Introducing changes at work: How voice behavior relates to management innovation

• Date: 01 January 2019
• Author: Felipe A. Guzman,Alvaro Espejo
• Published date: 01 January 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2319

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

Introducing changes at work: How voice behavior relates to

management innovation

Felipe A. Guzman

1

|Alvaro Espejo

2

1

IÉSEG School of Management, Lille, France

2

School of Business, Universidad Adolfo

Ibáñez, Viña del Mar, Chile

Correspondence

Felipe A. Guzman, IÉSEG School of

Management, 3 Rue de la Digue, Lille 59000,

France.

Email: felguz@gmail.com

Summary

This multistudy research examines the unit‐level relationship between promotive

voice behavior and management innovation. Study 1 utilizes multisource data from

62 work units and reports that willingness to discuss ideas mediates the unit‐level

relationship between promotive voice and management innovation. The results of

Study 1 also show that the unit's available resources make the relationship stronger

between promotive voice and willingness to discuss ideas. Study 2 employs a sce-

nario‐based design to constructively replicate and expand the results of Study 1, uti-

lizing a sample of 100 working adults. The results of the second study also show that

resource availability positively moderates the relationship between promotive voice

and willingness to discuss ideas. Furthermore, Study 2 shows that the indirect effect

of promotive voice on management innovation through willingness to discuss ideas is

stronger when more resources are made available to the work units. This moderated‐

mediation effect is shown to be significant using two different operationalizations of

management innovation. The implications for theory and practice are discussed.

KEYWORDS

creativity, innovation, managementinnovation, proactive behavior, promotive voice behavior

1|INTRODUCTION

In today's ever changing business landscape, organizations are increas-

ingly looking for proactive input from employees because proactivity

is expected to increase organizational functioning (Bindl & Parker,

2010). One way by which organizations can access valuable employee

input is through voice behavior. Voice is a proactive behavior that

relates to the employees' expression of ideas, opinions, or suggestions

with the intent to change and improve the current state of affairs

(Bashshur & Oc, 2015; Detert & Burris, 2007; Van Dyne & LePine,

1998). Researchers have discovered that employees who engage in

voice experience some benefits, such as higher performance evalua-

tions (Fuller, Marler, Hester, & Otondo, 2015; Grant, 2014; Grant, Par-

ker, & Collins, 2009; Whiting, Podsakoff, & Pierce, 2008), higher job

satisfaction (Wanberg & Kammeyer‐Mueller, 2000), more salary

increases and promotions (Seibert, Kraimer, & Crant, 2001), and a

higher degree of social integration as newcomers (Wanberg &

Kammeyer‐Mueller, 2000). However, organizations also value voice

because the benefits of this behavior can affect the outcomes of work

units or the organization (Bashshur & Oc, 2015; Bindl & Parker, 2010).

For instance, frequent employee voice behavior in work units has

been associated with a higher level of task performance (Frazier &

Bowler, 2015; Lanaj, Hollenbeck, Ilgen, Barnes, & Harmon, 2013).

In addition to enhancing task performance in units, scholars have

proposed that voice is associated with creativity and innovation (Rank,

Pace, & Frese, 2004). Nemeth (1986) argues that when employees

speak up with views dissenting those of the majority in their work

unit, they prompt others to consider creative (i.e., novel and useful)

alternatives to resolve crucial work issues. Scholars have also revealed

that voice is an antecedent of innovation (i.e., idea implementation).

Thus, when employees speak up with dissenting views in work units

in which team reflexivity is high (De Dreu, 2002) or members of the

unit have high levels of participation in decision‐making (De Dreu &

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public,

commercial, or not‐for‐profit sectors.

Received: 30 November 2016 Revised: 7 June 2018 Accepted: 14 June 2018

DOI: 10.1002/job.2319

J Organ Behav. 2019;40:73–90. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job 73

West, 2001), implementation of ideas in these units is also high. These

studies contribute significantly by suggesting that voice fosters inno-

vation, which is required by organizations in order to succeed (Grant

& Ashford, 2008; Morrison & Phelps, 1999). However, there are cer-

tain important questions that remain unanswered and require

addressing.

First, although previous research (De Dreu, 2002; De Dreu &

West, 2001) has proposed a conceptual pathway linking the communi-

cation of ideas through minority dissent, a type of voice behavior, with

the implementation of these ideas, this literature has not yet examined

the proposed processes empirically. To achieve theoretical progress,

researchers need to empirically examine the underlying theoretical

mechanisms of their conceptual models (Aguinis & Edwards, 2014).

Second, although previous research suggests that dissenting voice

can lead to general forms of innovation, little is known about whether

other types of voice can foster specific forms of innovation. The

nature of voice behavior is broad and more complex than what a size-

able portion of literature suggests (Burris, 2012; Liang, Farh, & Farh,

2012; Maynes & Podsakoff, 2014; Van Dyne, Ang, & Botero, 2003).

Therefore, it is important to understand the effects that different

types of voice have on specific outcomes, in order to advance our

knowledge of this construct and to enable ourselves to provide better

advice to practitioners (Morrison, 2011, 2014). Third, previous

research has focused mainly on social exchange theory (Blau, 1964)

to gain an understanding of the relationship between voice behavior

and other dimensions of performance, such as idea implementation

(Ng & Feldman, 2012). Failure to conceptualize an organizational phe-

nomenon such as voice, utilizing different conceptual perspectives,

restricts the researchers' ability to realize novel theoretical contribu-

tions (Ng & Feldman, 2012). Therefore, scholars advocate for an

expansion of the set of theoretical lenses used to “better understand

the psychological processes underlying the use of voice”(Ng &

Feldman, 2012, p. 228).

In this article, we seek to address these identified literature gaps

by using the conservation of resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 1989)

as our conceptual lens and by proposing a theoretical model relating

unit‐level promotive voice behavior (Liang et al., 2012) with manage-

ment innovation (Birkinshaw, Hamel, & Mol, 2008). Figure 1 graphi-

cally depicts our conceptual model. Unit‐level management

innovation comprises the implementation of a new management prac-

tice, process, or structure into the unit that affects the work and mem-

bers of the whole unit (Birkinshaw et al., 2008; Vaccaro, Jansen, Van

Den Bosch, & Volberda, 2012). Management innovations are impor-

tant because they constitute one of the most sustainable sources of

competitive advantage for firms today (Hamel, 2006; Hamel & Breen,

2007). We propose that the unit‐level relationship between promotive

voice and management innovation is mediated by the unit's willing-

ness to discuss ideas. Specifically, we propose that when promotive

voice is present and more frequent in a work unit, members of that

unit are more willing to undertake efforts to discuss ideas obtained

through voice, in order to evaluate and select the most appropriate

ones vis‐à‐vis idea implementation. Testing this mechanism is impor-

tant because it enables researchers to understand the process through

which work behaviors are related with work outcomes (Grant, Gino, &

Hofmann, 2011; Podsakoff, Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Maynes, &

Spoelma, 2014). Because situational characteristics impact the conse-

quences of proactive behaviors, such as voice behavior in work units

(Grant & Ashford, 2008; Griffin, Neal, & Parker, 2007), we also theo-

rize that resource availability moderates the relationship between

ideas expressed through voice and willingness to discuss ideas. Specif-

ically, we expect that when units have access to more resources to

implement their ideas, their willingness to discuss ideas will be higher.

Resource availability then constitutes a situational characteristic that

can influence the likelihood of the introduction of management inno-

vations into work units (Wu, 2010). In the following sections, we will

present the conceptual arguments and the empirical results of two

studies that provide support for the idea that if work units seek to

profit from ideas expressed through voice, in the form of management

innovation, unit members will require that efforts are put forth to have

access to resources.

2|THEORY AND HYPOTHESES

2.1 |Proactive behaviors and unit‐level promotive

voice

Proactive behaviors are employees' self‐initiated, anticipatory actions

that aim at changing and improving oneself or the work environment

rather than passively adapting to present conditions (Crant, 2000;

Grant & Ashford, 2008; Parker & Collins, 2010). Provided this broad

definition, several constructs can be included in the category of proac-

tive behavior. Specifically, the list of constructs that scholars have

regarded as proactive behaviors includes the following, but is not lim-

ited to, taking charge (Morrison & Phelps, 1999), issue selling (Ashford

& Dutton, 1993), feedback seeking (Ashford & Tsui, 1991), and voice

(Van Dyne & LePine, 1998).

In this article, we study voice behavior at the group level. Often,

scholars who study voice at the group level conceptualize voice as

the shared beliefs about speaking up in groups (i.e., engaging in voice

is safe and worthwhile; Morrison, Wheeler‐Smith, & Kamdar, 2011) or

as the shared perceptions of a climate that encourages voice behavior

in the group (Frazier & Bowler, 2015). In these cases, scholars adopt a

referent‐shift consensus approach (Chan, 1998) and refer to this con-

struct as a voice climate. In the present research, although we study

voice at the group level, our interest is on the actual voice behavior

within the work unit and not on the voice climate (Frazier & Bowler,

2015; Morrison et al., 2011). Therefore, we conceptualize unit‐level

voice behavior as the aggregate level of voice within the unit. This

way of conceptualizing voice does not follow a referent‐shift

FIGURE 1 “Theoretical model”

74 GUZMAN AND ESPEJO