TY - JOUR
T1 - Nonlinear consequences of promotive and prohibitive voice for managers' responses
T2 - The roles of voice frequency and LMX
AU - Huang, Xu
AU - Xu, Erica
AU - Huang, Lei
AU - Liu, Wu
N1 - Funding Information:
Xu Huang and Erica Xu contributed equally to this work, and the order of authorship was determined alphabetically. This work has been supported by the Research Grants Councils of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, People's Republic of China, (Project 592913) to Xu Huang. We thank Jason Shaw and Subrahmaniam Tangirala for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.
Publisher copyright:
Copyright © 2018, American Psychological Association
PY - 2018/10
Y1 - 2018/10
N2 - Departing from past research on managers' responses to employee voice, we propose and examine a nonlinear linkage between promotive/prohibitive voice and managers' evaluations of voicers (i.e., manager-rated voicers' promotability and overall performance). Drawing from social persuasion theory, we theorize that managers tend to give more positive evaluations to employees who engage in a moderate frequency of promotive/prohibitive voice than those who either rarely speak up or speak up very frequently. In Study 1, based on a sample from a Chinese bank, we found that leader-member exchange quality (LMX) moderated the inverted U-shaped linkage of prohibitive voice with manager-rated promotability of voicers, whereas the frequency of promotive voice was not related to promotability, irrespective of levels of LMX. In Study 2, using employee-reported voice frequency, rather than the manager-rated measures adopted in Study 1, we largely replicated the main findings of Study 1 based on a sample from an information technology firm in the United States. In Study 3, using another U.S. sample, from a financial services firm, we found that manager-perceived voice constructiveness mediated the curvilinear interactive effect of prohibitive voice (rather than promotive voice) and LMX on managers' evaluations of employees' overall performance.
AB - Departing from past research on managers' responses to employee voice, we propose and examine a nonlinear linkage between promotive/prohibitive voice and managers' evaluations of voicers (i.e., manager-rated voicers' promotability and overall performance). Drawing from social persuasion theory, we theorize that managers tend to give more positive evaluations to employees who engage in a moderate frequency of promotive/prohibitive voice than those who either rarely speak up or speak up very frequently. In Study 1, based on a sample from a Chinese bank, we found that leader-member exchange quality (LMX) moderated the inverted U-shaped linkage of prohibitive voice with manager-rated promotability of voicers, whereas the frequency of promotive voice was not related to promotability, irrespective of levels of LMX. In Study 2, using employee-reported voice frequency, rather than the manager-rated measures adopted in Study 1, we largely replicated the main findings of Study 1 based on a sample from an information technology firm in the United States. In Study 3, using another U.S. sample, from a financial services firm, we found that manager-perceived voice constructiveness mediated the curvilinear interactive effect of prohibitive voice (rather than promotive voice) and LMX on managers' evaluations of employees' overall performance.
KW - Consequences of voice
KW - LMX
KW - Prohibitive voice
KW - Promotive voice
KW - Social persuasion
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85049007770&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1037/apl0000326
DO - 10.1037/apl0000326
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 29939035
AN - SCOPUS:85049007770
SN - 0021-9010
VL - 103
SP - 1101
EP - 1120
JO - Journal of Applied Psychology
JF - Journal of Applied Psychology
IS - 10
ER -