Do not like it when you need it the most: Examining the effect of manager ego depletion on managerial voice endorsement

• Author: Christopher M. Barnes,Kai Chi Yam,Junchao (Jason) Li,Lin Wang,Cristiano L. Guarana
• Published date: 01 October 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2370
• Date: 01 October 2019

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Do not like it when you need it the most: Examining the effect

of manager ego depletion on managerial voice endorsement

Junchao (Jason) Li

1

|Christopher M. Barnes

2

|Kai Chi Yam

3

|Cristiano L. Guarana

4

|

Lin Wang

5

1

Rutgers Business School, Rutgers, The State

University of New Jersey, New Brunswick,

New Jersey, U.S.A.

2

Foster School of Business, University of

Washington, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.

3

Department of Management & Organization,

National University of Singapore, Singapore

4

Kelley School of Business, Indiana University,

Bloomington, Indiana, U.S.A.

5

Department of Management, Lingnan

College, Sun Yat‐Sen University, Guangzhou,

China

Correspondence

Lin Wang, Department of Management,

Lingnan College, Sun Yat‐Sen University,

Guangzhou, GD, 510275 China.

Email: WangL83@mail.sysu.edu.cn

Summary

This paper advances the understanding of managerial voice endorsement based on a

self‐regulation perspective. We suggest that although managers might potentially

benefit more from employees' upward voice when they are more depleted, they are

paradoxically less likely to diligently process or endorse such voice under ego

depletion. We draw from ego depletion theory and argue that when managers are

more depleted of their self‐control resources, they will spend less cognitive effort

in processing voice. In turn, they tend to reject employee voice due to status quo bias

and confirmation bias. We further suggest that the detrimental effect of ego

depletion on voice endorsement is stronger when the voicing employee is perceived

as having low expertise. We conducted an experience sampling study surveying 62

managers about voice events they encounter at work over 10 days (Study 1) and

an experiment with 198 managers (Study 2). These two studies support our

hypotheses. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.

KEYWORDS

decision making, ego depletion, employee voice, self‐control, voice endorseme nt

1|INTRODUCTION

Managers often have challenging tasks and responsibilities. These

include delegating work assignments to team members, making

important decisions that affect the team, resolving employee conflict,

responding to the most difficult customer complaints, and reacting to

the dynamics of the external environment. Such typical managerial

behaviors can consume managers' energy resources and result in

ego depletion, “a state in which the self does not have all the [self‐

control] resources it has normally”(Baumeister & Vohs, 2007, p.2).

For example, researchers find that managers tend to experience

ego depletion after dealing with customer complaints (Yam, Fehr,

Keng‐Highberger, Klotz, & Reynolds, 2016) and from serving as an

ethical role model for their subordinates (Lin, Ma, & Johnson,

2016). Likewise, excessive workloads and pressure are likely to leave

managers more depleted at work (Barnes, 2011; Barnes, Lucianetti,

Bhave, & Christian, 2015).

Researchers have shown that when managers are more depleted,

they tend to forgo long‐term benefits for short‐term gains (Kotabe &

Hofmann, 2015), become less engaged at work (Lanaj, Johnson, &

Barnes, 2014), exhibit less persistence in problem solving and reason-

ing (e.g., Hagger, Wood, Stiff, & Chatzisarantis, 2010), and thus often

fail to discern problems or identify opportunities. In this case,

employees' upward voice becomes especially valuable to aid depleted

managers in fulfilling their roles in the workplace. Upward voice in

organizations refers to employees' discretionary communication to

managers of ideas, suggestions, and concerns about work‐related

issues, with the intention of improving organizational or unit

Received: 29 June 2018 Revised: 12 April 2019 Accepted: 13 April 2019

DOI: 10.1002/job.2370

J Organ Behav. 2019;40:869–882.© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job

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