Co‐workers' voice climate and affective commitment towards the team: A test of mediation and moderation

• Published date: 01 July 2019
• Author: Florence Stinglhamber,Marc Ohana
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12232
• Date: 01 July 2019

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Co‐workers' voice climate and affective

commitment towards the team: A test of

mediation and moderation

Marc Ohana

1

|Florence Stinglhamber

2

1

Kedge Business School, Talence, France

2

Psychological Sciences Research Institute,

Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain‐

la‐Neuve, Belgium

Correspondence

Marc Ohana, Kedge Business School, 680

cours de la Libération, 33405 Talence, France.

Email: marc.ohana@kedgebs.com

Abstract

This article examines the consequences of co‐workers'

voice climate, defined as a shared perception regarding

how individuals who work together within the same unit

and who do not have formal authority over each other

judge the ability to participate in decision making inside

teams. We argue that co‐workers' voice climate may influ-

ence individuals' perception of quality of social exchange

with the team, operationalised through team–member

exchange. These high‐quality exchanges with the team

should, in turn, promote higher individual affective commit-

ment towards the team. Furthermore, we hypothesised that

the social exchange with the supervisor, operationalised

through leader–member exchange, buffers the effect of

co‐workers' voice climate on team–member exchange.

These hypotheses were tested using a sample of 183

employees belonging to 31 teams. Our findings supported

the theoretical model that was proposed, attesting to the

importance of considering co‐workers' justice climate in

the prediction of individual work attitudes. The theoretical

and practical implications of these results are discussed.

KEYWORDS

LMX, organisational justice, socialexchange, team commitment,

TMX, voice

Received: 18 September 2017 Revised: 31 January 2019 Accepted: 31 January 2019

DOI: 10.1111/1748-8583.12232

Hum Resour Manag J. 2019;29:395–412. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltdwileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrmj 395

1|INTRODUCTION

Prior research on workplace justice mainly focused on justice stemming from the supervisor or the organisation, that

is, on sources having power over the justice recipient (Masterson, Lewis, Goldman, & Taylor, 2000). However, recent

research has suggested that employees are receptive to other sources of justice and, in particular, to their co‐workers

(Li & Cropanzano, 2009). Making the distinction among the sources of justice is of primary importance for both

theoretical and practical reasons. Theoretically, the concept of justice is rooted in the notion of accountability, so that

the social entity responsible for the (un)just treatment received is fundamental to justice (Folger & Cropanzano, 2001;

Rupp, Shao, Jones, & Liao, 2014). Furthermore, because co‐workers' have no formal power over the justice recipient,

the mechanism responsible for the effects of co‐workers' justice may well be different than those found for justice

coming from the supervisor or the organisation (Li, Cropanzano, & Bagger, 2013; Ohana, 2016). Practically, given

the increased use of workgroups in organisations and the meaningfulness of the workgroup as a proximal entity

for employees (Lyubovnikova, West, Dawson, & Carter, 2014), studying co‐workers' justice is worth studying in many

work environments.

The goal of this article is precisely to study the effect of co‐workers' justice climate. To operationalise co‐workers'

justice, we focus on co‐workers' voice—that is, the opportunity to express one's opinion with respect to team

decisions (Ohana, 2016). Voice is one of the most widely documented criteria of justice in the literature (Shapiro &

Brett, 2005). Accordingly, the results of the present study on the effects of co‐workers' voice will be more directly

comparable with the myriad of studies dealing with organisation or supervisor voice. Moreover, teams of co‐workers

are increasingly inclined to make their own decisions in the modern workplace (Lavelle, Rupp, & Brockner, 2016).

Contrarily to other procedural justice criteria that are more likely to emanate from an authority figure, voice fits thus

particularly well with the topic addressed in the present research, that is, justice inside teams. In this paper, we thus

use the concept of voice derived from the procedural justice literature and not the voice concept coming from the

literature on proactive behaviours (where it refers to a prosocial behaviour, defined as a promotive behaviour that

emphasises constructive challenge intended to improve a situation; Van Dyne & LePine, 1998).

Building on this operationalisation, our study aims at examining the multilevel relationship between co‐workers'

voice climate and individual affective commitment towards the team. Affective commitment towards the team is

defined as employees' emotional connection with their team. It represents a crucial variable in organisational

behaviour as it explains key attitudes and behaviours such as turnover intention, performance, and citizenship

behaviours (Meyer, 2016; Riketta & van Dick, 2005). Above and beyond this direct effect, we further explore

this relationship by examining a mediating mechanism in terms of social exchange, that is, team–member exchange

(Seers, Petty, & Cashman, 1995). Finally, we identify a boundary condition of the co‐workers' justice climate–

team–member exchange relationship by testing the moderating role of leader–member exchange (LMX). We argue

that the effect of the quality of the exchange relationship with the supervisor is worth studying given the central role

supervisors play in the team dynamics (Boies & Howell, 2006).

By doing so, the contribution of our research is threefold. First, we contribute to the justice literature by studying

justice emanating from co‐workers'. In this way, we respond to the call of Rupp et al. (2014) and Li et al. (2013) for

conducting more research on justice emanating from other sources than the organisation or the supervisors. By

focusing on the co‐workers' justice source, we also shed new light on the relationship between justice climate and

commitment that does not provide so far a consistent pattern of results across studies whatever the source of justice.

Another major contribution of our research is to explore the black box of justice climate (Mayer & Kuenzi, 2010).

Relying on a unique theoretical framework, that is, the social exchange theory, we indeed propose to examine why

and when co‐workers' voice climate is related to a valuable outcome such as affective commitment towards the

team. If justice climate has been shown to impact individual attitudes and behaviours (Whitman, Caleo, Carpenter,

Horner, & Bernerth, 2012), little is indeed known about why these relationships exist. Whereas the effect of justice

on social exchange is well known at the individual level of analysis (Colquitt et al., 2013; Rupp et al., 2014), evidence

is lacking when justice is considered as a group variable. Studying the mediating effect of individual social exchange

396 OHANA AND STINGLHAMBER