Why do Employees speak up? The Effects of Employees' Prosocial and Impression Management Motives on Voice Behaviors: Moderating Roles of Employee Promotion Focus, Affective Commitment, and Citizenship Pressure
Encouraging employees to speak up is a key to continuous innovation for organizations. In order to contribute to the voice literature, the present study applied Morrison’s (2011) voice model to examine the relationships between employees' different voice motives and voice behaviors, as well as the moderating effects of employee promotion focus, affective commitment, and citizenship pressure. To test the proposed model, the present study collected the data from 416 supervisor-employee pairs from various industries and occupations at two different time points. The results of the hierarchical regression analyses showed: (1) Employees' impression management motive is negatively related to both supportive and challenging voice, whereas promotion focus attenuates these negative relationship; (2) When employees’ affective commitment or citizenship pressure are high, relationships between prosocial motives and supportive/challenging voice become positive. However, when affective commitment or citizenship pressure is low, these relationship become negative; (3) Employees’ impression management and prosocial motives interacted jointly in predicting voice: when impression management motive is low whereas prosocial motive is high, employees would engage in more supportive and challenging voice behaviors.
