,and takes the on-the-job employees as the survey object.A total of 246 valid questionnaires have been obtained.Through data analysis,it is found that employee status seeking has a significant positive impact on both promotive and prohibitive voice,and the process is moderated by the gender of voicer.Specifically,compared with male employees,the positive relationship between status seeking and voice behavior of female employees is weaker.In addition,acquisitive impression management motivation has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between employee status seeking and suggestive behavior,that is,the higher the level of acquisitive impression management motivation,the status-seeking employees will make more voice behavior(promotive and prohibitive voice).Finally,statistical analysis found significant three-way interaction of status seeking,acquisitive impression management motivation,and gender on voice behavior.That is,when the acquisitive impression management motivation is high,the gender difference between employee status-seeking and voice behavior is not significant,while the low-acquisitive impression management motivation,gender has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between employee status seeking and voice behavior.The results of the study confirm that acquisitive impression management motivation weaken the gender difference between status seeking and voice behavior.Finally,this study also summarizes the theoretical contribution and management practice enlightenment,research limitations and research prospects.