There is a long‐running debate in the business literature on the causes of organizational failure. On the one hand, classical industrial organization (IO) and organization ecology (OE) scholars have typically assumed a deterministic role of the environment and argued that managers are constrained by exogenous industrial and environmental constraints leaving them with little real strategic choice, and hence managers’ role should be ignored. On the other hand, the organization studies (OS) and organizational psychology (OP) literature takes a more voluntaristic perspective and argues that managers are the principal decision makers of the firm and, consequently, their actions and perceptions are the fundamental cause of organizational failure. This paper addresses the major deficiencies observed in the diverse body of literature covering this field, suggests an integrative framework and identifies the specific theoretical and methodological challenges ahead for researchers seeking to advance knowledge in the field of organizational failure.

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In recent years, the term empowerment has become part of everyday management language. It has also been associated with popular management movements of the times such as human resource management (HRM) and total quality management (TQM). Empowerment is regarded as providing a solution to the age‐old problem of Taylorised and bureaucratic workplaces where creativity is stifled and workers become alienated, showing discontent through individual or collective means. However, there are significant problems with much of the prescriptive literature on empowerment, in that there is little detailed discussion of the problems employers may experience implementing empowerment or the conditions which are necessary for such an approach to be successful. It is assumed employees will simply welcome the new way of working. Moreover, it is also assumed that empowerment is a universal solution appropriate to all organisations in all circumstances. Empowerment itself is not seen in a contingent way. Such literature has also been criticised as superficial and furthermore as trivialising the conflict that exists within organisations.

Employee voice has been studied across a diverse range of disciplines, generating an extensive body of literature on the topic. However, its conceptualization across the disciplines has differed, resulting in a lack of integrative theories and frameworks on employee voice. The main objective of this paper is to conduct a multidisciplinary review of the academic research on employee voice, to show where there is an opportunity to adopt and adapt the findings and research on employee voice within alternate disciplines, and to demonstrate how this may lead to more common ground in the conceptualization of employee voice. This review focuses on an analysis of the Human Resource Management/Employment Relations and Organizational Behaviour disciplines' conceptualization of employee voice, beginning with the identification of where the disciplines diverged in their concept and study of employee voice. Further, it maps their similarities and differences, on the basis of motive, content, mechanism, target and management of voice. Finally, it identifies opportunities to incorporate the alternate disciplinary perspective and proposes a conceptual model, which addresses the blind spots in each discipline. It is proposed that the consideration of formal and informal employee voice in future studies will enable the better integration of voice research.

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