Employee voice on social media — An affordance lens

Abstract

Voice mechanisms in organizations provide an opportunity for employees to have a say about their work. As new digital mechanisms, such as social media (SM), are being increasingly adopted by organizations for knowledge sharing, employee engagement and general communication, it is important to consider the extent to which SM may facilitate employee voice. The limited attempts to examine SM and employee voice have mostly focused on identifying the contextual factors that could promote constructive voice on SM. The extant literature does not explore how SM features may (or may not) facilitate all types of voice, such as those which promote employee interests. Adopting an affordance lens, this paper answers the call of voice scholars to explore the potential of SM as a voice mechanism by discussing the perceived value of different SM features for different types of employee voice content. The paper brings together SM and voice literature and explores how different SM affordances may potentially facilitate certain voice content more so over others. In doing so, future directions for research of voice on SM are also discussed.

The Impacts of Digital Leadership on Employee Voice Behaviors: The Mediating Roles of Employee Empowerment and Work Engagement

“…Our study aligns with Wu and Du’s (2022) findings, which indicate that employees with high work engagement are more likely to engage in prohibitive voice behavior rather than promotive voice behavior as they seek to safeguard their resources. In cases of digital overload, employees may feel unsupported by their supervisors and have limited control over their future actions (Bernauer & Kornau, 2024), which may discourage them from participating in transformative initiatives (Khan et al, 2023). Instead, they may use prohibitive voice behavior to express their apprehensions about their future when job control is restricted (Lin & Johnson, 2015; Van Dyne & LePine, 1998).…”

“…Typically, employees express their voice behavior through digital voice channels such as WeChat and WhatsApp in the digital transformation of enterprises. These channels enable employees to quickly and inexpensively obtain information, express themselves anonymously, and increase their willingness to share their emotions, knowledge, and experience (Khan et al, 2023). Matching digital voice channels with material resource allocation can synergize digital technology and management, encouraging employee voice behaviors (Ellmer & Reichel, 2021).…”