Too attached to speak up? It depends: How supervisor–subordinate guanxi and perceived job control influence upward constructive voice

Employee voice behavior as a critical factor for organizational sustainability in the telecommunications industry

“…Future studies should replicate this research in a context outside Pakistan. Secondly, research on employee voice behavior needs to be conducted with more caution and considering cultural differences [ 84 ], such as Pakistan’s high level of power distance [ 85 ].…”

Too unsafe to voice? Authoritarian leadership and employee voice in Chinese organizations

“…That is, the social exchange process between the actor and the target may be influenced by their quality of relationship (Cropanzano and Mitchell 2005). A higher quality of relationship involves greater mutual trust and personal obligations (Blau 1964;Davidson, Van Dyne and Lin 2017), which may strengthen the positive reciprocity or at least weaken the negative reciprocity in the social exchange process, as evidenced by several empirical studies (e.g. Alfes et al 2013;Dysvik, Buch and Kuvaas 2015;Lam et al 2015).…”

“…Second, the social activities involved in personal guanxi may facilitate the guanxi quality between the supervisor and the subordinate, which, in turn, will promote affective attachment (Chen and Chen 2004). In Chinese culture, high-quality guanxi is associated with stronger affective attachment (Chen and Chen 2004;Davidson, Van Dyne and Lin 2017), which means that both the supervisor and the subordinate are affectively connected to each other and willing to accept the obligations of mutual care, altruism, and understanding Davidson, Van Dyne and Lin 2017). When the subordinate is affectively attached to the supervisor, the subordinate may infer that AL is a specific form of care and encouragement by the supervisor (e.g.…”

“…Thus, we propose that supervisor-subordinate guanxi will weaken the mediating effect of subordinate psychological safety on the AL-subordinate voice relationship. Specifically, when the subordinate has good personal guanxi with the supervisor, the subordinate may perceive that his or her relationship with the supervisor is family-like, have more sincerity-based trust in the supervisor, and feel more affective attachment to the supervisor (Chen and Chen 2004;Chen, Chen and Huang 2013;Davidson, Van Dyne, and Lin 2017), all of which will make the subordinate interpret AL in a more positive way, leading to the subordinate's reciprocal attitude that taking risk before the authoritarian supervisor may not result in negative consequences and thus lessening the potential threat of AL to psychological safety.…”

“…In the current study, we simultaneously incorporate AL and supervisor-subordinate guanxi, two indigenous Chinese constructs, to represent hierarchy and relationalism, respectively. In fact, previous research on Chinese organizations has examined the roles that AL (Chan 2014;Li and Sun 2015) and supervisor-subordinate guanxi (Davidson, Van Dyne and Lin 2017;Wang et al 2010) play on voice separately without integration. Our study contributes to this literature by exploring how AL (hierarchy) and supervisor-subordinate guanxi (relationalism) interplay to affect employee voice via the mediating role of psychological safety.…”