| Although management scholars and practitioners emphasize the importance of employee input to organizational success, research suggests that many workers are hesitant to express an opinion or voice a view because they fear repercussions. In this dissertation, I focus on the issue of employee workplace expression, introducing the concept of speaking up. I define speaking up as "openly stating one's views or opinions about workplace issues." Speaking up is distinguished from several related concepts that fall within a common construct space. Drawing on expectancy theory (Vroom, 1964) and the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1988, 1991), I explain the process believed to underlie employees' decisions to speak up or remain silent.;A conceptual scheme of willingness to speak up is introduced and tested. Several individual (viz., need for achievement, locus of control, self-esteem, self-monitoring, and need for approval) and situational (viz., top-management openness, norms for openness, trust in supervisor, perceived organizational support, and perceived risk of speaking up) antecedents to willingness to speak up are empirically investigated using a sample of telecommunication company employees. The role of one antecedent, the perceived risk of speaking up, is explored as a mediating link between each of the other antecedents and willingness to speak up. Moreover, self-esteem and self-monitoring are examined as possible moderators of these predicted mediated relationships.;The results of the investigation lead to a respecification of the conceptual scheme that more heavily incorporates the influence of self-monitoring. In the new conceptual scheme, self-monitoring interacts with two personal attributes (i.e., locus of control and self-esteem), and individual perceptions of three workplace characteristics (i.e., top-management openness, trust in supervisor, and dyadic duration) in predicting speaking up behavior. Results from a series of hierarchical regression analyses indicate that self-monitoring significantly interacts with each set of parent variables such that perceptions of top-management openness, supervisory trustworthiness, and dyadic duration, as well as high self-esteem and internality, are associated with speaking up. Results suggest a need to consider both personal attributes and workplace characteristics to better understand the willingness to speak up. |
