Received Respect and Constructive Voice: The Roles of Proactive Motivation and Perspective Taking

Abstract

This study advances voice research by offering a social-relational view of the drivers of voice, a theoretical approach to voice that is seldom considered within the current paradigm largely focused on personality traits, job conditions, and organizational characteristics. One overlooked yet important social-relational antecedent of voice is received respect. Our core premise is that when employees believe they are respected by coworkers, they experience psychological changes to their control beliefs (representing “can-do” proactive motivation) and positive mood (representing “energized-to” proactive motivation), which then motivate voice. We further consider another social-relational variable—perspective taking—as a predictor of received respect and therefore as an indirect predictor of voice. Through a multimethod, multisample research program comprising four studies (two experiments involving more than 400 subjects in total, a sample involving more than 700 matched employee-coworker and subordinate-supervisor dyads, and a 9-week within-person field investigation of more than 400 university alumni), we provide evidence to support the proposed model. That is, received respect was associated with employees’ voice through control beliefs and positive mood, and perspective taking was a prominent predictor of received respect.

How does appreciation lead to higher job satisfaction?

“…There are not many studies investigating appreciation as a construct in its own right (e.g. Cleary et al , 2012; Ng et al , 2019; van Quaquebeke and Eckloff, 2010; Wang et al , 2019). Rather, appreciation has often been investigated as an element of other constructs, such as leadership (Judge et al , 2004; Kuoppala et al , 2008), or social support.…”

Observer reactions to workplace mistreatment: It’s a matter of perspective.

“…Thus, this work conceived of empathy and perspective-taking as intertwined. However, subsequent theory (e.g., Parker et al, 2008) and research (e.g., Batson et al, 1997;Galinsky, Maddux et al, 2008;Ng et al, 2019) distinguish these two constructs, and often view empathic concern as an outcome of perspective-taking. Consistent with this latter perspective, Parker et al (2008) conceptualized perspective-taking as a process of trying to understand or imagine the world from another's point of view (Galinsky et al, 2005), and defined active perspective-taking as an effortful, goal-directed process in which an individual attempts to understand the thoughts, feelings, and motives of another person.…”

Leaders’ accounts on employee voice in the Indian context: an exploratory study

“…The present study evidences the paradoxical and dualistic mind-set in voicing upwards via lateral exchanges. Hence, these lateral exchanges are indicative of a critical potential implication that certainly requires further exploration on how social and relational factors shape employee upward voice (Morrison 2014;Ng, Hsu and Parker 2019).…”

“…For example, in collectivist societies such as India, employees’ favour informal lateral voice and are most likely to have an acquiescent culture of voice where individuals’ ideas/issues are discouraged unless backed/shared by several other co‐workers. While there is literature on group dynamics explaining how co‐workers can be targets of voice, there is little empirical evidence on how co‐workers influence employee upward voice (Farmer, Van Dyne and Kamdar ; Ng, Hsu and Parker ; Shih and Wijaya ; Subhakaran and Dyaram ). The present study evidences the paradoxical and dualistic mind‐set in voicing upwards via lateral exchanges.…”