Employee Voice: A Mechanism to Harness Employees’ Potential for Sustainable Success

Listening to employees’ concerns reduces their dissatisfaction, but moreover, for an organization to achieve sustainable success, employees must raise their creative voice and give their input in decision-making without the fear of rejection in a psychologically safe environment. Ethical leaders facilitate such a participative style of management. A bureaucratic culture, as is generally encountered in Pakistan’s work settings, poses real challenges to those who dare to speak up, therefore the importance of ethical leadership, leader–member exchange (LMX), and psychological safety cannot be neglected as coping mechanisms to sustain the employee voice for mutual gains. To investigate ethical leadership’s mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions on voice behavior, we examined a moderated mediation model with the leader–member exchange as a moderator and psychological safety as a mediator. Grounded in social exchange theory (SET), the current study uniquely posits and tests that employees feel psychologically safe in the presence of an ethical leader with whom they have high-quality social exchanges. Data were collected from 281 employees from the public corporations and private enterprises of the petroleum sector of Karachi. Results of the analysis, through SPSS and AMOS, revealed that psychological safety mediated the relationship of ethical leadership and voice behavior, while the indirect effect of ethical leadership on voice behavior (via psychological safety) is stronger for those employees who enjoy high-quality exchanges with ethical leaders. LMX was also found to moderate the relationship between ethical leadership and voice behavior. Contributions, recommendations, and limitations of the current study and further research areas are also discussed. The study offers practical insight on the mechanism of ethical leadership on employee voice behavior and recommends leaders to develop social exchanges to improve voice behavior for sustainable success.

EXPRESS: Dynamic relationships between LMX and employee role-making behaviours: The moderating role of employee emotional ambivalence

We set out to understand how role-making works and what roles employees and leaders play in this process. Employees often make changes to their work roles, such as by negotiating their job responsibilities and seeking challenging tasks. In this study, we suggest that role-making behaviours influence and are influenced by the dyadic relationship between leaders and employees, otherwise known as leader–member exchange (LMX). We collected three waves of survey data from a sample of Chinese employees who were recent college graduates (n = 203). The results from cross-lagged panel analyses showed that 1) LMX and job-change negotiation were reciprocally related to each other and 2) initial LMX was associated with increased challenge-seeking behaviours, although these behaviours did not lead to greater LMX later on. In addition, we found evidence that when employees experienced a high level of emotional ambivalence (a conflicting, mixed, and complex emotional state), the direct and reciprocal relationships between LMX and role-making behaviours were weakened. Our findings advance the understanding of the development of leader–employee relationships in the workplace and have implications for strengthening employee perceptions of high-quality relationships with their leaders by making changes to their workplace roles.

How leader–member exchange affects job embeddedness and job dedication through employee advocacy

PurposeCompatible with the principles of leader–member exchange (LMX) theory and social exchange theory (SET), the study explores the effect of LMX on job embeddedness and job dedication and the mediating role of employee advocacy.Design/methodology/approachThe data were gathered via a survey at four hotels in Izmir. To test the reliability and validity, 194 valid questionnaires were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis. Structural equation modelling was used to test the hypothesized relationships.FindingsThe results show that high quality LMX and employee advocacy increase the hotel employees' job embeddedness and job dedication. In addition, the results show that employee advocacy has a partial mediating effect on the relationships between LMX and job embeddedness, and between LMX and job dedication.Originality/valueAlthough past researches have examined both various determinants of employee job embeddedness and job dedication, and consequences of high-quality LMX, they have ignored a critical factor, which is employee advocacy. This current study addresses this research gap by investigating the interrelations between LMX and job embeddedness, and job advocacy through employee advocacy in hotels. Moreover, this research is the first empirical study that analyzes the relationships between LMX, job embeddedness, job dedication and employee advocacy in the same model. Therefore, this research contributes to hospitality literature by filling this gap.

Dual crossover mechanisms of benevolent supervision on followers' contextual performance and emotional exhaustion alleviation

PurposeAdopting conservation of resources (COR) theory as a guiding framework, this study proposes that benevolent supervision (BS) is a feasible leadership style for building a positive resource gain process in subordinates' extra-role actions and reducing their exhaustion, and leader-member exchange (LMX) and positive affect (PA) serve as indirect crossover mechanisms.Design/methodology/approachSurveys were conducted at three-time points with four-week intervals. A total of 304 subordinates and 55 supervisors at a Taiwanese university participated in the surveys, and a multilevel model was used to test the hypotheses.FindingsThe results showed that prior BS (time 1) was positively associated with subordinates' subsequent LMX and PA (time 2). LMX mediated the relationship between BS and subsequent supervisor-rated contextual performance (time 3), and PA mediated the relationship between BS and subordinate-rated emotional exhaustion (time 3). In addition, supervisors' learning orientation positively moderated the relationship between BS and contextual performance via LMX, whereas supervisors' performance orientation negatively moderated this relationship.Practical implicationsThe results of the study encourage leaders to exhibit benevolence toward subordinates, increase subordinates' contextual performance and enhance personal feelings, thereby ultimately benefitting the organization.Originality/valueThis study reveals that BS is a source of resource investment in the process of subordinates' positive job (contextual performance) and personal (emotional exhaustion) resource gains through social exchange (LMX) and affective (PA) crossover mechanisms and that supervisors' goal inclinations impact this process.

Great minds think alike: does leader-follower similarity in construal level of the work enhance leader-member exchange quality?

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate whether leader-follower similarity in construal level of the work, which indicates the degree of abstraction applied to mental representation of the work, influences the quality of interpersonal relationship at work.Design/methodology/approachFirst, an interview study was conducted to adapt the work-based construal-level (WBCL) scale. Then, a survey study was conducted for hypothesis testing. Data collected from 245 matched supervisor-subordinate dyads were analyzed using multi-level modeling.FindingsResults revealed that dyadic similarity in work-domain construal level is positively related to leader-member exchange (LMX) quality. As a leader and a follower become similar to each other in terms of mental representation (i.e. construal level) of work, they experience higher relationship quality.Originality/valueThis study enhances the current knowledge of the role of cognition and cognitive similarity in leadership processes.

Need for Leadership in Times of Crises

The aim of this chapter is to give a comprehensive framework through integrating the modern and post-modern leadership approaches in times of crises. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to great challenges worldwide. Organizing in times of crisis or crisis management has gained greater attention much more than before. Pandemic new workforce created new perspectives on the basis of leadership. This study provides detailed information about both modern leadership types as autocratic, democratic, laissez-faire, charismatic, transformational, transactional, and post-modern leadership types as spiritual, resonant, agile, relational social constructionist, and hybrid. In chaotic and uncertain environment, the leadership types and their effectiveness are analyzed and discussed at the heart of social exchange, social identity, leader-member exchange, self-determination, and complexity leadership theoretical point of views and related empirical findings.

The Effect of Leader Member Exchange on Voice

The new digital age introduces new challenges and opportunities for leaders to engage their followers in voice behavior. Drawing on the conservation of resources theory, the objective of this paper is to examine the mediating role of employee engagement and the moderating role of the degree of digital communication by conducting two independent studies comprised of 116 and 188 employees. Results indicated that the positive effect of LMX on voice was mediated by employee engagement. Analyzing the moderation effects of the degree of digital communication, we found that the degree of digital communication attenuated the increase in employee engagement associated with LMX. We contribute to the literature on LMX and employee engagement by showing that while voice behaviors are reduced via the increased use of digital communication in the workplace, leaders can leverage digital communications to engage employees with lower LMX.