How employees’ voice helps teams remain resilient in the face of exogenous change.

Abstract

Teams often confront exogenous events that induce discontinuous change and unsettle existing routines. In the immediate aftermath of such events (the disruption stage), teams experience a dip in their performance and only over time regain their previous performance levels (in the recovery stage). We argue that prohibitive voice that allows teams to manage errors better is instrumental for preventing performance losses in the disruption stage. Whereas, promotive voice that helps teams innovate or improve team processes, can facilitate steeper and more positive performance trajectories in the recovery stage. We also propose that voice is especially functional when teams confront higher change intensity and, thereby, highlight that voice is particularly important when change events cause greater discontinuity in the task environment. We found general support for our theory in a correlational field study involving 172 production teams in which we examined over time trajectories in objective team performance, and a field experiment involving 88 teams in a different production setting, where team members were trained, incentivized, and provided opportunities to engage in voice. We discuss the implications of our findings for literature on voice, team adaptation, and resilience.

How and when managers reward employees’ voice: The role of proactivity attributions.

“…In recent years, the voice literature has started to recognize that to sustainably motivate voice, employees need to be properly rewarded for speaking up. For instance, in a recent field intervention (Li & Tangirala, 2021b), scholars have demonstrated that providing adequate reward structures for voice (e.g., bonuses for expressing concerns or ideas) is an effective way of stimulating the behavior. As such, it is important to examine how managers go about rewarding employees who make the effort to speak up at work.…”

“…Given such benefits, it is potentially important for managers to reinforce voice by properly rewarding it (see Li & Tangirala, 2021b). However, managers often vary in how they respond to voice (Burris, 2012; Fast et al, 2014; Sherf et al, 2019).…”

“…After all, desirable work behaviors can only be effectively maintained when their enactment is followed by rewards (Kerr, 1995). Indeed, recent studies have indicated that connecting voice with job rewards can be a helpful way of sustaining employees’ motivation to speak up (e.g., Li & Tangirala, 2021b). At the same time, however, meta-analyses have noted that there is variability in how managers respond to voice (Chamberlin et al, 2017), suggesting that voice is not always strongly positively associated with subsequent job rewards.…”

A Resource Model of Team Resilience Capacity and Learning

“…Related research also demonstrates the importance of team communication for shaping team resilience, such as by generating new ideas and creating alignment within the team ( Carmeli et al, 2013 ; Gomes, Borges, Huber, & Carvalho, 2014 ). More recently, Li and Tangirala (forthcoming) found that team promotive and prohibitive voice, proximal outcomes of voice climate ( Frazier & Bowler, 2015 ; Morrison et al, 2011 ), enable process innovation (resource acquisition) and error management (resource protection) in response to major organizational change events. Altogether, prior research suggests that voice climate is a central mechanism for building team resilience capacity.…”

The positive and negative effects of social status on ratings of voice behavior: A test of opposing structural and psychological pathways.

“…Voice is the act of speaking up with ideas, suggestions, or concerns to improve the workplace (Morrison, 2011) and is considered critical to the performance of workgroups (Detert et al, 2013;MacKenzie et al, 2011;McClean et al, 2013;Li & Tangirala, 2021;Liang et al, 2019). Yet, with some employees voicing more often than others (Morrison, 2011(Morrison, , 2014, scholars have sought to better understand the factors that affect speaking up.…”