EMPLOYEE VOICE BEHAVIOR DURING ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

Abstract

I seek to understand the dynamic organizational change process by focusing on employees' change-related voice as the mechanism through which their dissatisfaction with change implementation processes relates to their positive behavioral outcomes during organizational change. I propose that employees who are dissatisfied with their organization's change implementation processes are more likely to engage in change-related voice behavior - defined as behavior that expresses constructive suggestions (promotive voice) and challenges (prohibitive voice) to improve change processes - and that their affective commitment to change, change efficacy, and work-unit leader's empowering leader behavior will positively moderate the relationship between dissatisfaction and change-related voice behavior. Through a survey with a sample of 192 employees and 27 work-unit leaders working for an organization undergoing a large-scale organizational change, I found that the patterns of how the hypothesized antecedents relate to change-related voice behavior vary depending on the type of voice behavior. Specifically, employees are more likely to make constructive suggestions (promotive voice) when their work-unit leader shows empowering behaviors and when they are high in change efficacy. Employees who are dissatisfied with the change implementation processes engage in promotive voice behavior only when they are strongly committed to change (affective commitment to change) and believe they are not capable of handling change demands (change efficacy). Furthermore, employees tend to point out problems in current change implementation processes (prohibitive voice) when the levels of their work-unit leader's empowering leader behavior and dissatisfaction with the current change processes are high; and the relationship between dissatisfaction and prohibitive voice was stronger when the level of their change efficacy is low rather than high. Lastly, increased levels of employee change-related voice behavior in both types are positively related with their individual performance of change tasks.