Insiders maintain voice: A psychological safety model of organizational politics

Li, Jinsong; Wu, Long‐Zeng; Liu, Dong; Kwan, Ho Kwong; Liu, Jun

doi:10.1007/s10490-013-9371-7

Cited by 77 publications

(80 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Within a political context, employees high in power distance may appraise abusive supervision as even more threatening and be more concerned about actions of abusive supervisors out of fear of losing valued resources and receiving punishments (Treadway, Hochwarter, Ferris, Kacmar, Douglas, Ammeter, & Buckley, ). In support of our conjecture, prior research has shown that politics are often appraised as negative situations with uncontrollable threat (Cropanzano, Howes, Grandey, & Toth, ), resulting in perceptions of low psychological safety (Ferris et al, ; Li, Wu, Liu, Kwan, & Liu, ). We thus expect that when high‐power‐distance employees perceive organisations as political, they will adopt a more defensive silence under abusive supervision to protect their interests.…”

Section: Theoretical Background and Hypotheses Developmentsupporting

confidence: 85%

Power Imbalance and Employee Silence: The Role of Abusive Leadership, Power Distance Orientation, and Perceived Organisational Politics

Lam

Xu²

2018

Applied Psychology

123

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Employee silence is a costly but omnipresent phenomenon in modern organisations. In this study, we focus on two forms of silence: defensive silence based on fear and acquiescent silence based on resignation. Given the power imbalance in supervisor-subordinate relationships, we hypothesise that abusive supervision is an antecedent of subordinates' defensive silence and that a subordinate's power distance orientation affects acquiescent silence. We investigate the interaction effects of abusive supervision and power distance orientation on these two types of silence. Perceived organisational politics may also aggravate such interactive effects. Based on data collected from 159 junior employees in China in two periods, we find that abusive supervision is associated with employee defensive silence and moderates high-powerdistance employees' tendency to engage in acquiescent silence. When perceiving high politics in the organisation, high-power-distance employees are more sensitive to abusive supervision and engage in more defensive silence. A highly political organisational context also accentuates abusive supervision's moderating effect on the relation between employees' power distance orientation and acquiescent silence. We conclude with theoretical and practical implications for the silence literature.

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Section: Theoretical Background and Hypotheses Developmentsupporting

confidence: 85%

Power Imbalance and Employee Silence: The Role of Abusive Leadership, Power Distance Orientation, and Perceived Organisational Politics

Lam

Xu²

2018

Applied Psychology

123

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“…Of note, they found that this mediation existed even after controlling for other possible mechanisms (felt obligation, OBSE, and job engagement). Perceived organization politics (the perception that the workplace is characterized by the staff's self‐serving intentions) was negatively related to individual proactive behavior ( r = −0.24, Yang, ), with “can do” motivation, that is, psychological safety, as the mediator ( r = −0.31, Li, Wu, Liu, Kwan, & Liu, ): The greater the perceived politics is, the more unsafe individuals felt about being proactive. Wu, Kwan, Wu, and Ma () found that negative gossip in the workplace could serve as a stressor to exhaust employees' resources, manifested as emotional exhaustion, and so reduce their proactive behavior ( r = −0.22).…”

Section: Social Context Factors As Antecedents Of Proactive Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

How does the social context fuel the proactive fire? A multilevel review and theoretical synthesis

et al. 2019

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Summary The role of social context (e.g., leadership, team climate, and organizational support) in shaping employee proactive behavior has received considerable attention and has been investigated across multiple forms of proactive behavior. However, the research has not been well integrated. In this review, we adopt a multilevel approach to synthesize what is known about how social context factors influence employees' proactive behavior, as well as what mechanisms underpin these effects. Our analyses show that leader‐, team‐, and organization‐related social context factors mainly influence employee proactivity through shaping “reason to,” “can do,” and “energized to” states (i.e., proactive motivational states) via individual‐, team‐, and cross‐level processes. That has been most frequently investigated is the effect of the discretionary social context, particularly leadership, on proactive behavior. We also review the interaction effects between social context factors and other factors on employee proactive behavior and found inconsistent support for the motivational‐fit perspective that stimuli with the same directions enhance each other's effect. We offer a research agenda to advance theoretical insights on this important topic.

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“…Research Hsiung et al (2012) explains more about what affects employees doing OCB in the form of doing good or looking good. One of the factors that influence the motives underlying OCB is politics (Bolino, 1999;Hsiung et al, 2012;Li et al, 2014).…”

Section: Hypothesis Development the Effects Perceived Organizational mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The uncertainty that was felt by the employees will be a negative threat because employees feel the work environment situation cannot be controlled. Furthermore, negative threats will affect the psychological condition of employees so that employees feel insecure (Li et al, 2014).…”

Section: The Effects Of Perceived Organizational Politics (Pop) On Psmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although the promoti-on of position is also based on performance appraisal, employees need non-performance efforts to ensure the promotion of the position will be given to them (Feldman & Weitz, 1991). Employees who perceive politics are more concerned with the assessment of others about themselves and their career goals tend to increase their own value (Kim et al, 2016) On the other hand, (Li et al, 2014) assume that organizations with a high political climate will make psychological safety of the employees feel threatened and reluctant to carry out their activities outside their duties. This explanation shows that POP has a negative influence on OCB through psychological safety.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Paradoxical Effect of Perceived Organizational Politics and Organizational Citizenship Behaviour

Hadi¹,

Yulianti²

2019

JDM

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This study aims to explain how the psychological process affects perceived organizational politics (POP) toward organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB). The paradoxical effect of POP to OCB needs to be explained through two psychological processes: First, the mediation effect of psychological safety which explains POP as a barrier to OCB. Second, the mediation effect of careerism which explains POP as an OCB driver. One of the government institutions in Malang District used as research objects, involving 97 employees as respondents. A quantitative approach using Partial Least Square (PLS) used as the method of this study. The results showed careerism mediated the relationship between POP and OCB. But the surprising result is that psychological safety cannot mediate the effect of POP to OCB because employees feel that there is no high threat of doing voice behaviour, helping behaviour and individual initiatives in the political environment. These results indicate that OCB is a safe activity when it does not contrary to other people’s self-interest, so it does not cause a conflict.

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Insiders maintain voice: A psychological safety model of organizational politics

Cited by 77 publications

References 42 publications

Power Imbalance and Employee Silence: The Role of Abusive Leadership, Power Distance Orientation, and Perceived Organisational Politics

Power Imbalance and Employee Silence: The Role of Abusive Leadership, Power Distance Orientation, and Perceived Organisational Politics

How does the social context fuel the proactive fire? A multilevel review and theoretical synthesis

The Paradoxical Effect of Perceived Organizational Politics and Organizational Citizenship Behaviour

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