A meta‐analysis of empowerment and voice as transmitters of high‐performance managerial practices to job performance

• Date: 01 December 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2295
• Author: Melissa Chamberlin,Daniel W. Newton,Jeffery A. LePine
• Published date: 01 December 2018

RESEARCH ARTICLE

A meta‐analysis of empowerment and voice as transmitters of

high‐performance managerial practices to job performance

Melissa Chamberlin

1

|Daniel W. Newton

2

|Jeffery A. LePine

2

1

Ivy College of Business, Ames, Iowa, USA

2

W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona

State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA

Correspondence

Melissa Chamberlin, College of Business, Iowa

State University, 3132 Gerdin Building, Ames,

Iowa 50011, USA.

Email: mc6@iastate.edu

Summary

Empowerment offers the predominant explanation for why employee perceptions of

high‐performance managerial practices are positively associated with employee job

performance. Drawing on social cognitive theory, we propose that high‐performance

managerial practices also influence performance because these practices encourage

employees to engage in voice. Additionally, we suggest that empowerment and voice

together provide a more complete explanation for why high‐performance managerial

practices and job performance are linked. In essence, we argue that empowerment

transmits the effects of high‐performance managerial practices to job performance

because it engenders voice. Using meta‐analysis of primary research consisting of

151 independent samples involving 53,200 employees, we find that not only do

empowerment and voice independently transmit the effects of high‐performance

managerial practices to job performance, but they sequentially mediate this relation-

ship as well. Further, we distinguish among skill‐enhancing, motivation‐enhancing,

and opportunity‐enhancing high‐performance managerial practices to identify when

empowerment and voice are more or less effective in explaining associations with

job performance. Although empowerment and voice transmit effects of all 3 types

of high‐performance managerial practices to employee performance, these mecha-

nisms appear to provide the best explanation for the effects of opportunity‐enhancing

practices, and the primary reason why is because employees respond to opportunity‐

enhancing practices with voice.

KEYWORDS

empowerment, high‐performance managerial practices, jobperformance, voice

1|INTRODUCTION

Scholars have long been interested in managerial practices that

encourage employee involvement and participation (e.g., Hapgood,

1975; Lewin, Lippitt, & White, 1939; Roethlisberger & Dickson,

1939), and a substantial body of work has examined how the imple-

mentation of these practices is associated with organizational perfor-

mance (e.g., Becker & Huselid, 1998; Guthrie, 2001; Huselid, 1995;

Jiang, Lepak, Hu, & Baer, 2012). Recently, scholars have called for

an individual‐level focus in an effort to better understand the

microfoundations that underlie the effects of these managerial

practices (Lepak, Liao, Chung, & Harden, 2006; Liao, Toya, Lepak, &

Hong, 2009; Wright & Boswell, 2002), broadly referred to as high‐per-

formance managerial practices (HPMP; Seibert, Wang, & Courtright,

2011). Specifically, scholars have sought to understand how

employee perceptions of HPMP subsequently influence employees'

job performance, or the overall value of employees' behavioral contri-

butions to the organization (Campbell, 1990; Motowidlo, Borman, &

Schmit, 1997). The predominant view is that HPMP influence job per-

formance because they foster a sense of psychological empowerment,

a multifaceted form of intrinsic motivation reflecting employees' ori-

entation to their work (Conger & Kanungo, 1988; Ehrnrooth &

Received: 8 July 2017 Revised: 25 April 2018 Accepted: 26 April 2018

DOI: 10.1002/job.2295

1296 Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J Organ Behav. 2018;39:1296–1313.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job

Björkman, 2012; Liao et al., 2009; Spreitzer, 1995, 1996; Thomas &

Velthouse, 1990).

However, the emphasis on psychological empowerment as the

focal explanation for the relationship between HPMP and job perfor-

mance has limited consideration of other mechanisms that could also

explain HPMP effects. In particular, some have suggested that HPMP

influence job performance because they prompt employees to engage

in the organizationally valued behaviors that the practices ostensibly

target (e.g., Harley, 2014). That is, HPMP are associated with job per-

formance by directly or indirectly inducing employees to become more

involved in their work by speaking up and sharing constructive ideas

for change. Considering a behavioral explanation of the effect of

HPMP on job performance would complement and extend prior work

that has focused more exclusively on the role of psychological

empowerment.

Importantly, by considering additional mechanisms that explain

how HPMP influence employee job performance, we can explore

whether different types of HPMP influence employee job perfor-

mance for different reasons. Researchers have argued that HPMP

involve practices that (a) build employees' skills, (b) manage

employees' motivation, and (c) provide employees with opportunities

to contribute (Jiang, Lepak, Han, et al., 2012; Lepak et al., 2006), and

it is quite possible that there are differences in the mechanisms that

transmit the effects of these different types of HPMP to employee

job performance. Insight into differences in the means by which these

specific HPMP influence job performance would not only enhance our

theoretical understanding but would also be important for practical

reasons. For example, a manager implementing HPMP would want

to know which mechanism is primarily responsible for its effects, so

that efforts could be taken to ensure that the mechanism is not unin-

tentionally dampened by other organizational factors.

The purpose of this article is to provide a more complete under-

standing of the relationship between employee perceptions of HPMP

and employee job performance. We develop hypotheses regarding the

role of empowerment and voice as mechanisms that explain why

HPMP are related to employee job performance, and we consider

how these mechanisms function as transmitters of the narrower forms

of HPMP. To these ends, we first examine assertions in the literature

linking HPMP to job performance through empowerment. We then

consider voice, or the discretionary expression of constructive ideas

intended to improve or change the organization (Detert & Burris,

2007; Liang, Farh, & Farh, 2012; Morrison, 2014; Van Dyne & LePine,

1998), as an additional pathway through which HPMP influence job

performance. This idea is based on social cognitive theory, which sug-

gests that when prompted by situational cues, individuals thoughtfully

enact behaviors in order to reach a future desired course of action or

outcome (Bandura, 1989, 2001). To the extent that HPMP prompt dis-

cretionary, intentional involvement in matters that promote organiza-

tional interests, expressions of voice, which are positively associated

with job performance, should manifest. Moreover, because voice is

influenced by intrinsic motivation reflected in empowerment (e.g.,

Bandura, 1999; Morrison, 2014), we consider whether empowerment

transmits the effects of HPMP to job performance because it inspires

employees to speak up and engage in voice. Finally, we delineate

among employee perceptions of skill‐enhancing, motivation‐

enhancing, and opportunity‐enhancing practices (Jiang, Lepak, Han,

et al., 2012; Jiang, Lepak, Hu, et al., 2012; Lepak et al., 2006), and con-

trast the role of the empowerment and voice mechanisms in the con-

text of these three types of practices.

We examine our hypotheses using path analyses that leverage

meta‐analytic estimates of primary research conducted over the last

several decades. We examine the indirect effects of employee percep-

tions of HPMP (and its narrower manifestations) on job performance

attributable to empowerment and voice independently, as well as

through empowerment and voice sequentially. This approach allows

us gauge the relative importance of each explanatory pathway for

the various HPMP concepts. In so doing, our research makes several

contributions. First, we offer a meta‐analytic test of prior work to con-

firm the mediating role of empowerment in the relationship between

HPMP and job performance. Direct examination of this pathway helps

rule out the possibility that job performance and empowerment are

simply epiphenomenal consequences of HPMP, and empirically con-

firms our understanding of the functioning of empowerment. Second,

and more importantly, we introduce voice as an additional mechanism

through which HPMP influence job performance. In this regard, we

contribute to the current HPMP literature by offering new insight

regarding how HPMP operate at the individual level of analysis. Fur-

ther, our inclusion of voice allows insight into the predominant expla-

nation regarding why HPMP are linked to employee job performance.

Specifically, we suggest that HPMP are positively related to employee

job performance because they empower employees, which in turn,

inspires them to speak up with fresh perspectives, ideas, and sugges-

tions. Finally, we consider specific types of HPMP and identify which

practices are most and least applicable with regard to our empower-

ment and voice explanations. In particular, we find that opportunity‐

enhancing practices are generally stronger in transmitting the effects

of HPMP to performance because they allow employees to get

involved and believe that they have openings to voice. This finding

extends prior work on HPMP, which has largely found no significant

differences in the effects of each of the practice types (e.g., Jiang,

Lepak, Hu, et al., 2012). In addition to enriching our theoretical under-

standing, our research also has important practical implications. Per-

haps most notable, the illumination of new pathways through which

HPMP operate suggests that managers would do well to foster

employees' internal motivation and remain open to employees' ideas

and initiatives in order to maximize the benefit of these practices.

1.1 |Pathways from HPMP to job performance

Scholars have identified a broad array of practices that organizations

implement to increase the effectiveness of employees by enhancing

their involvement, motivation, and skills (Delaney & Huselid, 1996;

Jiang, Lepak, Hu, et al., 2012; Seibert et al., 2011). Although scholars

have used a number of labels to describe these practices (e.g., Jiang,

Lepak, Hu, et al., 2012; Lepak et al., 2006), Seibert et al. (2011) refer

to these as HPMP, an encompassing term, which includes practices

such as training (e.g., Appelbaum, Bailey, Berg, & Kalleberg, 2000),

selection (Schmidt, Hunter, McKenzie, & Muldrow, 1979), feedback

(Eisenberger, Rhoades, & Cameron, 1999), rewards and incentives

(Seibert, Kraimer, & Crant, 2001), participative decision‐making (Axtell

CHAMBERLIN ET AL.1297