Rational or emotional? Prohibitive voice of outsourced employees in a time trajectory perspective

Abstract

Does outsourced employees' risk behavior depend more on rationality or emotion in temporary interorganizational project‐based teams? Combining trust‐related research and a time trajectory perspective, this study re‐examines the relationship between trust and outsourced employees' prohibitive voice in interorganizational project‐based teams. Two‐wave survey data were collected from 286 outsourced employees and their supervisors across 52 interorganizational teams in China. Empirical results show that outsourced employees' prohibitive voice depends more on cognition‐based trust than on affect‐based trust. With project execution time increases, the promoting effect of affect‐based trust on prohibitive voice shows an increase, while the impact of cognition‐based trust demonstrated little variation. Moreover, outsourced employees' perceptions of leader‐member exchange (LMX) differentiation mediates the moderating effect of project execution time on the relationship between affect‐based trust and prohibitive voice. However, the mediated moderation effect is not significant for cognition‐based trust. Theoretical and practical implications for project‐based team management are discussed.