Review of Leadership behaviour and employee voice

Detert and Burris (2007) (henceforth referred to as authors) have carried out a

quantitative research to investigate the relationship between two types of change-

oriented leadership (managerial openness and transformational leadership) and the

employee voice. Through their research they have also studied the effect of

psychological safety and employee performance on the relationship between

leadership style and voice behaviour.

Theoretical framework and hypothesis

In the competitive and fast changing business environment, employee voice can play

an important role in steering the future of the organisation in right direction (Van

Dyne and LePine 1998:109). Various researches on the “employee voice” (LePine

and Van Dyne 1998:854) show that “employees weigh the advantages of speaking up

against the risks and they decide to speak only when the advantages outweigh the

risks” (Detert and Burris 2007:870). There are various factors, which influence this

risk assessment like, psychological safety, personality differences and organisational

contexts. This study focuses on organisational contexts, specifically the change

oriented leadership behaviour. This is because based on their characteristics,

“organisation leaders have the authority to reward as well as punish the employees for

their voice behaviour” (Detert and Burris 2007:870).

Authors have picked up specifically two aspects of change-oriented leadership:

transformational leadership and managerial openness. Being a deductive study,

authors have formulated four hypothesises. “managerial openness is positively related

to the voice behaviour”, “transformational leadership is positively related to employee

voice”, and “psychological safely mediates the relationship between leadership

behaviour and the employee voice” and “employee performance mediates the

relationship between the change oriented leadership and the employee voice.” (Detert

and Burris 2007:870)

Research methodology

There are many existing qualitative research exploring the issue of employee voice

(Milliken et al., Saunders et al. cited in Detert and Burris 2007:870) but there are not

that many quantitative researches. A few available quantitative researches did not

produce consistent results (Ashford et al; Saunders; Janssen and Cozijnsen cited in

Detert and Burris 2007:870). To address this issue, authors carried out a two-phased

quantitative research on the employees and managers of a chain of dining restaurant.

They used self-administered questionnaire for data collection using crossectional

research design. They also collected longitudinal data to further cement their findings.

For the first study they sent questionnaire to all the crew members of the restaurant.

The response rate was 63%. To measure the variables like leadership styles,

psychological safely and employee voices various standard measures were used.

Alternative explanation for the voice behaviour was accounted for by collecting the

data about personality, demography, gender, tenure, job type, job satisfaction etc.

Bivariate analysis was used to work out the correlation between various variables and

multi level analysis was used to obtain quantitative information on more complex

relationships.

For second study, samples were collected from shift managers and the general

managers of shift managers. Taking sample over 10 month duration collected

longitudinal data. Usable response rate was 26%. Measurement and analysis methods

similar to the first study were used for data collection and analysis.
Results summary

Analysis of the data collected from the first study, showed that both managerial

openness and transformational leadership were positively related to the employee

voice, confirming hypothesis 1 and 2. Further analysis of the data and Sobel test

showed that psychological safely mediates the relationship between leadership

behaviour and the employee voice, confirming hypothesis 3.

Analysis of data collected from second study further confirmed the first hypothesis

but the second hypothesis could not be significantly confirmed. Hypothesis 3 was

again confirmed by this study. This study confirmed hypothesis 4 that the

performance of employees mediates the relationship between leadership behaviour

and employee voice.

Validity and usefulness of the research

The research questions, which authors have taken up, are very pertinent, especially in

the fast paced and highly competitive business environment. The study has been

undertaken in a real business environment and has quantified the reasons why the

voice may not come out, which could have important practical implications. This

increases the ecological validity of the research (Bryman and Bell 2007:42).

Authors have clearly specified their research methodology making their research

replicable. Their measurement validity is also high, as they have used the well-defined

measures of the variables (Bryman and Bell 2007:41).

Authors have collected and analysed data about lots of other factors (apart from

leadership behaviour) affecting the employee voice, creating an important source of

secondary data for any further research on the related topics. This coupled with the

fact that they collected longitudinal data raises the reliability of the research.

Limitations of the study

Response rate of 63% in the first study and 26% in the second made the sample a non-

random and non-representative sample (Bryman and Bell 2007:184). Most of the

respondents were older and more experienced. This introduced sampling related bias.

For both the studies, samples were collected from a particular type of business. Due to

this it may not be possible to generalise the results to other types of businesses. This

weakens the external validity (Bryman and Bell 2007:42) of the study. Any future

study on the related topics would be more useful if carried out on business segment

like high technology or telecom due to their fast paced and highly competitive nature.

The causality between the performance and the employee voice has not been clearly

established which weakens the internal validity of the research (Bryman and Bell

2007:41).

As a typical quantitative study, authors have proved the weakness of hypothesis 2 but

not analysed the reasons of this, although some explanation is offered (Kark et al.

cited in Detert and Burris 2007:881; Ashford et al. 1998:46). A qualitative research on

this topic would help in understanding this in more depth. Authors have also not tried

to justify/disapprove the inconsistent results of the available quantitative research

(Ashford et al; Saunders; Janssen and Cozijnsen cited in Detert and Burris 2007:870)

on this topic.

Employee voice behaviour can vary depending on whether the voice disturbs the

existing set up or not. This factor has not been taken into account in the study.

Various other personality variables affecting voice like conscientiousness,

extraversion, neuroticism and agreeableness (LePine and Van Dyne 2001:327), effect

of group/team size (LePine and Van Dyne 1998:857), effect of available grievance

procedure (Van Dyne and LePine 1998:109), fear of damaging ones image (Milliken

et al. 2003:1467; Ashford et al. 1998:28) could have been considered to increase the

validity of the results. Any further study on this topic could also consider the fact that

the employee voice would vary depending on the economic condition of the business

(Dutton et al. 1997:415)

References

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University Press

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