Tactics of speaking up: The roles of issue importance, perceived managerial openness, and managers' positive mood

• Author: Wu Liu,Kan Ouyang,Saiquan Hu,Xu Huang,Erica Xu
• Date: 01 May 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21992
• Published date: 01 May 2020

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Tactics of speaking up: The roles of issue importance,

perceived managerial openness, and managers' positive mood

Erica Xu

1

| Xu Huang

1

| Kan Ouyang

2

| Wu Liu

3

| Saiquan Hu

4

1

Department of Management, Hong Kong

Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong

2

Department of Human Resource

Management, Shanghai University of Finance

and Economics, Shanghai, China

3

Department of Management and Marketing,

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung

Hom, Hong Kong

4

School of Public Administration, Hunan

University, Changsha, China

Correspondence

Kan Ouyang, Department of Human Resource

Management, Shanghai University of Finance

and Economics, Shanghai, China.

Email: ouyangkan@mail.shufe.edu.cn

Saiquan Hu, School of Public Administration,

Hunan University, Changsha, China.

Email: husaiquan@hnu.edu.cn

Abstract

Extant voice research has focused mainly on the conditions under which employees

speak up, but we have limited knowledge about how employees speak up. This study

examines voice tactics or the various ways in which employees express concerns to

or share suggestions with their managers. Based on the notion that voice is a deliber-

ative behavior, we draw upon a cost–benefit framework and propose that voice tac-

tics are influenced by messages' characteristics and managers' stable and temporal

characteristics. Specifically, we examine the joint effects of issue importance, per-

ceived managerial openness, and managers' positive mood on employees' public

(vs. private) and formal (vs. informal) voice tactics. Across two independent studies,

our findings demonstrate that employees tend to use public channels and formal pro-

cedures only when three conditions are met simultaneously: (a) the issue is impor-

tant, (b) managers are perceived as being open to employees' voice, and (c) managers

are in a positive mood at the time of voicing. In addition, we found that speaking up

via public channels or formal procedures is positively related to the success of voice.

KEYWORDS

issue importance, managers' positive mood, perceived managerial openness, voice tactics

1|INTRODUCTION

Voice refers to employees' voluntary behavior of communicating their

work-related concerns to organizational leaders (Detert & Burris,

2007; Van Dyne, Kamdar, & Joireman, 2008), through which

employees can influence managers by directing their attention to

important trends, new ideas, or potential problems (Burris, 2012; Mor-

rison & Phelps, 1999). Conceptualizing voice as a dichotomous choice

between speaking up or remaining silent, scholars have focused

mainly on identifying factors that may encourage or discourage

employees' choice to voice to their managers (e.g., Burris, Detert, &

Chiaburu, 2008; Detert & Burris, 2007; Van Dyne & LePine, 1998;

see a recent review by Morrison, 2011). Although this line of research

has invaluably informed us about when employees are likely to speak

up, we know little about how employees voice out their concerns or

their voice tactics (Dutton & Ashford, 1993; Dutton, Ashford,

O'Neill, & Lawrence, 2001; Morrison, 2011).

An investigation of employee voice tactics is important, because it

allows us to develop a deeper understanding of employee voice as a

deliberative and calculative behavior (Dutton et al., 2001; Dutton &

Ashford, 1993). Specifically, past research has focused mainly on how

employees' calculation of the risk of voice determines their decision

to voice or not (e.g., Detert & Edmondson, 2011; Milliken, Morrison, &

Hewlin, 2003). Speaking up or remaining silent, however, is only one

aspect of voice, and engaging in voice behavior does not necessarily

translate into positive outcomes, such as managers' attention and

managerial implementation (Burris, Rockmann, & Kimmons, 2017). In

the workplace, managers are often bombarded with many problems

and issues and can attend to and endorse only a few (Mintzberg,

1973). One challenge for voicing employees is how to effectively

attract managers' limited attention (Dutton et al., 2001; Dutton &

Ashford, 1993) and minimize the personal risks associated with speak-

ing up at the same time (Ashford, Rothbard, Piderit, & Dutton, 1998;

Detert & Burris, 2007). Scholars thus have called for a “better

DOI: 10.1002/hrm.21992

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