This paper highlights the nature of individualistic employee voice in the context of contemporary Indian organisations. As the demand for knowledge workers increase, more organisations are finding that employee voice is critical for developing business intelligence. Yet, organisations often find their employees mostly silent despite the potential of knowledge sharing. Considering the benefits and the implicit costs associated with employee voice, the paper draws on senior executives' accounts of employee voice that represent varied industry sectors and uses qualitative content analysis. The findings indicate broad themes around the nature, content, boundaries, avenues, and targets of voice along with its underlying mechanisms. The paper extends management perspectives on employee voice behaviour and contributes towards understanding the intricacies of individual dynamics and human experience in voice scholarship. The study has implications for Indian indigenous voice research and practice.

Purpose Despite the increasing prominence of employee voice in organizational innovation and productivity, employees continue to struggle to influence matters that affect them at work. The purpose of this paper is to model work group context and manager behavior as the predictors of employee upward voice. Further, a mediating role of employee psychological safety is examined in this link. Design/methodology/approach With data from 575 employees representing various technology firms in India, the authors test the hypothesized relationships using covariance-based structural equation modeling. Findings Results indicate coworkers upward voice and manager pro-voice behavior to significantly impact employee upward voice with a mediating impact of psychological safety. This implies that perceived psychological safety plays a significant role in explaining the impact, coworkers and manager behavior would have on regulating employee upward voice. Originality/value This study contributes to the employee voice literature from an Indian context, where upward communication is culturally discouraged.

Purpose This paper aims to model how an employee’s proactive personality and manager’s pro-voice behaviour help to predict employee upward voice. Employee perceived voice efficacy is expected to mediate these links. Design/methodology/approach To analyse the data, a confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling procedure using AMOS 22 were used. The mediating role of voice efficacy was tested with bootstrapping method. Data included 625 employees representing various technology firms in India. Findings The results showed a significant positive impact of employee proactive personality and manager pro-voice behaviour on employee upward voice. Further, findings suggest significant mediation of employee voice efficacy beliefs in these links. Originality/value The study extends employee voice literature from an Indian context, where confronting those in authority is culturally discouraged. Contributing to the scant work on voice self-efficacy, its role as a key mechanism impacting employee upward voice is examined.